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diff --git a/.gitattributes b/.gitattributes new file mode 100644 index 0000000..6833f05 --- /dev/null +++ b/.gitattributes @@ -0,0 +1,3 @@ +* text=auto +*.txt text +*.md text diff --git a/17038-8.txt b/17038-8.txt new file mode 100644 index 0000000..34b112a --- /dev/null +++ b/17038-8.txt @@ -0,0 +1,8704 @@ +The Project Gutenberg eBook, History of the English People, Volume II (of +8), by John Richard Green + + +This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere at no cost and with +almost no restrictions whatsoever. You may copy it, give it away or +re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included +with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.org + + + + + +Title: History of the English People, Volume II (of 8) + The Charter, 1216-1307; The Parliament, 1307-1400 + + +Author: John Richard Green + + + +Release Date: November 10, 2005 [eBook #17038] +Most recently updated: May 20, 2008 + +Language: English + +Character set encoding: ISO-8859-1 + + +***START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK HISTORY OF THE ENGLISH PEOPLE, +VOLUME II (OF 8)*** + + +E-text prepared by Paul Murray and the Project Gutenberg Online +Distributed Proofreading Team (https://www.pgdp.net/) + + + +Note: Project Gutenberg also has an HTML version of this + file which includes the original illustrations. + See 17038-h.htm or 17038-h.zip: + (https://www.gutenberg.org/dirs/1/7/0/3/17038/17038-h/17038-h.htm) + or + (https://www.gutenberg.org/dirs/1/7/0/3/17038/17038-h.zip) + + Readers who are unable to use the fully illustrated html + version of this text may wish to view the individual images, + located within the "images" directory of the html file + (https://www.gutenberg.org/dirs/1/7/0/3/17038/17038-h/images). + The image file names have been included with each + illustration caption in this text. + + + The index for the entire 8 volume set of _History of + the English People_ was located at the end of Volume + VIII. For ease in accessibility, it has been removed + and produced as a separate volume + (https://www.gutenberg.org/etext/25533). + + + + + +HISTORY OF THE ENGLISH PEOPLE, VOLUME II + +by + +JOHN RICHARD GREEN, M.A. +Honorary Fellow of Jesus College, Oxford + +THE CHARTER, 1216-1307 +THE PARLIAMENT, 1307-1400 + + + + + + + +_First Edition, Demy 8vo, November_ 1877; +_Reprinted December_ 1877, 1881, 1885, 1890. +_Eversley Edition,_ 1895. +London MacMillan and Co. and New York 1895 + + + + +CONTENTS + + Volume II + + Book III--The Charter--1216-1307 + + Chapter II--Henry the Third--1216-1232 + + Chapter III--The Barons' War--1232-1272 + + Chapter IV--Edward the First--1272-1307 + + Book IV--The Parliament--1307-1461 + + Authorities for Book IV + + Chapter I--Edward II--1307-1327 + + Chapter II--Edward the Third--1327-1347 + + Chapter III--The Peasant Revolt--1347-1381 + + Chapter IV--Richard the Second--1381-1400 + + +LIST OF MAPS + + Scotland in 1290 (v2-map-1.jpg) + + France at the Treaty of Bretigny (v2-map-2.jpg) + + + + + +VOLUME II + + +BOOK III +THE CHARTER +1216-1307 + + +CHAPTER II +HENRY THE THIRD +1216-1232 + + + +[Sidenote: William Marshal] + +The death of John changed the whole face of English affairs. His son, Henry +of Winchester, was but nine years old, and the pity which was stirred by +the child's helplessness was aided by a sense of injustice in burthening +him with the iniquity of his father. At his death John had driven from his +side even the most loyal of his barons; but William Marshal had clung to +him to the last, and with him was Gualo, the Legate of Innocent's +successor, Honorius the Third. The position of Gualo as representative of +the Papal overlord of the realm was of the highest importance, and his +action showed the real attitude of Rome towards English freedom. The +boy-king was hardly crowned at Gloucester when Legate and Earl issued in +his name the very Charter against which his father had died fighting. Only +the clauses which regulated taxation and the summoning of parliament were +as yet declared to be suspended. The choice of William Marshal as "governor +of King and kingdom" gave weight to this step; and its effect was seen when +the contest was renewed in 1217. Lewis was at first successful in the +eastern counties, but the political reaction was aided by jealousies which +broke out between the English and French nobles in his force, and the first +drew gradually away from him. So general was the defection that at the +opening of summer William Marshal felt himself strong enough for a blow at +his foes. Lewis himself was investing Dover, and a joint army of French and +English barons under the Count of Perche and Robert Fitz-Walter was +besieging Lincoln, when gathering troops rapidly from the royal castles the +regent marched to the relief of the latter town. Cooped up in its narrow +streets and attacked at once by the Earl and the garrison, the barons fled +in utter rout; the Count of Perche fell on the field, Robert Fitz-Walter +was taken prisoner. Lewis at once retreated on London and called for aid +from France. But a more terrible defeat crushed his remaining hopes. A +small English fleet which set sail from Dover under Hubert de Burgh fell +boldly on the reinforcements which were crossing under escort of Eustace +the Monk, a well-known freebooter of the Channel. Some incidents of the +fight light up for us the naval warfare of the time. From the decks of the +English vessels bowmen poured their arrows into the crowded transports, +others hurled quicklime into their enemies' faces, while the more active +vessels crashed with their armed prows into the sides of the French ships. +The skill of the mariners of the Cinque Ports turned the day against the +larger forces of their opponents, and the fleet of Eustace was utterly +destroyed. The royal army at once closed upon London, but resistance was +really at an end. By a treaty concluded at Lambeth in September Lewis +promised to withdraw from England on payment of a sum which he claimed as +debt; his adherents were restored to their possessions, the liberties of +London and other towns confirmed, and the prisoners on either side set at +liberty. A fresh issue of the Charter, though in its modified form, +proclaimed yet more clearly the temper and policy of the Earl Marshal. + + +[Sidenote: Hubert de Burgh] + +His death at the opening of 1219, after a year spent in giving order to the +realm, brought no change in the system he had adopted. The control of +affairs passed into the hands of a new legate, Pandulf, of Stephen Langton +who had just returned forgiven from Rome, and of the Justiciar, Hubert de +Burgh. It was a time of transition, and the temper of the Justiciar was +eminently transitional. Bred in the school of Henry the Second, Hubert had +little sympathy with national freedom, and though resolute to maintain the +Charter he can have had small love for it; his conception of good +government, like that of his master, lay in a wise personal administration, +in the preservation of order and law. But he combined with this a +thoroughly English desire for national independence, a hatred of +foreigners, and a reluctance to waste English blood and treasure in +Continental struggles. Able as he proved himself, his task was one of no +common difficulty. He was hampered by the constant interference of Rome. A +Papal legate resided at the English court, and claimed a share in the +administration of the realm as the representative of its overlord and as +guardian of the young sovereign. A foreign party too had still a footing in +the kingdom, for William Marshal had been unable to rid himself of men like +Peter des Roches or Faukes de Breauté, who had fought on the royal side in +the struggle against Lewis. Hubert had to deal too with the anarchy which +that struggle left behind it. From the time of the Conquest the centre of +England had been covered with the domains of great houses, whose longings +were for feudal independence and whose spirit of revolt had been held in +check partly by the stern rule of the kings and partly by the rise of a +baronage sprung from the Court and settled for the most part in the North. +The oppression of John united both the earlier and these newer houses in +the struggle for the Charter. But the character of each remained unchanged, +and the close of the struggle saw the feudal party break out in their old +lawlessness and defiance of the Crown. + + +[Sidenote: Order restored] + +For a time the anarchy of Stephen's days seemed to revive. But the +Justiciar was resolute to crush it, and he was backed by the strenuous +efforts of Stephen Langton. A new and solemn coronation of the young king +in 1220 was followed by a demand for the restoration of the royal castles +which had been seized by the barons and foreigners. The Earl of Chester, +the head of the feudal baronage, though he rose in armed rebellion, quailed +before the march of Hubert and the Primate's threats of excommunication. A +more formidable foe remained in the Frenchman, Faukes de Breauté, the +sheriff of six counties, with six royal castles in his hands, and allied +both with the rebel barons and Llewelyn of Wales. But in 1224 his castle of +Bedford was besieged for two months; and on its surrender the stern justice +of Hubert hung the twenty-four knights and their retainers who formed the +garrison before its walls. The blow was effectual; the royal castles were +surrendered by the barons, and the land was once more at peace. Freed from +foreign soldiery, the country was freed also from the presence of the +foreign legate. Langton wrested a promise from Rome that so long as he +lived no future legate should be sent to England, and with Pandulf's +resignation in 1221 the direct interference of the Papacy in the government +of the realm came to an end. But even these services of the Primate were +small compared with his services to English freedom. Throughout his life +the Charter was the first object of his care. The omission of the articles +which restricted the royal power over taxation in the Charter which was +published at Henry's accession in 1216 was doubtless due to the +Archbishop's absence and disgrace at Rome. The suppression of disorder +seems to have revived the older spirit of resistance among the royal +ministers; for when Langton demanded a fresh confirmation of the Charter in +Parliament at London William Brewer, one of the King's councillors, +protested that it had been extorted by force and was without legal +validity. "If you loved the King, William," the Primate burst out in anger, +"you would not throw a stumbling-block in the way of the peace of the +realm." The young king was cowed by the Archbishop's wrath, and promised +observance of the Charter. But it may have been their consciousness of such +a temper among the royal councillors that made Langton and the baronage +demand two years later a fresh promulgation of the Charter as the price of +a subsidy, and Henry's assent established the principle, so fruitful of +constitutional results, that redress of wrongs precedes a grant to the +Crown. + + +[Sidenote: State of the Church] + +These repeated sanctions of the Charter and the government of the realm +year after year in accordance with its provisions were gradually bringing +the new freedom home to the mass of Englishmen. But the sense of liberty +was at this time quickened and intensified by a religious movement which +stirred English society to its depths. Never had the priesthood wielded +such boundless power over Christendom as in the days of Innocent the Third +and his immediate successors. But its religious hold on the people was +loosening day by day. The old reverence for the Papacy was fading away +before the universal resentment at its political ambition, its lavish use +of interdict and excommunication for purely secular ends, its degradation +of the most sacred sentences into means of financial extortion. In Italy +the struggle that was opening between Rome and Frederick the Second +disclosed a spirit of scepticism which among the Epicurean poets of +Florence denied the immortality of the soul and attacked the very +foundations of the faith itself. In Southern Gaul, Languedoc and Provence +had embraced the heresy of the Albigenses and thrown off all allegiance to +the Papacy. Even in England, though there were no signs as yet of religious +revolt, and though the political action of Rome had been in the main on the +side of freedom, there was a spirit of resistance to its interference with +national concerns which broke out in the struggle against John. "The Pope +has no part in secular matters," had been the reply of London to the +interdict of Innocent. And within the English Church itself there was much +to call for reform. Its attitude in the strife for the Charter as well as +the after work of the Primate had made it more popular than ever; but its +spiritual energy was less than its political. The disuse of preaching, the +decline of the monastic orders into rich landowners, the non-residence and +ignorance of the parish priests, lowered the religious influence of the +clergy. The abuses of the time foiled even the energy of such men as Bishop +Grosseteste of Lincoln. His constitutions forbid the clergy to haunt +taverns, to gamble, to share in drinking bouts, to mix in the riot and +debauchery of the life of the baronage. But such prohibitions witness to +the prevalence of the evils they denounce. Bishops and deans were still +withdrawn from their ecclesiastical duties to act as ministers, judges, or +ambassadors. Benefices were heaped in hundreds at a time on royal +favourites like John Mansel. Abbeys absorbed the tithes of parishes and +then served them by half-starved vicars, while exemptions purchased from +Rome shielded the scandalous lives of canons and monks from all episcopal +discipline. And behind all this was a group of secular statesmen and +scholars, the successors of such critics as Walter Map, waging indeed no +open warfare with the Church, but noting with bitter sarcasm its abuses and +its faults. + + +[Sidenote: The Friars] + +To bring the world back again within the pale of the Church was the aim of +two religious orders which sprang suddenly to life at the opening of the +thirteenth century. The zeal of the Spaniard Dominic was roused at the +sight of the lordly prelates who sought by fire and sword to win the +Albigensian heretics to the faith. "Zeal," he cried, "must be met by zeal, +lowliness by lowliness, false sanctity by real sanctity, preaching lies by +preaching truth." His fiery ardour and rigid orthodoxy were seconded by the +mystical piety, the imaginative enthusiasm of Francis of Assisi. The life +of Francis falls like a stream of tender light across the darkness of the +time. In the frescoes of Giotto or the verse of Dante we see him take +Poverty for his bride. He strips himself of all, he flings his very clothes +at his father's feet, that he may be one with Nature and God. His +passionate verse claims the moon for his sister and the sun for his +brother, he calls on his brother the Wind, and his sister the Water. His +last faint cry was a "Welcome, Sister Death!" Strangely as the two men +differed from each other, their aim was the same--to convert the heathen, +to extirpate heresy, to reconcile knowledge with orthodoxy, above all to +carry the Gospel to the poor. The work was to be done by an utter reversal +of the older monasticism, by seeking personal salvation in effort for the +salvation of their fellow-men, by exchanging the solitary of the cloister +for the preacher, the monk for the "brother" or friar. To force the new +"brethren" into entire dependence on those among whom they laboured their +vow of Poverty was turned into a stern reality; the "Begging Friars" were +to subsist solely on alms, they might possess neither money nor lands, the +very houses in which they lived were to be held in trust for them by +others. The tide of popular enthusiasm which welcomed their appearance +swept before it the reluctance of Rome, the jealousy of the older orders, +the opposition of the parochial priesthood. Thousands of brethren gathered +in a few years round Francis and Dominic; and the begging preachers, clad +in coarse frock of serge with a girdle of rope round their waist, wandered +barefooted as missionaries over Asia, battled with heresy in Italy and +Gaul, lectured in the Universities, and preached and toiled among the poor. + + +[Sidenote: The Friars and the Towns] + +To the towns especially the coming of the Friars was a religious +revolution. They had been left for the most part to the worst and most +ignorant of the clergy, the mass-priest, whose sole subsistence lay in his +fees. Burgher and artizan were left to spell out what religious instruction +they might from the gorgeous ceremonies of the Church's ritual or the +scriptural pictures and sculptures which were graven on the walls of its +minsters. We can hardly wonder at the burst of enthusiasm which welcomed +the itinerant preacher whose fervid appeal, coarse wit, and familiar story +brought religion into the fair and the market place. In England, where the +Black Friars of Dominic arrived in 1221, the Grey Friars of Francis in +1224, both were received with the same delight. As the older orders had +chosen the country, the Friars chose the town. They had hardly landed at +Dover before they made straight for London and Oxford. In their ignorance +of the road the first two Grey Brothers lost their way in the woods between +Oxford and Baldon, and fearful of night and of the floods turned aside to a +grange of the monks of Abingdon. Their ragged clothes and foreign gestures, +as they prayed for hospitality, led the porter to take them for jongleurs, +the jesters and jugglers of the day, and the news of this break in the +monotony of their lives brought prior, sacrist, and cellarer to the door to +welcome them and witness their tricks. The disappointment was too much for +the temper of the monks, and the brothers were kicked roughly from the gate +to find their night's lodging under a tree. But the welcome of the townsmen +made up everywhere for the ill-will and opposition of both clergy and +monks. The work of the Friars was physical as well as moral. The rapid +progress of population within the boroughs had outstripped the sanitary +regulations of the Middle Ages, and fever or plague or the more terrible +scourge of leprosy festered in the wretched hovels of the suburbs. It was +to haunts such as these that Francis had pointed his disciples, and the +Grey Brethren at once fixed themselves in the meanest and poorest quarters +of each town. Their first work lay in the noisome lazar-houses; it was +amongst the lepers that they commonly chose the site of their homes. At +London they settled in the shambles of Newgate; at Oxford they made their +way to the swampy ground between its walls and the streams of Thames. Huts +of mud and timber, as mean as the huts around them, rose within the rough +fence and ditch that bounded the Friary. The order of Francis made a hard +fight against the taste for sumptuous buildings and for greater personal +comfort which characterized the time. "I did not enter into religion to +build walls," protested an English provincial when the brethren pressed for +a larger house; and Albert of Pisa ordered a stone cloister which the +burgesses of Southampton had built for them to be razed to the ground. "You +need no little mountains to lift your heads to heaven," was his scornful +reply to a claim for pillows. None but the sick went shod. An Oxford Friar +found a pair of shoes one morning, and wore them at matins. At night he +dreamed that robbers leapt on him in a dangerous pass between Gloucester +and Oxford with, shouts of "Kill, kill!" "I am a friar," shrieked the +terror-stricken brother. "You lie," was the instant answer, "for you go +shod." The Friar lifted up his foot in disproof, but the shoe was there. In +an agony of repentance he woke and flung the pair out of window. + + +[Sidenote: Revival of Theology] + +It was with less success that the order struggled against the passion of +the time for knowledge. Their vow of poverty, rigidly interpreted as it was +by their founders, would have denied them the possession of books or +materials for study. "I am your breviary, I am your breviary," Francis +cried passionately to a novice who asked for a psalter. When the news of a +great doctor's reception was brought to him at Paris, his countenance fell. +"I am afraid, my son," he replied, "that such doctors will be the +destruction of my vineyard. They are the true doctors who with the meekness +of wisdom show forth good works for the edification of their neighbours." +One kind of knowledge indeed their work almost forced on them. The +popularity of their preaching soon led them to the deeper study of +theology; within a short time after their establishment in England we find +as many as thirty readers or lecturers appointed at Hereford, Leicester, +Bristol, and other places, and a regular succession of teachers provided at +each University. The Oxford Dominicans lectured on theology in the nave of +their new church while philosophy was taught in the cloister. The first +provincial of the Grey Friars built a school in their Oxford house and +persuaded Grosseteste to lecture there. His influence after his promotion +to the see of Lincoln was steadily exerted to secure theological study +among the Friars, as well as their establishment in the University; and in +this work he was ably seconded by his scholar, Adam Marsh, or de Marisco, +under whom the Franciscan school at Oxford attained a reputation throughout +Christendom. Lyons, Paris, and Koln borrowed from it their professors: it +was through its influence indeed that Oxford rose to a position hardly +inferior to that of Paris itself as a centre of scholasticism. But the +result of this powerful impulse was soon seen to be fatal to the wider +intellectual activity which had till now characterized the Universities. +Theology in its scholastic form resumed its supremacy in the schools. Its +only efficient rivals were practical studies such as medicine and law. The +last, as he was by far the greatest, instance of the freer and wider +culture which had been the glory of the last century, was Roger Bacon, and +no name better illustrates the rapidity and completeness with which it +passed away. + + +[Sidenote: Roger Bacon] + +Roger Bacon was the child of royalist parents who were driven into exile +and reduced to poverty by the civil wars. From Oxford, where he studied +under Edmund of Abingdon to whom he owed his introduction to the works of +Aristotle, he passed to the University of Paris, and spent his whole +heritage there in costly studies and experiments. "From my youth up," he +writes, "I have laboured at the sciences and tongues. I have sought the +friendship of all men among the Latins who had any reputation for +knowledge. I have caused youths to be instructed in languages, geometry, +arithmetic, the construction of tables and instruments, and many needful +things besides." The difficulties in the way of such studies as he had +resolved to pursue were immense. He was without instruments or means of +experiment. "Without mathematical instruments no science can be mastered," +he complains afterwards, "and these instruments are not to be found among +the Latins, nor could they be made for two or three hundred pounds. +Besides, better tables are indispensably necessary, tables on which the +motions of the heavens are certified from the beginning to the end of the +world without daily labour, but these tables are worth a king's ransom and +could not be made without a vast expense. I have often attempted the +composition of such tables, but could not finish them through failure of +means and the folly of those whom I had to employ." Books were difficult +and sometimes even impossible to procure. "The scientific works of +Aristotle, of Avicenna, of Seneca, of Cicero, and other ancients cannot be +had without great cost; their principal works have not been translated into +Latin, and copies of others are not to be found in ordinary libraries or +elsewhere. The admirable books of Cicero de Republica are not to be found +anywhere, so far as I can hear, though I have made anxious enquiry for them +in different parts of the world, and by various messengers. I could never +find the works of Seneca, though I made diligent search for them during +twenty years and more. And so it is with many more most useful books +connected with the science of morals." It is only words like these of his +own that bring home to us the keen thirst for knowledge, the patience, the +energy of Roger Bacon. He returned as a teacher to Oxford, and a touching +record of his devotion to those whom he taught remains in the story of John +of London, a boy of fifteen, whose ability raised him above the general +level of his pupils. "When he came to me as a poor boy," says Bacon in +recommending him to the Pope, "I caused him to be nurtured and instructed +for the love of God, especially since for aptitude and innocence I have +never found so towardly a youth. Five or six years ago I caused him to be +taught in languages, mathematics, and optics, and I have gratuitously +instructed him with my own lips since the time that I received your +mandate. There is no one at Paris who knows so much of the root of +philosophy, though he has not produced the branches, flowers, and fruit +because of his youth, and because he has had no experience in teaching. But +he has the means of surpassing all the Latins if he live to grow old and +goes on as he has begun." + +The pride with which he refers to his system of instruction was justified +by the wide extension which he gave to scientific teaching in Oxford. It is +probably of himself that he speaks when he tells us that "the science of +optics has not hitherto been lectured on at Paris or elsewhere among the +Latins, save twice at Oxford." It was a science on which he had laboured +for ten years. But his teaching seems to have fallen on a barren soil. From +the moment when the Friars settled in the Universities scholasticism +absorbed the whole mental energy of the student world. The temper of the +age was against scientific or philosophical studies. The older enthusiasm +for knowledge was dying down; the study of law was the one source of +promotion, whether in Church or state; philosophy was discredited, +literature in its purer forms became almost extinct. After forty years of +incessant study, Bacon found himself in his own words "unheard, forgotten, +buried." He seems at one time to have been wealthy, but his wealth was +gone. "During the twenty years that I have specially laboured in the +attainment of wisdom, abandoning the path of common men, I have spent on +these pursuits more than two thousand pounds, not to mention the cost of +books, experiments, instruments, tables, the acquisition of languages, and +the like. Add to all this the sacrifices I have made to procure the +friendship of the wise and to obtain well-instructed assistants." Ruined +and baffled in his hopes, Bacon listened to the counsels of his friend +Grosseteste and renounced the world. He became a friar of the order of St. +Francis, an order where books and study were looked upon as hindrances to +the work which it had specially undertaken, that of preaching among the +masses of the poor. He had written little. So far was he from attempting to +write that his new superiors prohibited him from publishing anything under +pain of forfeiture of the book and penance of bread and water. But we can +see the craving of his mind, the passionate instinct of creation which +marks the man of genius, in the joy with which he seized a strange +opportunity that suddenly opened before him. "Some few chapters on +different subjects, written at the entreaty of friends," seem to have got +abroad, and were brought by one of the Pope's chaplains under the notice of +Clement the Fourth. The Pope at once invited Bacon to write. But +difficulties stood in his way. Materials, transcription, and other expenses +for such a work as he projected would cost at least, £60, and the Pope sent +not a penny. Bacon begged help from his family, but they were ruined like +himself. No one would lend to a mendicant friar, and when his friends +raised the money he needed it was by pawning their goods in the hope of +repayment from Clement. Nor was this all; the work itself, abstruse and +scientific as was its subject, had to be treated in a clear and popular +form to gain the Papal ear. But difficulties which would have crushed +another man only roused Roger Bacon to an almost superhuman energy. By the +close of 1267 the work was done. The "greater work," itself in modern form +a closely-printed folio, with its successive summaries and appendices in +the "lesser" and the "third" works (which make a good octavo more), were +produced and forwarded to the Pope within fifteen months. + + +[Sidenote: The Opus Majus] + +No trace of this fiery haste remains in the book itself. The "Opus Majus" +is alike wonderful in plan and detail. Bacon's main purpose, in the words +of Dr. Whewell, is "to urge the necessity of a reform in the mode of +philosophizing, to set forth the reasons why knowledge had not made a +greater progress, to draw back attention to sources of knowledge which had +been unwisely neglected, to discover other sources which were yet wholly +unknown, and to animate men to the undertaking by a prospect of the vast +advantages which it offered." The developement of his scheme is on the +largest scale; he gathers together the whole knowledge of his time on every +branch of science which it possessed, and as he passes them in review he +suggests improvements in nearly all. His labours, both here and in his +after works, in the field of grammar and philology, his perseverance in +insisting on the necessity of correct texts, of an accurate knowledge of +languages, of an exact interpretation, are hardly less remarkable than his +scientific investigations. From grammar he passes to mathematics, from +mathematics to experimental philosophy. Under the name of mathematics +indeed was included all the physical science of the time. "The neglect of +it for nearly thirty or forty years," pleads Bacon passionately, "hath +nearly destroyed the entire studies of Latin Christendom. For he who knows +not mathematics cannot know any other sciences; and what is more, he cannot +discover his own ignorance or find its proper remedies." Geography, +chronology, arithmetic, music, are brought into something of scientific +form, and like rapid sketches are given of the question of climate, +hydrography, geography, and astrology. The subject of optics, his own +especial study, is treated with greater fulness; he enters into the +question of the anatomy of the eye besides discussing problems which lie +more strictly within the province of optical science. In a word, the +"Greater Work," to borrow the phrase of Dr. Whewell, is "at once the +Encyclopedia and the Novum Organum of the thirteenth century." The whole of +the after-works of Roger Bacon--and treatise after treatise has of late +been disentombed from our libraries--are but developements in detail of the +magnificent conception he laid before Clement. Such a work was its own +great reward. + +From the world around Roger Bacon could look for and found small +recognition. No word of acknowledgement seems to have reached its author +from the Pope. If we may credit a more recent story, his writings only +gained him a prison from his order. "Unheard, forgotten, buried," the old +man died as he had lived, and it has been reserved for later ages to roll +away the obscurity that had gathered round his memory, and to place first +in the great roll of modern science the name of Roger Bacon. + + +[Sidenote: Scholasticism] + +The failure of Bacon shows the overpowering strength of the drift towards +the practical studies, and above all towards theology in its scholastic +guise. Aristotle, who had been so long held at bay as the most dangerous +foe of mediæval faith, was now turned by the adoption of his logical method +in the discussion and definition of theological dogma into its unexpected +ally. It was this very method that led to "that unprofitable subtlety and +curiosity" which Lord Bacon notes as the vice of the scholastic philosophy. +But "certain it is"--to continue the same great thinker's comment on the +Friars--"that if these schoolmen to their great thirst of truth and +unwearied travel of wit had joined variety of reading and contemplation, +they had proved excellent lights to the great advancement of all learning +and knowledge." What, amidst all their errors, they undoubtedly did was to +insist on the necessity of rigid demonstration and a more exact use of +words, to introduce a clear and methodical treatment of all subjects into +discussion, and above all to substitute an appeal to reason for +unquestioning obedience to authority. It was by this critical tendency, by +the new clearness and precision which scholasticism gave to enquiry, that +in spite of the trivial questions with which it often concerned itself it +trained the human mind through the next two centuries to a temper which +fitted it to profit by the great disclosure of knowledge that brought about +the Renascence. And it is to the same spirit of fearless enquiry as well as +to the strong popular sympathies which their very constitution necessitated +that we must attribute the influence which the Friars undoubtedly exerted +in the coming struggle between the people and the Crown. Their position is +clearly and strongly marked throughout the whole contest. The University of +Oxford, which soon fell under the direction of their teaching, stood first +in its resistance to Papal exactions and its claim of English liberty. The +classes in the towns, on whom the influence of the Friars told most +directly, were steady supporters of freedom throughout the Barons' Wars. + + +[Sidenote: Its Political Influence] + +Politically indeed the teaching of the schoolmen was of immense value, for +it set on a religious basis and gave an intellectual form to the +constitutional theory of the relations between king and people which was +slowly emerging from the struggle with the Crown. In assuming the +responsibility of a Christian king to God for the good government of his +realm, in surrounding the pledges whether of ruler or ruled with religious +sanctions, the mediæval Church entered its protest against any personal +despotism. The schoolmen pushed further still to the doctrine of a contract +between king and people; and their trenchant logic made short work of the +royal claims to irresponsible power and unquestioning obedience. "He who +would be in truth a king," ran a poem which embodies their teaching at this +time in pungent verse--"he is a 'free king' indeed if he rightly rule +himself and his realm. All things are lawful to him for the government of +his realm, but nothing is lawful to him for its destruction. It is one +thing to rule according to a king's duty, another to destroy a kingdom by +resisting the law." "Let the community of the realm advise, and let it be +known what the generality, to whom their laws are best known, think on the +matter. They who are ruled by the laws know those laws best; they who make +daily trial of them are best acquainted with them; and since it is their +own affairs which are at stake they will take the more care and will act +with an eye to their own peace." "It concerns the community to see what +sort of men ought justly to be chosen for the weal of the realm." The +constitutional restrictions on the royal authority, the right of the whole +nation to deliberate and decide on its own affairs and to have a voice in +the selection of the administrators of government, had never been so +clearly stated before. But the importance of the Friar's work lay in this, +that the work of the scholar was supplemented by that of the popular +preacher. The theory of government wrought out in cell and lecture-room was +carried over the length and breadth of the land by the mendicant brother, +begging his way from town to town, chatting with farmer or housewife at the +cottage door, and setting up his portable pulpit in village green or +market-place. His open-air sermons, ranging from impassioned devotion to +coarse story and homely mother wit, became the journals as well as the +homilies of the day; political and social questions found place in them +side by side with spiritual matters; and the rudest countryman learned his +tale of a king's oppression or a patriot's hopes as he listened to the +rambling, passionate, humorous discourse of the begging friar. + + +[Sidenote: Henry the Third] + +Never had there been more need of such a political education of the whole +people than at the moment we have reached. For the triumph of the Charter, +the constitutional government of Governor and Justiciar, had rested mainly +on the helplessness of the king. As boy or youth, Henry the Third had bowed +to the control of William Marshal or Langton or Hubert de Burgh. But he was +now grown to manhood, and his character was from this hour to tell on the +events of his reign. From the cruelty, the lust, the impiety of his father +the young king was absolutely free. There was a geniality, a vivacity, a +refinement in his temper which won a personal affection for him even in his +worst days from some who bitterly censured his rule. The Abbey-church of +Westminster, with which he replaced the ruder minster of the Confessor, +remains a monument of his artistic taste. He was a patron and friend of men +of letters, and himself skilled in the "gay science" of the troubadour. But +of the political capacity which was the characteristic of his house he had +little or none. Profuse, changeable, false from sheer meanness of spirit, +impulsive alike in good and ill, unbridled in temper and tongue, reckless +in insult and wit, Henry's delight was in the display of an empty and +prodigal magnificence, his one notion of government was a dream of +arbitrary power. But frivolous as the king's mood was, he clung with a weak +man's obstinacy to a distinct line of policy; and this was the policy not +of Hubert or Langton but of John. He cherished the hope of recovering his +heritage across the sea. He believed in the absolute power of the Crown; +and looked on the pledges of the Great Charter as promises which force had +wrested from the king and which force could wrest back again. France was +telling more and more on English opinion; and the claim which the French +kings were advancing to a divine and absolute power gave a sanction in +Henry's mind to the claim of absolute authority which was still maintained +by his favourite advisers in the royal council. Above all he clung to the +alliance with the Papacy. Henry was personally devout; and his devotion +only bound him the more firmly to his father's system of friendship with +Rome. Gratitude and self-interest alike bound him to the Papal See. Rome +had saved him from ruin as a child; its legate had set the crown on his +head; its threats and excommunications had foiled Lewis and built up again +a royal party. Above all it was Rome which could alone free him from his +oath to the Charter, and which could alone defend him if like his father he +had to front the baronage in arms. + + +[Sidenote: England and Rome] + +His temper was now to influence the whole system of government. In 1227 +Henry declared himself of age; and though Hubert still remained Justiciar +every year saw him more powerless in his struggle with the tendencies of +the king. The death of Stephen Langton in 1228 was a yet heavier blow to +English freedom. In persuading Rome to withdraw her Legate the Primate had +averted a conflict between the national desire for self-government and the +Papal claims of overlordship. But his death gave the signal for a more +serious struggle, for it was in the oppression of the Church of England by +the Popes through the reign of Henry that the little rift first opened +which was destined to widen into the gulf that parted the one from the +other at the Reformation. In the mediæval theory of the Papacy, as Innocent +and his successors held it, Christendom, as a spiritual realm of which the +Popes were the head, took the feudal form of the secular realms which lay +within its pale. The Pope was its sovereign, the Bishops were his barons, +and the clergy were his under vassals. As the king demanded aids and +subsidies in case of need from his liegemen, so in the theory of Rome might +the head of the Church demand aid in need from the priesthood. And at this +moment the need of the Popes was sore. Rome had plunged into her desperate +conflict with the Emperor, Frederick the Second, and was looking everywhere +for the means of recruiting her drained exchequer. On England she believed +herself to have more than a spiritual claim for support. She regarded the +kingdom as a vassal kingdom, and as bound to aid its overlord. It was only +by the promise of a heavy subsidy that Henry in 1229 could buy the Papal +confirmation of Langton's successor. But the baronage was of other mind +than Henry as to this claim of overlordship, and the demand of an aid to +Rome from the laity was at once rejected by them. Her spiritual claim over +the allegiance of the clergy however remained to fall back upon, and the +clergy were in the Pope's hand. Gregory the Ninth had already claimed for +the Papal See a right of nomination to some prebends in each cathedral +church; he now demanded a tithe of all the moveables of the priesthood, and +a threat of excommunication silenced their murmurs. Exaction followed +exaction as the needs of the Papal treasury grew greater. The very rights +of lay patrons were set aside, and under the name of "reserves" +presentations to English benefices were sold in the Papal market, while +Italian clergy were quartered on the best livings of the Church. + + +[Sidenote: Fall of Hubert de Burgh] + +The general indignation at last found vent in a wide conspiracy. In 1231 +letters from "the whole body of those who prefer to die rather than be +ruined by the Romans" were scattered over the kingdom by armed men; tithes +gathered for the Pope or the foreign priests were seized and given to the +poor; the Papal collectors were beaten and their bulls trodden under foot. +The remonstrances of Rome only made clearer the national character of the +movement; but as enquiry went on the hand of the Justiciar himself was seen +to have been at work. Sheriffs had stood idly by while violence was done; +royal letters had been shown by the rioters as approving their acts; and +the Pope openly laid the charge of the outbreak on the secret connivance of +Hubert de Burgh. No charge could have been more fatal to Hubert in the mind +of the king. But he was already in full collision with the Justiciar on +other grounds. Henry was eager to vindicate his right to the great heritage +his father had lost: the Gascons, who still clung to him, not because they +loved England but because they hated France, spurred him to war; and in +1229 a secret invitation came from the Norman barons. But while Hubert held +power no serious effort was made to carry on a foreign strife. The Norman +call was rejected through his influence, and when a great armament gathered +at Portsmouth for a campaign in Poitou it dispersed for want of transport +and supplies. The young king drew his sword and rushed madly on the +Justiciar, charging him with treason and corruption by the gold of France. +But the quarrel was appeased and the expedition deferred for the year. In +1230 Henry actually took the field in Britanny and Poitou, but the failure +of the campaign was again laid at the door of Hubert whose opposition was +said to have prevented a decisive engagement. It was at this moment that +the Papal accusation filled up the measure of Henry's wrath against his +minister. In the summer of 1232 he was deprived of his office of Justiciar, +and dragged from a chapel at Brentwood where threats of death had driven +him to take sanctuary. A smith who was ordered to shackle him stoutly +refused. "I will die any death," he said, "before I put iron on the man who +freed England from the stranger and saved Dover from France." The +remonstrances of the Bishop of London forced the king to replace Hubert in +sanctuary, but hunger compelled him to surrender; he was thrown a prisoner +into the Tower, and though soon released he remained powerless in the +realm. His fall left England without a check to the rule of Henry himself. + + + + + +CHAPTER III +THE BARON'S WAR +1232-1272 + + + +[Sidenote: The Aliens] + +Once master of his realm, Henry the Third was quick to declare his plan of +government. The two great checks on a merely personal rule lay as yet in +the authority of the great ministers of State and in the national character +of the administrative body which had been built up by Henry the Second. +Both of these checks Henry at once set himself to remove. He would be his +own minister. The Justiciar ceased to be the Lieutenant-General of the king +and dwindled into a presiding judge of the law-courts. The Chancellor had +grown into a great officer of State, and in 1226 this office had been +conferred on the Bishop of Chichester by the advice and consent of the +Great Council. But Henry succeeded in wresting the seal from him and naming +to this as to other offices at his pleasure. His policy was to entrust all +high posts of government to mere clerks of the royal chapel; trained +administrators, but wholly dependent on the royal will. He found equally +dependent agents of administration by surrounding himself with foreigners. +The return of Peter des Roches to the royal councils was the first sign of +the new system; and hosts of hungry Poitevins and Bretons were summoned +over to occupy the royal castles and fill the judicial and administrative +posts about the Court. The king's marriage in 1236 to Eleanor of Provence +was followed by the arrival in England of the new queen's uncles. The +"Savoy," as his house in the Strand was named, still recalls Peter of Savoy +who arrived five years later to take for a while the chief place at Henry's +council-board; another brother, Boniface, was consecrated on Archbishop +Edmund's death to the highest post in the realm save the Crown itself, the +Archbishoprick of Canterbury. The young Primate, like his brother, brought +with him foreign fashions strange enough to English folk. His armed +retainers pillaged the markets. His own archiepiscopal fist felled to the +ground the prior of St. Bartholomew-by-Smithfield who opposed his +visitation. London was roused by the outrage; on the king's refusal to do +justice a noisy crowd of citizens surrounded the Primate's house at Lambeth +with cries of vengeance, and the "handsome archbishop," as his followers +styled him, was glad to escape over sea. This brood of Provençals was +followed in 1243 by the arrival of the Poitevin relatives of John's queen, +Isabella of Angoulême. Aymer was made Bishop of Winchester; William of +Valence received at a later time the earldom of Pembroke. Even the king's +jester was a Poitevin. Hundreds of their dependants followed these great +nobles to find a fortune in the English realm. The Poitevin lords brought +in their train a bevy of ladies in search of husbands, and three English +earls who were in royal wardship were wedded by the king to foreigners. The +whole machinery of administration passed into the hands of men who were +ignorant and contemptuous of the principles of English government or +English law. Their rule was a mere anarchy; the very retainers of the royal +household turned robbers and pillaged foreign merchants in the precincts of +the Court; corruption invaded the judicature; at the close of this period +of misrule Henry de Bath, a justiciary, was proved to have openly taken +bribes and to have adjudged to himself disputed estates. + + +[Sidenote: Henry and the Baronage] + +That misgovernment of this kind should have gone on unchecked in defiance +of the provisions of the Charter was owing to the disunion and sluggishness +of the English baronage. On the first arrival of the foreigners Richard, +the Earl Marshal, a son of the great Regent, stood forth as their leader to +demand the expulsion of the strangers from the royal Council. Though +deserted by the bulk of the nobles he defeated the foreign troops sent +against him and forced the king to treat for peace. But at this critical +moment the Earl was drawn by an intrigue of Peter des Roches to Ireland; he +fell in a petty skirmish, and the barons were left without a head. The +interposition of a new primate, Edmund of Abingdon, forced the king to +dismiss Peter from court; but there was no real change of system, and the +remonstrances of the Archbishop and of Robert Grosseteste, the Bishop of +Lincoln, remained fruitless. In the long interval of misrule the financial +straits of the king forced him to heap exaction on exaction. The Forest +Laws were used as a means of extortion, sees and abbeys were kept vacant, +loans were wrested from lords and prelates, the Court itself lived at free +quarters wherever it moved. Supplies of this kind however were utterly +insufficient to defray the cost of the king's prodigality. A sixth of the +royal revenue was wasted in pensions to foreign favourites. The debts of +the Crown amounted to four times its annual income. Henry was forced to +appeal for aid to the great Council of the realm, and aid was granted in +1237 on promise of control in its expenditure and on condition that the +king confirmed the Charter. But Charter and promise were alike disregarded; +and in 1242 the resentment of the barons expressed itself in a determined +protest and a refusal of further subsidies. In spite of their refusal +however Henry gathered money enough for a costly expedition for the +recovery of Poitou. The attempt ended in failure and shame. At Taillebourg +the king's force fled in disgraceful rout before the French as far as +Saintes, and only the sudden illness of Lewis the Ninth and a disease which +scattered his army saved Bordeaux from the conquerors. The treasury was +utterly drained, and Henry was driven in 1244 to make a fresh appeal with +his own mouth to the baronage. But the barons had now rallied to a plan of +action, and we can hardly fail to attribute their union to the man who +appears at their head. This was the Earl of Leicester, Simon of Montfort. + + +[Sidenote: Simon of Montfort] + +Simon was the son of another Simon of Montfort, whose name had become +memorable for his ruthless crusade against the Albigensian heretics in +Southern Gaul, and who had inherited the Earldom of Leicester through his +mother, a sister and co-heiress of the last Earl of the house of Beaumont. +But as Simon's tendencies were for the most part French John had kept the +revenues of the earldom in his own hands, and on his death the claim of his +elder son, Amaury, was met by the refusal of Henry the Third to accept a +divided allegiance. The refusal marks the rapid growth of that sentiment of +nationality which the loss of Normandy had brought home. Amaury chose to +remain French, and by a family arrangement with the king's sanction the +honour of Leicester passed in 1231 to his younger brother Simon. His choice +made Simon an Englishman, but his foreign blood still moved the jealousy of +the barons, and this jealousy was quickened by a secret match in 1238 with +Eleanor, the king's sister and widow of the second William Marshal. The +match formed probably part of a policy which Henry pursued throughout his +reign of bringing the great earldoms into closer connexion with the Crown. +That of Chester had fallen to the king through the extinction of the family +of its earls; Cornwall was held by his brother, Richard; Salisbury by his +cousin. Simon's marriage linked the Earldom of Leicester to the royal +house. But it at once brought Simon into conflict with the nobles and the +Church. The baronage, justly indignant that such a step should have been +taken without their consent, for the queen still remained childless and +Eleanor's children by one whom they looked on as a stranger promised to be +heirs of the Crown, rose in a revolt which failed only through the +desertion of their head, Earl Richard of Cornwall, who was satisfied with +Earl Simon's withdrawal from the Royal Council. The censures of the Church +on Eleanor's breach of a vow of chaste widowhood which she had made at her +first husband's death were averted with hardly less difficulty by a journey +to Rome. It was after a year of trouble that Simon returned to England to +reap as it seemed the fruits of his high alliance. He was now formally made +Earl of Leicester and re-entered the Royal Council. But it is probable that +he still found there the old jealousy which had forced from him a pledge of +retirement after his marriage; and that his enemies now succeeded in +winning over the king. In a few months, at any rate, he found the +changeable king alienated from him, he was driven by a burst of royal +passion from the realm, and was forced to spend seven months in France. + + +[Sidenote: Simon's early action] + +Henry's anger passed as quickly as it had risen, and in the spring of 1240 +the Earl was again received with honour at court. It was from this moment +however that his position changed. As yet it had been that of a foreigner, +confounded in the eyes of the nation at large with the Poitevins and +Provençals who swarmed about the court. But in the years of retirement +which followed Simon's return to England his whole attitude was reversed. +There was as yet no quarrel with the king: he followed him in a campaign +across the Channel, and shared in his defeat at Saintes. But he was a +friend of Grosseteste and a patron of the Friars, and became at last known +as a steady opponent of the misrule about him. When prelates and barons +chose twelve representatives to confer with Henry in 1244 Simon stood with +Earl Richard of Cornwall at the head of them. A definite plan of reform +disclosed his hand. The confirmation of the Charter was to be followed by +the election of Justiciar, Chancellor, Treasurer, in the Great Council. Nor +was this restoration of a responsible ministry enough; a perpetual Council +was to attend the king and devise further reforms. The plan broke against +Henry's resistance and a Papal prohibition; but from this time the Earl +took his stand in the front rank of the patriot leaders. The struggle of +the following years was chiefly with the exactions of the Papacy, and Simon +was one of the first to sign the protest which the Parliament in 1246 +addressed to the court of Rome. He was present at the Lent Parliament of +1248, and we can hardly doubt that he shared in its bold rebuke of the +king's misrule and its renewed demand for the appointment of the higher +officers of state by the Council. It was probably a sense of the danger of +leaving at home such a centre of all efforts after reform that brought +Henry to send him in the autumn of 1248 as Seneschal of Gascony to save for +the Crown the last of its provinces over sea. + + +[Sidenote: Simon in Gascony] + +Threatened by France and by Navarre without as well as by revolt within, +the loss of Gascony seemed close at hand; but in a few months the stern +rule of the new Seneschal had quelled every open foe within or without its +bounds. To bring the province to order proved a longer and a harder task. +Its nobles were like the robber-nobles of the Rhine: "they rode the country +by night," wrote the Earl, "like thieves, in parties of twenty or thirty or +forty," and gathered in leagues against the Seneschal, who set himself to +exact their dues to the Crown and to shield merchant and husbandman from +their violence. For four years Earl Simon steadily warred down these robber +bands, storming castles where there was need, and bridling the wilder +country with a chain of forts. Hard as the task was, his real difficulty +lay at home. Henry sent neither money nor men; and the Earl had to raise +both from his own resources, while the men whom he was fighting found +friends in Henry's council-chamber. Again and again Simon was recalled to +answer charges of tyranny and extortion made by the Gascon nobles and +pressed by his enemies at home on the king. Henry's feeble and impulsive +temper left him open to pressure like this; and though each absence of the +Earl from the province was a signal for fresh outbreaks of disorder which +only his presence repressed, the deputies of its nobles were still admitted +to the council-table and commissions sent over to report on the Seneschal's +administration. The strife came to a head in 1252, when the commissioners +reported that stern as Simon's rule had been the case was one in which +sternness was needful. The English barons supported Simon, and in the face +of their verdict Henry was powerless. But the king was now wholly with his +enemies; and his anger broke out in a violent altercation. The Earl offered +to resign his post if the money he had spent was repaid him, and appealed +to Henry's word. Henry hotly retorted that he was bound by no promise to a +false traitor. Simon at once gave Henry the lie; "and but that thou bearest +the name of king it had been a bad hour for thee when thou utteredst such a +word!" A formal reconciliation was brought about, and the Earl once more +returned to Gascony, but before winter had come he was forced to withdraw +to France. The greatness of his reputation was shown in an offer which its +nobles made him of the regency of their realm during the absence of King +Lewis from the land. But the offer was refused; and Henry, who had himself +undertaken the pacification of Gascony, was glad before the close of 1253 +to recall its old ruler to do the work he had failed to do. + + +[Sidenote: Simon's temper] + +The Earl's character had now thoroughly developed. He inherited the strict +and severe piety of his father; he was assiduous in his attendance on +religious services whether by night or day. In his correspondence with Adam +Marsh we see him finding patience under his Gascon troubles in a perusal of +the Book of Job. His life was pure and singularly temperate; he was noted +for his scant indulgence in meat, drink, or sleep. Socially he was cheerful +and pleasant in talk; but his natural temper was quick and ardent, his +sense of honour keen, his speech rapid and trenchant. His impatience of +contradiction, his fiery temper, were in fact the great stumbling-blocks in +his after career. His best friends marked honestly this fault, and it shows +the greatness of the man that he listened to their remonstrances. "Better +is a patient man," writes honest Friar Adam, "than a strong man, and he who +can rule his own temper than he who storms a city." But the one +characteristic which overmastered all was what men at that time called his +"constancy," the firm immoveable resolve which trampled even death under +foot in its loyalty to the right. The motto which Edward the First chose as +his device, "Keep troth," was far truer as the device of Earl Simon. We see +in his correspondence with what a clear discernment of its difficulties +both at home and abroad he "thought it unbecoming to decline the danger of +so great an exploit" as the reduction of Gascony to peace and order; but +once undertaken, he persevered in spite of the opposition he met with, the +failure of all support or funds from England, and the king's desertion of +his cause, till the work was done. There was the same steadiness of will +and purpose in his patriotism. The letters of Robert Grosseteste show how +early Simon had learned to sympathize with the Bishop in his resistance to +Rome, and at the crisis of the contest he offered him his own support and +that of his associates. But Robert passed away, and as the tide of +misgovernment mounted higher and higher the Earl silently trained himself +for the day of trial. The fruit of his self-discipline was seen when the +crisis came. While other men wavered and faltered and fell away, the +enthusiastic love of the people clung to the grave, stern soldier who +"stood like a pillar," unshaken by promise or threat or fear of death, by +the oath he had sworn. + + +[Sidenote: Matthew Paris] + +While Simon had been warring with Gascon rebels affairs in England had been +going from bad to worse. The scourge of Papal taxation fell heavier on the +clergy. After vain appeals to Rome and to the king, Archbishop Edmund +retired to an exile of despair at Pontigny, and tax-gatherer after +tax-gatherer with powers of excommunication, suspension from orders, and +presentation to benefices, descended on the unhappy priesthood. The +wholesale pillage kindled a wide spirit of resistance. Oxford gave the +signal by hunting a Papal legate out of the city amid cries of "usurer" and +"simoniac" from the mob of students. Fulk Fitz-Warenne in the name of the +barons bade a Papal collector begone out of England. "If you tarry here +three days longer," he added, "you and your company shall be cut to +pieces." For a time Henry himself was swept away by the tide of national +indignation. Letters from the king, the nobles, and the prelates, protested +against the Papal exactions, and orders were given that no money should be +exported from the realm. But the threat of interdict soon drove Henry back +on a policy of spoliation in which he went hand in hand with Rome. The +temper which this oppression begot among even the most sober churchmen has +been preserved for us by an annalist whose pages glow with the new outburst +of patriotic feeling. Matthew Paris is the greatest, as he in reality is +the last, of our monastic historians. The school of St. Alban's survived +indeed till a far later time, but its writers dwindle into mere annalists +whose view is bounded by the abbey precincts and whose work is as +colourless as it is jejune. In Matthew the breadth and precision of the +narrative, the copiousness of his information on topics whether national or +European, the general fairness and justice of his comments, are only +surpassed by the patriotic fire and enthusiasm of the whole. He had +succeeded Roger of Wendover as chronicler at St. Alban's; and the Greater +Chronicle with an abridgement of it which long passed under the name of +Matthew of Westminster, a "History of the English," and the "Lives of the +Earlier Abbots," are only a few among the voluminous works which attest his +prodigious industry. He was an artist as well as an historian, and many of +the manuscripts which are preserved are illustrated by his own hand. A +large circle of correspondents--bishops like Grosseteste, ministers like +Hubert de Burgh, officials like Alexander de Swereford--furnished him with +minute accounts of political and ecclesiastical proceedings. Pilgrims from +the East and Papal agents brought news of foreign events to his scriptorium +at St. Alban's. He had access to and quotes largely from state documents, +charters, and exchequer rolls. The frequency of royal visits to the abbey +brought him a store of political intelligence, and Henry himself +contributed to the great chronicle which has preserved with so terrible a +faithfulness the memory of his weakness and misgovernment. On one solemn +feast-day the king recognized Matthew, and bidding him sit on the middle +step between the floor and the throne begged him to write the story of the +day's proceedings. While on a visit to St. Alban's he invited him to his +table and chamber, and enumerated by name two hundred and fifty of the +English baronies for his information. But all this royal patronage has left +little mark on his work. "The case," as Matthew says, "of historical +writers is hard, for if they tell the truth they provoke men, and if they +write what is false they offend God." With all the fulness of the school of +court historians, such as Benedict and Hoveden, to which in form he +belonged, Matthew Paris combines an independence and patriotism which is +strange to their pages. He denounces with the same unsparing energy the +oppression of the Papacy and of the king. His point of view is neither that +of a courtier nor of a churchman but of an Englishman, and the new national +tone of his chronicle is but the echo of a national sentiment which at last +bound nobles and yeomen and churchmen together into a people resolute to +wrest freedom from the Crown. + + +[Sidenote: Wales] + +The nation was outraged like the Church. Two solemn confirmations of the +Charter failed to bring about any compliance with its provisions. In 1248, +in 1249, and again in 1255 the great Council fruitlessly renewed its demand +for a regular ministry, and the growing resolve of the nobles to enforce +good government was seen in their offer of a grant on condition that the +great officers of the Crown were appointed in the Council of the Baronage. +But Henry refused their offer with scorn and sold his plate to the citizens +of London to find payment for his household. A spirit of mutinous defiance +broke out on the failure of all legal remedy. When the Earl of Norfolk +refused him aid Henry answered with a threat. "I will send reapers and reap +your fields for you," he said. "And I will send you back the heads of your +reapers," replied the Earl. Hampered by the profusion of the court and the +refusal of supplies, the Crown was in fact penniless; and yet never was +money more wanted, for a trouble which had long pressed upon the English +kings had now grown to a height that called for decisive action. Even his +troubles at home could not blind Henry to the need of dealing with the +difficulty of Wales. Of the three Welsh states into which all that remained +unconquered of Britain had been broken by the victories of Deorham and +Chester, two had long ceased to exist. The country between the Clyde and +the Dee had been gradually absorbed by the conquests of Northumbria and the +growth of the Scot monarchy. West Wales, between the British Channel and +the estuary of the Severn, had yielded to the sword of Ecgberht. But a +fiercer resistance prolonged the independence of the great central portion +which alone in modern language preserves the name of Wales. Comprising in +itself the largest and most powerful of the British kingdoms, it was aided +in its struggle against Mercia by the weakness of its assailant, the +youngest and feeblest of the English states, as well as by an internal +warfare which distracted the energies of the invaders. But Mercia had no +sooner risen to supremacy among the English kingdoms than it took the work +of conquest vigorously in hand. Offa tore from Wales the border-land +between the Severn and the Wye; the raids of his successors carried fire +and sword into the heart of the country; and an acknowledgement of the +Mercian overlordship was wrested from the Welsh princes. On the fall of +Mercia this overlordship passed to the West-Saxon kings, and the Laws of +Howel Dda own the payment of a yearly tribute by "the prince of Aberffraw" +to "the King of London." The weakness of England during her long struggle +with the Danes revived the hopes of British independence; it was the +co-operation of the Welsh on which the northmen reckoned in their attack on +the house of Ecgberht. But with the fall of the Danelaw the British princes +were again brought to submission, and when in the midst of the Confessor's +reign the Welsh seized on a quarrel between the houses of Leofric and +Godwine to cross the border and carry their attacks into England itself, +the victories of Harold reasserted the English supremacy. Disembarking on +the coast his light-armed troops he penetrated to the heart of the +mountains, and the successors of the Welsh prince Gruffydd, whose head was +the trophy of the campaign, swore to observe the old fealty and render the +old tribute to the English Crown. + + +[Sidenote: Wales and the Normans] + +A far more desperate struggle began when the wave of Norman conquest broke +on the Welsh frontier. A chain of great earldoms, settled by William along +the border-land, at once bridled the old marauding forays. From his county +palatine of Chester Hugh the Wolf harried Flintshire into a desert, Robert +of Belesme in his earldom of Shrewsbury "slew the Welsh," says a +chronicler, "like sheep, conquered them, enslaved them and flayed them with +nails of iron." The earldom of Gloucester curbed Britain along the lower +Severn. Backed by these greater baronies a horde of lesser adventurers +obtained the royal "licence to make conquest on the Welsh." Monmouth and +Abergavenny were seized and guarded by Norman castellans; Bernard of +Neufmarché won the lordship of Brecknock; Roger of Montgomery raised the +town and fortress in Powysland which still preserves his name. A great +rising of the whole people in the days of the second William won back some +of this Norman spoil. The new castle of Montgomery was burned, Brecknock +and Cardigan were cleared of the invaders, and the Welsh poured ravaging +over the English border. Twice the Red King carried his arms fruitlessly +among the mountains against enemies who took refuge in their fastnesses +till famine and hardship drove his broken host into retreat. The wiser +policy of Henry the First fell back on his father's system of gradual +conquest. A new tide of invasion flowed along the southern coast, where the +land was level and open and accessible from the sea. The attack was aided +by strife in the country itself. Robert Fitz-Hamo, the lord of Gloucester, +was summoned to his aid by a Welsh chieftain; and his defeat of Rhys ap +Tewdor, the last prince under whom Southern Wales was united, produced an +anarchy which enabled Robert to land safely on the coast of Glamorgan, to +conquer the country round, and to divide it among his soldiers. A force of +Flemings and Englishmen followed the Earl of Clare as he landed near +Milford Haven and pushing back the British inhabitants settled a "Little +England" in the present Pembrokeshire. A few daring adventurers accompanied +the Norman Lord of Kemeys into Cardigan, where land might be had for the +winning by any one who would "wage war on the Welsh." + + +[Sidenote: The Welsh Revival] + +It was at this moment, when the utter subjugation of the British race +seemed at hand, that a new outburst of energy rolled back the tide of +invasion and changed the fitful resistance of the separate Welsh provinces +into a national effort to regain independence. To all outer seeming Wales +had become utterly barbarous. Stripped of every vestige of the older Roman +civilization by ages of bitter warfare, of civil strife, of estrangement +from the general culture of Christendom, the unconquered Britons had sunk +into a mass of savage herdsmen, clad in the skins and fed by the milk of +the cattle they tended. Faithless, greedy, and revengeful, retaining no +higher political organization than that of the clan, their strength was +broken by ruthless feuds, and they were united only in battle or in raid +against the stranger. But in the heart of the wild people there still +lingered a spark of the poetic fire which had nerved it four hundred years +before through Aneurin and Llywarch Hen to its struggle with the earliest +Englishmen. At the hour of its lowest degradation the silence of Wales was +suddenly broken by a crowd of singers. The song of the twelfth century +burst forth, not from one bard or another, but from the nation at large. +The Welsh temper indeed was steeped in poetry. "In every house," says the +shrewd Gerald de Barri, "strangers who arrived in the morning were +entertained till eventide with the talk of maidens and the music of the +harp." A romantic literature, which was destined to leaven the fancy of +western Europe, had grown up among this wild people and found an admirable +means of utterance in its tongue. The Welsh language was as real a +developement of the old Celtic language heard by Cæsar as the Romance +tongues are developements of Cæsar's Latin, but at a far earlier date than +any other language of modern Europe it had attained to definite structure +and to settled literary form. No other mediæval literature shows at its +outset the same elaborate and completed organization as that of the Welsh. +But within these settled forms the Celtic fancy played with a startling +freedom. In one of the later poems Gwion the Little transforms himself into +a hare, a fish, a bird, a grain of wheat; but he is only the symbol of the +strange shapes in which the Celtic fancy embodies itself in the romantic +tales which reached their highest perfection in the legends of Arthur. + + +[Sidenote: The Welsh Poetry] + +The gay extravagance of these "Mabinogion" flings defiance to all fact, +tradition, probability, and revels in the impossible and unreal. When +Arthur sails into the unknown world it is in a ship of glass. The "descent +into hell," as a Celtic poet paints it, shakes off the mediæval horror with +the mediæval reverence, and the knight who achieves the quest spends his +years of infernal durance in hunting and minstrelsy, and in converse with +fair women. The world of the Mabinogion is a world of pure phantasy, a new +earth of marvels and enchantments, of dark forests whose silence is broken +by the hermit's bell and sunny glades where the light plays on the hero's +armour. Each figure as it moves across the poet's canvas is bright with +glancing colour. "The maiden was clothed in a robe of flame-coloured silk, +and about her neck was a collar of ruddy gold in which were precious +emeralds and rubies. Her head was of brighter gold than the flower of the +broom, her skin was whiter than the foam of the wave, and fairer were her +hands and her fingers than the blossoms of the wood-anemone amidst the +spray of the meadow fountain. The eye of the trained hawk, the glance of +the falcon, was not brighter than hers. Her bosom was more snowy than the +breast of the white swan, her cheek was redder than the reddest roses." +Everywhere there is an Oriental profusion of gorgeous imagery, but the +gorgeousness is seldom oppressive. The sensibility of the Celtic temper, so +quick to perceive beauty, so eager in its thirst for life, its emotions, +its adventures, its sorrows, its joys, is tempered by a passionate +melancholy that expresses its revolt against the impossible, by an instinct +of what is noble, by a sentiment that discovers the weird charm of nature. +The wildest extravagance of the tale-teller is relieved by some graceful +play of pure fancy, some tender note of feeling, some magical touch of +beauty. As Kulwch's greyhounds bound from side to side of their master's +steed, they "sport round him like two sea-swallows." His spear is "swifter +than the fall of the dewdrop from the blade of reed-grass upon the earth +when the dew of June is at the heaviest." A subtle, observant love of +nature and natural beauty takes fresh colour from the passionate human +sentiment with which it is imbued. "I love the birds" sings Gwalchmai "and +their sweet voices in the lulling songs of the wood"; he watches at night +beside the fords "among the untrodden grass" to hear the nightingale and +watch the play of the sea-mew. Even patriotism takes the same picturesque +form. The Welsh poet hates the flat and sluggish land of the Saxon; as he +dwells on his own he tells of "its sea-coast and its mountains, its towns +on the forest border, its fair landscape, its dales, its waters, and its +valleys, its white sea-mews, its beauteous women." Here as everywhere the +sentiment of nature passes swiftly and subtly into the sentiment of a human +tenderness: "I love its fields clothed with tender trefoil" goes on the +song; "I love the marches of Merioneth where my head was pillowed on a +snow-white arm." In the Celtic love of woman there is little of the +Teutonic depth and earnestness, but in its stead a childlike spirit of +delicate enjoyment, a faint distant flush of passion like the rose-light of +dawn on a snowy mountain peak, a playful delight in beauty. "White is my +love as the apple-blossom, as the ocean's spray; her face shines like the +pearly dew on Eryri; the glow of her cheeks is like the light of sunset." +The buoyant and elastic temper of the French trouveur was spiritualized in +the Welsh singers by a more refined poetic feeling. "Whoso beheld her was +filled with her love. Four white trefoils sprang up wherever she trod." A +touch of pure fancy such as this removes its object out of the sphere of +passion into one of delight and reverence. + + +[Sidenote: The Bards] + +It is strange to pass from the world of actual Welsh history into such a +world as this. But side by side with this wayward, fanciful stream of poesy +and romance ran a torrent of intenser song. The spirit of the earlier +bards, their joy in battle, their love of freedom, broke out anew in ode +after ode, in songs extravagant, monotonous, often prosaic, but fused into +poetry by the intense fire of patriotism which glowed within them. Every +fight, every hero had its verse. The names of older singers, of Taliesin, +Aneurin, and Llywarch Hen, were revived in bold forgeries to animate the +national resistance and to prophesy victory. It was in North Wales that the +spirit of patriotism received its strongest inspiration from this burst of +song. Again and again Henry the Second was driven to retreat from the +impregnable fastnesses where the "Lords of Snowdon," the princes of the +house of Gruffydd ap Conan, claimed supremacy over the whole of Wales. Once +in the pass of Consilt a cry arose that the king was slain, Henry of Essex +flung down the royal standard, and the king's desperate efforts could +hardly save his army from utter rout. The bitter satire of the Welsh +singers bade him knight his horse, since its speed had alone saved him from +capture. In a later campaign the invaders were met by storms of rain, and +forced to abandon their baggage in a headlong flight to Chester. The +greatest of the Welsh odes, that known to English readers in Gray's +translation as "The Triumph of Owen," is Gwalchmai's song of victory over +the repulse of an English fleet from Abermenai. + + +[Sidenote: Llewelyn ap Jorwerth] + +The long reign of Llewelyn the son of Jorwerth seemed destined to realize +the hopes of his countrymen. The homage which he succeeded in extorting +from the whole of the Welsh chieftains during a reign which lasted from +1194 to 1246 placed him openly at the head of his race, and gave a new +character to its struggle with the English king. In consolidating his +authority within his own domains, and in the assertion of his lordship over +the princes of the south, Llewelyn ap Jorwerth aimed steadily at securing +the means of striking off the yoke of the Saxon. It was in vain that John +strove to buy his friendship by the hand of his natural daughter Johanna. +Fresh raids on the Marches forced the king to enter Wales in 1211; but +though his army reached Snowdon it fell back like its predecessors, starved +and broken before an enemy it could never reach. A second attack in the +same year had better success. The chieftains of South Wales were drawn from +their new allegiance to join the English forces, and Llewelyn, prisoned in +his fastnesses, was at last driven to submit. But the ink of the treaty was +hardly dry before Wales was again on fire; a common fear of the English +once more united its chieftains, and the war between John and his barons +soon removed all dread of a new invasion. Absolved from his allegiance to +an excommunicated king, and allied with the barons under Fitz-Walter--too +glad to enlist in their cause a prince who could hold in check the nobles +of the border country where the royalist cause was strongest--Llewelyn +seized his opportunity to reduce Shrewsbury, to annex Powys, the central +district of Wales where the English influence had always been powerful, to +clear the royal garrisons from Caermarthen and Cardigan, and to force even +the Flemings of Pembroke to do him homage. + + +[Sidenote: Llewelyn and the Bards] + +England watched these efforts of the subject race with an anger still +mingled with contempt. "Who knows not," exclaims Matthew Paris as he dwells +on the new pretensions of the Welsh ruler, "who knows not that the Prince +of Wales is a petty vassal of the King of England?" But the temper of +Llewelyn's own people was far other than the temper of the English +chronicler. The hopes of Wales rose higher and higher with each triumph of +the Lord of Snowdon. His court was crowded with bardic singers. "He pours," +sings one of them, "his gold into the lap of the bard as the ripe fruit +falls from the trees." Gold however was hardly needed to wake their +enthusiasm. Poet after poet sang of "the Devastator of England," the "Eagle +of men that loves not to lie nor sleep," "towering above the rest of men +with his long red lance," his "red helmet of battle crested with a fierce +wolf." "The sound of his coming is like the roar of the wave as it rushes +to the shore, that can neither be stayed nor hushed." Lesser bards strung +together Llewelyn's victories in rough jingle of rime and hounded him on to +the slaughter. "Be of good courage in the slaughter," sings Elidir, "cling +to thy work, destroy England, and plunder its multitudes." A fierce thirst +for blood runs through the abrupt, passionate verses of the court singers. +"Swansea, that tranquil town, was broken in heaps," bursts out a triumphant +bard; "St. Clears, with its bright white lands, it is not Saxons who hold +it now!" "In Swansea, the key of Lloegria, we made widows of all the +wives." "The dread Eagle is wont to lay corpses in rows, and to feast with +the leader of wolves and with hovering ravens glutted with flesh, butchers +with keen scent of carcases." "Better," closes the song, "better the grave +than the life of man who sighs when the horns call him forth, to the +squares of battle." + + +[Sidenote: The Welsh hopes] + +But even in bardic verse Llewelyn rises high out of the mere mob of +chieftains who live by rapine, and boast as the Hirlas-horn passes from +hand to hand through the hall that "they take and give no quarter." +"Tender-hearted, wise, witty, ingenious," he was "the great Caesar" who was +to gather beneath his sway the broken fragments of the Celtic race. +Mysterious prophecies, the prophecies of Merlin the Wise which floated from +lip to lip and were heard even along the Seine and the Rhine, came home +again to nerve Wales to its last struggle with the stranger. Medrawd and +Arthur, men whispered, would appear once more on earth to fight over again +the fatal battle of Camlan in which the hero-king perished. The last +conqueror of the Celtic race, Cadwallon, still lived to combat for his +people. The supposed verses of Taliesin expressed the undying hope of a +restoration of the Cymry. "In their hands shall be all the land from +Britanny to Man: ... a rumour shall arise that the Germans are moving out +of Britain back again to their fatherland." Gathered up in the strange work +of Geoffry of Monmouth, these predictions had long been making a deep +impression not on Wales only but on its conquerors. It was to meet the +dreams of a yet living Arthur that the grave of the legendary hero-king at +Glastonbury was found and visited by Henry the Second. But neither trick +nor conquest could shake the firm faith of the Celt in the ultimate victory +of his race. "Think you," said Henry to a Welsh chieftain who joined his +host, "that your people of rebels can withstand my army?" "My people," +replied the chieftain, "may be weakened by your might, and even in great +part destroyed, but unless the wrath of God be on the side of its foe it +will not perish utterly. Nor deem I that other race or other tongue will +answer for this corner of the world before the Judge of all at the last day +save this people and tongue of Wales." So ran the popular rime, "Their Lord +they will praise, their speech they shall keep, their land they shall +lose--except wild Wales." + + +[Sidenote: The Provisions of Oxford] + +Faith and prophecy seemed justified by the growing strength of the British +people. The weakness and dissensions which characterized the reign of Henry +the Third enabled Llewelyn ap Jorwerth to preserve a practical independence +till the close of his life, when a fresh acknowledgement of the English +supremacy was wrested from him by Archbishop Edmund. But the triumphs of +his arms were renewed by Llewelyn the son of Gruffydd, who followed him in +1246. The raids of the new chieftain swept the border to the very gates of +Chester, while his conquest of Glamorgan seemed to bind the whole people +together in a power strong enough to meet any attack from the stranger. So +pressing was the danger that it called the king's eldest son, Edward, to +the field; but his first appearance in arms ended in a crushing defeat. The +defeat however remained unavenged. Henry's dreams were of mightier +enterprises than the reduction of the Welsh. The Popes were still fighting +their weary battle against the House of Hohenstaufen, and were offering its +kingdom of Sicily, which they regarded as a forfeited fief of the Holy See, +to any power that would aid them in the struggle. In 1254 it was offered to +the king's second son, Edmund. With imbecile pride Henry accepted the +offer, prepared to send an army across the Alps, and pledged England to +repay the sums which the Pope was borrowing for the purposes of his war. In +a Parliament at the opening of 1257 he demanded an aid and a tenth from the +clergy. A fresh demand was made in 1258. But the patience of the realm was +at last exhausted. Earl Simon had returned in 1253 from his government of +Gascony, and the fruit of his meditations during the four years of his +quiet stay at home, a quiet broken only by short embassies to France and +Scotland which showed there was as yet no open quarrel with Henry, was seen +in a league of the baronage and in their adoption of a new and startling +policy. The past half-century had shown both the strength and weakness of +the Charter: its strength as a rallying-point for the baronage and a +definite assertion of rights which the king could be made to acknowledge; +its weakness in providing no means for the enforcement of its own +stipulations. Henry had sworn again and again to observe the Charter and +his oath was no sooner taken than it was unscrupulously broken. The barons +had secured the freedom of the realm; the secret of their long patience +during the reign of Henry lay in the difficulty of securing its right +administration. It was this difficulty which Earl Simon was prepared to +solve when action was forced on him by the stir of the realm. A great +famine added to the sense of danger from Wales and from Scotland and to the +irritation at the new demands from both Henry and Rome with which the year +1258 opened. It was to arrange for a campaign against Wales that Henry +called a parliament in April. But the baronage appeared in arms with +Gloucester and Leicester at their head. The king was forced to consent to +the appointment of a committee of twenty-four to draw up terms for the +reform of the state. The Twenty-four again met the Parliament at Oxford in +June, and although half the committee consisted of royal ministers and +favourites it was impossible to resist the tide of popular feeling. Hugh +Bigod, one of the firmest adherents of the two Earls, was chosen as +Justiciar. The claim to elect this great officer was in fact the leading +point in the baronial policy. But further measures were needed to hold in +check such arbitrary misgovernment as had prevailed during the last twenty +years. By the "Provisions of Oxford" it was agreed that the Great Council +should assemble thrice in the year, whether summoned by the king or no; and +on each occasion "the Commonalty shall elect twelve honest men who shall +come to the Parliaments, and at other times when occasion shall be when the +King and his Council shall send for them, to treat of the wants of the king +and of his kingdom. And the Commonalty shall hold as established that which +these Twelve shall do." Three permanent committees of barons and prelates +were named to carry out the work of reform and administration. The reform +of the Church was left to the original Twenty-four; a second Twenty-four +negotiated the financial aids; a Permanent Council of Fifteen advised the +king in the ordinary work of government. The complexity of such an +arrangement was relieved by the fact that the members of each of these +committees were in great part the same persons. The Justiciar, Chancellor, +and the guardians of the king's castles swore to act only with the advice +and assent of the Permanent Council, and the first two great officers, with +the Treasurer, were to give account of their proceedings to it at the end +of the year. Sheriffs were to be appointed for a single year only, no doubt +by the Council, from among the chief tenants of the county, and no undue +fees were to be exacted for the administration of justice in their court. + + +[Sidenote: Government of the Barons] + +A royal proclamation in the English tongue, the first in that tongue since +the Conquest which has reached us, ordered the observance of these +Provisions. The king was in fact helpless, and resistance came only from +the foreign favourites, who refused to surrender the castles and honours +which had been granted to them. But the Twenty-four were resolute in their +action; and an armed demonstration of the barons drove the foreigners in +flight over sea. The whole royal power was now in fact in the hands of the +committees appointed by the Great Council. But the measures of the barons +showed little of the wisdom and energy which the country had hoped for. In +October 1259 the knighthood complained that the barons had done nothing but +seek their own advantage in the recent changes. This protest produced the +Provisions of Westminster, which gave protection to tenants against their +feudal lords, regulated legal procedure in the feudal courts, appointed +four knights in each shire to watch the justice of the sheriffs, and made +other temporary enactments for the furtherance of justice. But these +Provisions brought little fruit, and a tendency to mere feudal privilege +showed itself in an exemption of all nobles and prelates from attendance at +the Sheriff's courts. Their foreign policy was more vigorous and +successful. All further payment to Rome, whether secular or ecclesiastical, +was prohibited, formal notice was given to the Pope of England's withdrawal +from the Sicilian enterprise, peace put an end to the incursions of the +Welsh, and negotiations on the footing of a formal abandonment of the +king's claim to Normandy, Anjou, Maine, Touraine, and Poitou ended in +October 1259 in a peace with France. + + +[Sidenote: Simon and the Baronage] + +This peace, the triumph of that English policy which had been struggling +ever since the days of Hubert de Burgh with the Continental policy of Henry +and his foreign advisers, was the work of the Earl of Leicester. The +revolution had doubtless been mainly Simon's doing. In the summer of 1258, +while the great change was going on, a thunderstorm drove the king as he +passed along the river to the house of the Bishop of Durham where the Earl +was then sojourning. Simon bade Henry take shelter with him and have no +fear of the storm. The king refused with petulant wit. "If I fear the +thunder, I fear you, Sir Earl, more than all the thunder in the world." But +Simon had probably small faith in the cumbrous system of government which +the Barons devised, and it was with reluctance that he was brought to swear +to the Provisions of Oxford which embodied it. With their home government +he had little to do, for from the autumn of 1258 to that of 1259 he was +chiefly busied in negotiation in France. But already his breach with +Gloucester and the bulk of his fellow councillors was marked. In the Lent +Parliament of 1259 he had reproached them, and Gloucester above all, with +faithlessness to their trust. "The things we are treating of," he cried, +"we have sworn to carry out. With such feeble and faithless men I care not +to have ought to do!" The peace with France was hardly signed when his +distrust of his colleagues was verified. Henry's withdrawal to the French +court at the close of the year for the formal signature of the treaty was +the signal for a reactionary movement. From France the king forbade the +summoning of a Lent Parliament in 1260 and announced his resumption of the +enterprise against Sicily. Both acts were distinct breaches of the +Provisions of Oxford, but Henry trusted to the divisions of the +Twenty-four. Gloucester was in open feud with Leicester; the Justiciar, +Hugh Bigod, resigned his office in the spring; and both of these leaders +drew cautiously to the king. Roger Mortimer and the Earls of Hereford and +Norfolk more openly espoused the royal cause, and in February 1260 Henry +had gained confidence enough to announce that as the barons had failed to +keep their part of the Provisions he should not keep his. + + +[Sidenote: The Counter Revolution] + +Earl Simon almost alone remained unshaken. But his growing influence was +seen in the appointment of his supporter, Hugh Despenser, as Justiciar in +Bigod's place, while his strength was doubled by the accession of the +King's son Edward to his side. In the moment of the revolution Edward had +vehemently supported the party of the foreigners. But he had sworn to +observe the Provisions, and the fidelity to his pledge which remained +throughout his life the chief note of his temper at once showed itself. +Like Simon he protested against the faithlessness of the barons in the +carrying out of their reforms, and it was his strenuous support of the +petition of the knighthood that brought about the additional Provisions of +1259. He had been brought up with Earl Simon's sons, and with the Earl +himself his relations remained friendly even at the later time of their +fatal hostilities. But as yet he seems to have had no distrust of Simon's +purposes or policy. His adhesion to the Earl recalled Henry from France; +and the king was at once joined by Gloucester in London while Edward and +Simon remained without the walls. But the love of father and son proved too +strong to bear political severance, and Edward's reconciliation foiled the +Earl's plans. He withdrew to the Welsh border, where fresh troubles were +breaking out, while Henry prepared to deal his final blow at the government +which, tottering as it was, still held him in check. Rome had resented the +measures which had put an end to her extortions, and it was to Rome that +Henry looked for a formal absolution from his oath to observe the +Provisions. In June 1261 he produced a Bull annulling the Provisions and +freeing him from his oath in a Parliament at Winchester. The suddenness of +the blow forbade open protest and Henry quickly followed up his victory. +Hugh Bigod, who had surrendered the Tower and Dover in the spring, +surrendered the other castles he held in the autumn. Hugh Despenser was +deposed from the Justiciarship and a royalist, Philip Basset, appointed in +his place. + + +[Sidenote: Simon's rising] + +The news of this counter-revolution reunited for a moment the barons. +Gloucester joined Earl Simon in calling an autumn Parliament at St. +Alban's, and in summoning to it three knights from every shire south of +Trent. But the union was a brief one. Gloucester consented to refer the +quarrel with the king to arbitration and the Earl of Leicester withdrew in +August to France. He saw that for the while there was no means of +withstanding Henry, even in his open defiance of the Provisions. Foreign +soldiers were brought into the land; the king won back again the +appointment of sheriffs. For eighteen months of this new rule Simon could +do nothing but wait. But his long absence lulled the old jealousies against +him. The confusion of the realm and a fresh outbreak of troubles in Wales +renewed the disgust at Henry's government, while his unswerving +faithfulness to the Provisions fixed the eyes of all Englishmen upon the +Earl as their natural leader. The death of Gloucester in the summer of 1262 +removed the one barrier to action; and in the spring of 1263 Simon landed +again in England as the unquestioned head of the baronial party. What +immediately forced him to action was a march of Edward with a body of +foreign troops against Llewelyn, who was probably by this time in +communication if not in actual alliance with the Earl. The chief opponents +of Llewelyn among the Marcher Lords were ardent supporters of Henry's +misgovernment, and when a common hostility drew the Prince and Earl +together, the constitutional position of Llewelyn as an English noble gave +formal justification for co-operation with him. At Whitsuntide the barons +met Simon at Oxford and finally summoned Henry to observe the Provisions. +His refusal was met by an appeal to arms. Throughout the country the +younger nobles flocked to Simon's standard, and the young Earl of +Gloucester, Gilbert of Clare, became his warmest supporter. His rapid +movements foiled all opposition. While Henry vainly strove to raise money +and men, Simon swept the Welsh border, marched through Reading on Dover, +and finally appeared before London. + + +[Sidenote: Mise of Amiens] + +The Earl's triumph was complete. Edward after a brief attempt at resistance +was forced to surrender Windsor and disband his foreign troops. The rising +of London in the cause of the barons left Henry helpless. But at the moment +of triumph the Earl saw himself anew forsaken. The bulk of the nobles again +drew towards the king; only six of the twelve barons who had formed the +patriot half of the committee of 1258, only four of the twelve +representatives of the community at that date, were now with the Earl. The +dread too of civil war gave strength to the cry for a compromise, and at +the end of the year it was agreed that the strife should be left to the +arbitration of the French king, Lewis the Ninth. But saint and just ruler +as he was, the royal power was in the conception of Lewis a divine thing, +which no human power could limit or fetter, and his decision, which was +given in January 1264, annulled the whole of the Provisions. Only the +Charters granted before the Provisions were to be observed. The appointment +and removal of all officers of state was to be wholly with the king, and he +was suffered to call aliens to his councils if he would. The Mise of Amiens +was at once confirmed by the Pope, and, crushing blow as it was, the barons +felt themselves bound by the award. It was only the exclusion of aliens--a +point which they had not purposed to submit to arbitration--which they +refused to concede. Luckily Henry was as inflexible on this point as on the +rest, and the mutual distrust prevented any real accommodation. + + +[Sidenote: Battle of Lewes] + +But Henry had to reckon on more than the baronage. Deserted as he was by +the greater nobles, Simon was far from standing alone. Throughout the +recent struggle the new city governments of the craft-gilds, which were +known by the name of "Communes," had shown an enthusiastic devotion to his +cause. The queen was stopped in her attempt to escape from the Tower by an +angry mob, who drove her back with stones and foul words. When Henry +attempted to surprise Leicester in his quarters at Southwark, the Londoners +burst the gates which had been locked by the richer burghers against him, +and rescued him by a welcome into the city. The clergy and the universities +went in sympathy with the towns, and in spite of the taunts of the +royalists, who accused him of seeking allies against the nobility in the +common people, the popular enthusiasm gave a strength to the Earl which +sustained him even in this darkest hour of the struggle. He at once +resolved on resistance. The French award had luckily reserved the rights of +Englishmen to the liberties they had enjoyed before the Provisions of +Oxford, and it was easy for Simon to prove that the arbitrary power it gave +to the Crown was as contrary to the Charter as to the Provisions +themselves. London was the first to reject the decision; in March 1264 its +citizens mustered at the call of the town-bell at Saint Paul's, seized the +royal officials, and plundered the royal parks. But an army had already +mustered in great force at the king's summons, while Leicester found +himself deserted by the bulk of the baronage. Every day brought news of +ill. A detachment from Scotland joined Henry's forces. The younger De +Montfort was taken prisoner. Northampton was captured, the king raised the +siege of Rochester, and a rapid march of Earl Simon's only saved London +itself from a surprise by Edward. But, betrayed as he was, the Earl +remained firm to the cause. He would fight to the end, he said, even were +he and his sons left to fight alone. With an army reinforced by 15,000 +Londoners, he marched in May to the relief of the Cinque Ports which were +now threatened by the king. Even on the march he was forsaken by many of +the nobles who followed him. Halting at Fletching in Sussex, a few miles +from Lewes, where the royal army was encamped, Earl Simon with the young +Earl of Gloucester offered the king compensation for all damage if he would +observe the Provisions. Henry's answer was one of defiance, and though +numbers were against him, the Earl resolved on battle. His skill as a +soldier reversed the advantages of the ground; marching at dawn on the 14th +of May he seized the heights eastward of the town, and moved down these +slopes to an attack. His men with white crosses on back and breast knelt in +prayer before the battle opened, and all but reached the town before their +approach was perceived. Edward however opened the fight by a furious charge +which broke the Londoners on Leicester's left. In the bitterness of his +hatred for the insult to his mother he pursued them for four miles, +slaughtering three thousand men. But he returned to find the battle lost. +Crowded in the narrow space between the heights and the river Ouse, a space +broken by marshes and by the long street of the town, the royalist centre +and left were crushed by Earl Simon. The Earl of Cornwall, now King of the +Romans, who, as the mocking song of the victors ran, "makede him a castel +of a mulne post" ("he weened that the mill-sails were mangonels" goes on +the sarcastic verse), was taken prisoner, and Henry himself captured. +Edward cut his way into the Priory only to join in his father's surrender. + + +[Sidenote: Simon's rule] + +The victory of Lewes placed Earl Simon at the head of the state. "Now +England breathes in the hope of liberty," sang a poet of the time; "the +English were despised like dogs, but now they have lifted up their head and +their foes are vanquished." But the moderation of the terms agreed upon in +the Mise of Lewes, a convention between the king and his captors, shows +Simon's sense of the difficulties of his position. The question of the +Provisions was again to be submitted to arbitration; and a parliament in +June, to which four knights were summoned from every county, placed the +administration till this arbitration was complete in the hands of a new +council of nine to be nominated by the Earls of Leicester and Gloucester +and the patriotic Bishop of Chichester. Responsibility to the community was +provided for by the declaration of a right in the body of barons and +prelates to remove either of the Three Electors, who in turn could displace +or appoint the members of the Council. Such a constitution was of a +different order from the cumbrous and oligarchical committees of 1258. But +it had little time to work in. The plans for a fresh arbitration broke +down. Lewis refused to review his decision, and all schemes for setting +fresh judges between the king and his people were defeated by a formal +condemnation of the barons' cause issued by the Pope. Triumphant as he was +indeed Earl Simon's difficulties thickened every day. The queen with +Archbishop Boniface gathered an army in France for an invasion; Roger +Mortimer with the border barons was still in arms and only held in check by +Llewelyn. It was impossible to make binding terms with an imprisoned king, +yet to release Henry without terms was to renew the war. The imprisonment +too gave a shock to public feeling which thinned the Earl's ranks. In the +new Parliament which he called at the opening of 1265 the weakness of the +patriotic party among the baronage was shown in the fact that only +twenty-three earls and barons could be found to sit beside the hundred and +twenty ecclesiastics. + + +[Sidenote: Summons of the Commons] + +But it was just this sense of his weakness which prompted the Earl to an +act that has done more than any incident of this struggle to immortalize +his name. Had the strife been simply a strife for power between the king +and the baronage the victory of either would have been equally fatal in its +results. The success of the one would have doomed England to a royal +despotism, that of the other to a feudal aristocracy. Fortunately for our +freedom the English baronage had been brought too low by the policy of the +kings to be able to withstand the crown single-handed. From the first +moment of the contest it had been forced to make its cause a national one. +The summons of two knights from each county, elected in its county court, +to a Parliament in 1254, even before the opening of the struggle, was a +recognition of the political weight of the country gentry which was +confirmed by the summons of four knights from every county to the +Parliament assembled after the battle of Lewes. The Provisions of Oxford, +in stipulating for attendance and counsel on the part of twelve delegates +of the "commonalty," gave the first indication of a yet wider appeal to the +people at large. But it was the weakness of his party among the baronage at +this great crisis which drove Earl Simon to a constitutional change of +mighty issue in our history. As before, he summoned two knights from every +county. But he created a new force in English politics when he summoned to +sit beside them two citizens from every borough. The attendance of +delegates from the towns had long been usual in the county courts when any +matter respecting their interests was in question; but it was the writ +issued by Earl Simon that first summoned the merchant and the trader to sit +beside the knight of the shire, the baron, and the bishop in the parliament +of the realm. + + +[Sidenote: Simon's difficulties] + +It is only this great event however which enables us to understand the +large and prescient nature of Earl Simon's designs. Hardly a few months had +passed away since the victory of Lewes when the burghers took their seats +at Westminster, yet his government was tottering to its fall. We know +little of the Parliament's acts. It seems to have chosen Simon as Justiciar +and to have provided for Edward's liberation, though he was still to live +under surveillance at Hereford and to surrender his earldom of Chester to +Simon, who was thus able to communicate with his Welsh allies. The Earl met +the dangers from without with complete success. In September 1264 a general +muster of the national forces on Barham Down and a contrary wind put an end +to the projects of invasion entertained by the mercenaries whom the queen +had collected in Flanders; the threats of France died away into +negotiations; the Papal Legate was forbidden to cross the Channel, and his +bulls of excommunication were flung into the sea. But the difficulties at +home grew more formidable every day. The restraint upon Henry and Edward +jarred against the national feeling of loyalty, and estranged the mass of +Englishmen who always side with the weak. Small as the patriotic party +among the barons had been from the first, it grew smaller as dissensions +broke out over the spoils of victory. The Earl's justice and resolve to +secure the public peace told heavily against him. John Giffard left him +because he refused to allow him to exact ransom from a prisoner, contrary +to the agreement made after Lewes. A greater danger opened when the young +Earl of Gloucester, though enriched with the estates of the foreigners, +held himself aloof from the Justiciar, and resented Leicester's prohibition +of a tournament, his naming the wardens of the royal castles by his own +authority, his holding Edward's fortresses on the Welsh marches by his own +garrisons. + + +[Sidenote: Edward and Gloucester] + +Gloucester's later conduct proves the wisdom of Leicester's precautions. In +the spring Parliament of 1265 he openly charged the Earl with violating the +Mise of Lewes, with tyranny, and with aiming at the crown. Before its close +he withdrew to his own lands in the west and secretly allied himself with +Roger Mortimer and the Marcher Barons. Earl Simon soon followed him to the +west, taking with him the king and Edward. He moved along the Severn, +securing its towns, advanced westward to Hereford, and was marching at the +end of May along bad roads into the heart of South Wales to attack the +fortresses of Earl Gilbert in Glamorgan when Edward suddenly made his +escape from Hereford and joined Gloucester at Ludlow. The moment had been +skilfully chosen, and Edward showed a rare ability in the movements by +which he took advantage of the Earl's position. Moving rapidly along the +Severn he seized Gloucester and the bridges across the river, destroyed the +ships by which Leicester strove to escape across the Channel to Bristol, +and cut him off altogether from England. By this movement too he placed +himself between the Earl and his son Simon, who was advancing from the east +to his father's relief. Turning rapidly on this second force Edward +surprised it at Kenilworth and drove it with heavy loss within the walls of +the castle. But the success was more than compensated by the opportunity +which his absence gave to the Earl of breaking the line of the Severn. +Taken by surprise and isolated as he was, Simon had been forced to seek for +aid and troops in an avowed alliance with Llewelyn, and it was with Welsh +reinforcements that he turned to the east. But the seizure of his ships and +of the bridges of the Severn held him a prisoner in Edward's grasp, and a +fierce attack drove him back, with broken and starving forces, into the +Welsh hills. In utter despair he struck northward to Hereford; but the +absence of Edward now enabled him on the 2nd of August to throw his troops +in boats across the Severn below Worcester. The news drew Edward quickly +back in a fruitless counter-march to the river, for the Earl had already +reached Evesham by a long night march on the morning of the 4th, while his +son, relieved in turn by Edward's counter-march, had pushed in the same +night to the little town of Alcester. The two armies were now but some ten +miles apart, and their junction seemed secured. But both were spent with +long marching, and while the Earl, listening reluctantly to the request of +the King who accompanied him, halted at Evesham for mass and dinner, the +army of the younger Simon halted for the same purpose at Alcester. + + +[Sidenote: Battle of Evesham] + +"Those two dinners doleful were, alas!" sings Robert of Gloucester; for +through the same memorable night Edward was hurrying back from the Severn +by country cross-lanes to seize the fatal gap that lay between them. As +morning broke his army lay across the road that led northward from Evesham +to Alcester. Evesham lies in a loop of the river Avon where it bends to the +south; and a height on which Edward ranged his troops closed the one outlet +from it save across the river. But a force had been thrown over the river +under Mortimer to seize the bridges, and all retreat was thus finally cut +off. The approach of Edward's army called Simon to the front, and for the +moment he took it for his son's. Though the hope soon died away a touch of +soldierly pride moved him as he recognised in the orderly advance of his +enemies a proof of his own training. "By the arm of St. James," he cried, +"they come on in wise fashion, but it was from me that they learnt it." A +glance however satisfied him of the hopelessness of a struggle; it was +impossible for a handful of horsemen with a mob of half-armed Welshmen to +resist the disciplined knighthood of the royal army. "Let us commend our +souls to God," Simon said to the little group around him, "for our bodies +are the foe's." He bade Hugh Despenser and the rest of his comrades fly +from the field. "If he died," was the noble answer, "they had no will to +live." In three hours the butchery was over. The Welsh fled at the first +onset like sheep, and were cut ruthlessly down in the cornfields and +gardens where they sought refuge. The little group of knights around Simon +fought desperately, falling one by one till the Earl was left alone. So +terrible were his sword-strokes that he had all but gained the hill-top +when a lance-thrust brought his horse to the ground, but Simon still +rejected the summons to yield till a blow from behind felled him mortally +wounded to the ground. Then with a last cry of "It is God's grace," the +soul of the great patriot passed away. + + +[Sidenote: The Royalist reaction] + +The triumphant blare of trumpets which welcomed the rescued king into +Evesham, "his men weeping for joy," rang out in bitter contrast to the +mourning of the realm. It sounded like the announcement of a reign of +terror. The rights and laws for which men had toiled and fought so long +seemed to have been swept away in an hour. Every town which had supported +Earl Simon was held to be at the king's mercy, its franchises to be +forfeited. The Charter of Lynn was annulled; London was marked out as the +special object of Henry's vengeance, and the farms and merchandise of its +citizens were seized as first-fruits of its plunder. The darkness which on +that fatal morning hid their books from the monks of Evesham as they sang +in choir was but a presage of the gloom which fell on the religious houses. +From Ramsey, from Evesham, from St. Alban's rose the same cry of havoc and +rapine. But the plunder of monk and burgess was little to the vast sentence +of confiscation which the mere fact of rebellion was held to have passed on +all the adherents of Earl Simon. To "disinherit" these of their lands was +to confiscate half the estates of the landed gentry of England; but the +hotter royalists declared them disinherited, and Henry was quick to lavish +their lands away on favourites and foreigners. The very chroniclers of +their party recall the pillage with shame. But all thought of resistance +lay hushed in a general terror. Even the younger Simon "saw no other rede" +than to release his prisoners. His army, after finishing its meal, was +again on its march to join the Earl when the news of his defeat met it, +heralded by a strange darkness that, rising suddenly in the north-west and +following as it were on Edward's track, served to shroud the mutilations +and horrors of the battle-field. The news was soon fatally confirmed. Simon +himself could see from afar his father's head borne off on a spear-point to +be mocked at Wigmore. But the pursuit streamed away southward and westward +through the streets of Tewkesbury, heaped with corpses of the panic-struck +Welshmen whom the townsmen slaughtered without pity; and there was no +attack as the little force fell back through the darkness and big +thunder-drops in despair upon Kenilworth. "I may hang up my axe," are the +bitter words which a poet attributes to their leader, "for feebly have I +gone"; and once within the castle he gave way to a wild sorrow, day after +day tasting neither meat nor drink. + + +[Sidenote: Edward] + +He was roused into action again by news of the shameful indignities which +the Marcher Lords had offered to the body of the great Earl before whom +they had trembled so long. The knights around him broke out at the tidings +in a passionate burst of fury, and clamoured for the blood of Richard of +Cornwall and his son, who were prisoners in the castle. But Simon had +enough nobleness left to interpose. "To God and him alone was it owing" +Richard owned afterwards, "that I was snatched from death." The captives +were not only saved, but set free. A Parliament had been called at +Winchester at the opening of September, and its mere assembly promised an +end to the reign of utter lawlessness. A powerful party, too, was known to +exist in the royal camp which, hostile as it had shown itself to Earl +Simon, shared his love for English liberties, and the liberation of Richard +was sure to aid its efforts. At the head of this party stood the young Earl +of Gloucester, Gilbert of Clare, to whose action above all the Earl's +overthrow was due. And with Gilbert stood Edward himself. The passion for +law, the instinct of good government, which were to make his reign so +memorable in our history, had declared themselves from the first. He had +sided with the barons at the outset of their struggle with Henry; he had +striven to keep his father true to the Provisions of Oxford. It was only +when the figure of Earl Simon seemed to tower above that of Henry himself, +when the Crown seemed falling into bondage, that Edward passed to the royal +side; and now that the danger which he dreaded was over he returned to his +older attitude. In the first flush of victory, while the doom of Simon was +as yet unknown, Edward had stood alone in desiring his captivity against +the cry of the Marcher Lords for his blood. When all was done he wept over +the corpse of his cousin and playfellow, Henry de Montfort, and followed +the Earl's body to the tomb. But great as was Edward's position after the +victory of Evesham, his moderate counsels were as yet of little avail. His +efforts in fact were met by those of Henry's second son, Edmund, who had +received the lands and earldom of Earl Simon, and whom the dread of any +restoration of the house of De Montfort set at the head of the +ultra-royalists. Nor was any hope of moderation to be found in the +Parliament which met in September 1265. It met in the usual temper of a +restoration-Parliament to legalize the outrages of the previous month. The +prisoners who had been released from the dungeons of the barons poured into +Winchester to add fresh violence to the demands of the Marchers. The wives +of the captive loyalists and the widows of the slain were summoned to give +fresh impulse to the reaction. Their place of meeting added fuel to the +fiery passions of the throng, for Winchester was fresh from its pillage by +the younger Simon on his way to Kenilworth, and its stubborn loyalty must +have been fanned into a flame by the losses it had endured. In such an +assembly no voice of moderation could find a hearing. The four bishops who +favoured the national cause, the bishops of London and Lincoln, of +Worcester and Chichester, were excluded from it, and the heads of the +religious houses were summoned for the mere purpose of extortion. Its +measures were but a confirmation of the violence which had been wrought. +All grants made during the king's "captivity" were revoked. The house of De +Montfort was banished from the realm. The charter of London was annulled. +The adherents of Earl Simon were disinherited and seizin of their lands was +given to the king. + + +[Sidenote: Simon's Miracles] + +Henry at once appointed commissioners to survey and take possession of his +spoil while he moved to Windsor to triumph in the humiliation of London. +Its mayor and forty of its chief citizens waited in the castle yard only to +be thrown into prison in spite of a safe-conduct, and Henry entered his +capital in triumph as into an enemy's city. The surrender of Dover came to +fill his cup of joy, for Richard and Amaury of Montfort had sailed with the +Earl's treasure to enlist foreign mercenaries, and it was by this port that +their force was destined to land. But a rising of the prisoners detained +there compelled its surrender in October, and the success of the royalists +seemed complete. In reality their difficulties were but beginning. Their +triumph over Earl Simon had been a triumph over the religious sentiment of +the time, and religion avenged itself in its own way. Everywhere the Earl's +death was looked upon as a martyrdom; and monk and friar united in praying +for the souls of the men who fell at Evesham as for soldiers of Christ. It +was soon whispered that heaven was attesting the sanctity of De Montfort by +miracles at his tomb. How great was the effect of this belief was seen in +the efforts of King and Pope to suppress the miracles, and in their +continuance not only through the reign of Edward the First but even in the +days of his successor. But its immediate result was a sudden revival of +hope. "Sighs are changed into songs of praise," breaks out a monk of the +time, "and the greatness of our former joy has come to life again!" Nor was +it in miracles alone that the "faithful," as they proudly styled +themselves, began to look for relief "from the oppression of the +malignants." A monk of St. Alban's who was penning a eulogy of Earl Simon +in the midst of this uproar saw the rise of a new spirit of resistance in +the streets of the little town. In dread of war it was guarded and strongly +closed with bolts and bars, and refused entrance to all strangers, and +above all to horsemen, who wished to pass through. The Constable of +Hertford, an old foe of the townsmen, boasted that spite of bolts and bars +he would enter the place and carry off four of the best villeins captive. +He contrived to make his way in; but as he loitered idly about a butcher +who passed by heard him ask his men how the wind stood. The butcher guessed +his design to burn the town, and felled him to the ground. The blow roused +the townsmen. They secured the Constable and his followers, struck off +their heads, and fixed them at the four corners of the borough. + + +[Sidenote: The Younger Simon] + +The popular reaction gave fresh heart to the younger Simon. Quitting +Kenilworth, he joined in November John D'Eyvill and Baldewin Wake in the +Isle of Axholme where the Disinherited were gathering in arms. So fast did +horse and foot flow in to him that Edward himself hurried into Lincolnshire +to meet this new danger. He saw that the old strife was just breaking out +again. The garrison of Kenilworth scoured the country; the men of the +Cinque Ports, putting wives and children on board their barks, swept the +Channel and harried the coasts; while Llewelyn, who had brought about the +dissolution of Parliament by a raid upon Chester, butchered the forces sent +against him and was master of the border. The one thing needed to link the +forces of resistance together was a head, and such a head the appearance of +Simon at Axholme seemed to promise. But Edward was resolute in his plan of +conciliation. Arriving before the camp at the close of 1265, he at once +entered into negotiations with his cousin, and prevailed on him to quit the +island and appear before the king. Richard of Cornwall welcomed Simon at +the court, he presented him to Henry as the saviour of his life, and on his +promise to surrender Kenilworth Henry gave him the kiss of peace. In spite +of the opposition of Roger Mortimer and the Marcher Lords success seemed to +be crowning this bold stroke of the peace party when the Earl of Gloucester +interposed. Desirous as he was of peace, the blood of De Montfort lay +between him and the Earl's sons, and the safety of the one lay in the ruin +of the other. In the face of this danger Earl Gilbert threw his weight into +the scale of the ultra-royalists, and peace became impossible. The question +of restitution was shelved by a reference to arbitrators; and Simon, +detained in spite of a safe-conduct, moved in Henry's train at Christmas to +witness the surrender of Kenilworth which had been stipulated as the price +of his full reconciliation with the king. But hot blood was now stirred +again on both sides. The garrison replied to the royal summons by a refusal +to surrender. They had received ward of the castle, they said, not from +Simon but from the Countess, and to none but her would they give it up. The +refusal was not likely to make Simon's position an easier one. On his +return to London the award of the arbitrators bound him to quit the realm +and not to return save with the assent of king and baronage when all were +at peace. He remained for a while in free custody at London; but warnings +that he was doomed to lifelong imprisonment drove him to flight, and he +finally sought a refuge over sea. + + +[Sidenote: Ban of Kenilworth] + +His escape set England again on fire. Llewelyn wasted the border; the +Cinque Ports held the sea; the garrison of Kenilworth pushed their raids as +far as Oxford; Baldewin Wake with a band of the Disinherited threw himself +into the woods and harried the eastern counties; Sir Adam Gurdon, a knight +of gigantic size and renowned prowess, wasted with a smaller party the +shires of the south. In almost every county bands of outlaws were seeking a +livelihood in rapine and devastation, while the royal treasury stood empty +and the enormous fine imposed upon London had been swept into the coffers +of French usurers. But a stronger hand than the king's was now at the head +of affairs, and Edward met his assailants with untiring energy. King +Richard's son, Henry of Almaine, was sent with a large force to the north; +Mortimer hurried to hold the Welsh border; Edmund was despatched to Warwick +to hold Kenilworth in check; while Edward himself marched at the opening of +March to the south. The Berkshire woods were soon cleared, and at +Whitsuntide Edward succeeded in dispersing Adam Gurdon's band and in +capturing its renowned leader in single combat. The last blow was already +given to the rising in the north, where Henry of Almaine surprised the +Disinherited at Chesterfield and took their leader, the Earl of Derby, in +his bed. Though Edmund had done little but hold the Kenilworth knights in +check, the submission of the rest of the country now enabled the royal army +to besiege it in force. But the king was penniless, and the Parliament +which he called to replenish his treasury in August showed the resolve of +the nation that the strife should cease. They would first establish peace, +if peace were possible, they said, and then answer the king's demand. +Twelve commissioners, with Earl Gilbert at their head, were appointed on +Henry's assent to arrange terms on reconciliation. They at once decided +that none should be utterly disinherited for their part in the troubles, +but that liberty of redemption should be left open to all. Furious at the +prospect of being forced to disgorge their spoil, Mortimer and the +ultra-royalists broke out in mad threats of violence, even against the life +of the Papal legate who had pressed for the reconciliation. But the power +of the ultra-royalists was over. The general resolve was not to be shaken +by the clamour of a faction, and Mortimer's rout at Brecknock by Llewelyn, +the one defeat that chequered the tide of success, had damaged that +leader's influence. Backed by Edward and Earl Gilbert, the legate met their +opposition with a threat of excommunication, and Mortimer withdrew sullenly +from the camp. Fresh trouble in the country and the seizure of the Isle of +Ely by a band of the Disinherited quickened the labours of the Twelve. At +the close of September they pronounced their award, restoring the lands to +all who made submission on a graduated scale of redemption, promising +indemnity for all wrong done during the troubles, and leaving the +restoration of the house of De Montfort to the royal will. But to these +provisions was added an emphatic demand that "the king fully keep and +observe those liberties of the Church, charters of liberties, and forest +charters, which he is expressly and by his own mouth bound to preserve and +keep." "Let the King," they add, "establish on a lasting foundation those +concessions which he has hitherto made of his own will and not on +compulsion, and those needful ordinances which have been devised by his +subjects and by his own good pleasure." + + +[Sidenote: Close of the Struggle] + +With this Award the struggle came to an end. The garrison of Kenilworth +held out indeed till November, and the full benefit of the Ban was only +secured when Earl Gilbert in the opening of the following year suddenly +appeared in arms and occupied London. But the Earl was satisfied, the +Disinherited were at last driven from Ely, and Llewelyn was brought to +submission by the appearance of an army at Shrewsbury. All was over by the +close of 1267. His father's age and weakness, his own brilliant military +successes, left Edward practically in possession of the royal power; and +his influence at once made itself felt. There was no attempt to return to +the misrule of Henry's reign, to his projects of continental aggrandizement +or internal despotism. The constitutional system of government for which +the Barons had fought was finally adopted by the Crown, and the Parliament +of Marlborough which assembled in November 1267 renewed the provisions by +which the baronage had remedied the chief abuses of the time in their +Provisions of Oxford and Westminster. The appointment of all officers of +state indeed was jealously reserved to the crown. But the royal expenditure +was brought within bounds. Taxation was only imposed with the assent of the +Great Council. So utterly was the land at rest that Edward felt himself +free to take the cross in 1268 and to join the Crusade which was being +undertaken by St. Lewis of France. He reached Tunis only to find Lewis dead +and his enterprise a failure, wintered in Sicily, made his way to Acre in +the spring of 1271, and spent more than a year in exploits which want of +force prevented from growing into a serious campaign. He was already on his +way home when the death of Henry the Third in November 1272 called him to +the throne. + + + + + +CHAPTER IV +EDWARD THE FIRST +1272-1307 + + + +[Sidenote: Edward's Temper] + +In his own day and among his own subjects Edward the First was the object +of an almost boundless admiration. He was in the truest sense a national +king. At the moment when the last trace of foreign conquest passed away, +when the descendants of those who won and those who lost at Senlac blended +for ever into an English people, England saw in her ruler no stranger but +an Englishman. The national tradition returned in more than the golden hair +or the English name which linked him to our earlier kings. Edward's very +temper was English to the core. In good as in evil he stands out as the +typical representative of the race he ruled, like them wilful and +imperious, tenacious of his rights, indomitable in his pride, dogged, +stubborn, slow of apprehension, narrow in sympathy, but like them, too, +just in the main, unselfish, laborious, conscientious, haughtily observant +of truth and self-respect, temperate, reverent of duty, religious. It is +this oneness with the character of his people which parts the temper of +Edward from what had till now been the temper of his house. He inherited +indeed from the Angevins their fierce and passionate wrath; his +punishments, when he punished in anger, were without pity; and a priest who +ventured at a moment of storm into his presence with a remonstrance dropped +dead from sheer fright at his feet. But his nature had nothing of the hard +selfishness, the vindictive obstinacy which had so long characterized the +house of Anjou. His wrath passed as quickly as it gathered; and for the +most part his conduct was that of an impulsive, generous man, trustful, +averse from cruelty, prone to forgive. "No man ever asked mercy of me," he +said in his old age, "and was refused." The rough soldierly nobleness of +his nature broke out in incidents like that at Falkirk where he lay on the +bare ground among his men, or in his refusal during a Welsh campaign to +drink of the one cask of wine which had been saved from marauders. "It is I +who have brought you into this strait," he said to his thirsty +fellow-soldiers, "and I will have no advantage of you in meat or drink." +Beneath the stern imperiousness of his outer bearing lay in fact a strange +tenderness and sensitiveness to affection. Every subject throughout his +realm was drawn closer to the king who wept bitterly at the news of his +father's death though it gave him a crown, whose fiercest burst of +vengeance was called out by an insult to his mother, whose crosses rose as +memorials of his love and sorrow at every spot where his wife's bier +rested. "I loved her tenderly in her lifetime," wrote Edward to Eleanor's +friend, the Abbot of Cluny; "I do not cease to love her now she is dead." +And as it was with mother and wife, so it was with his people at large. All +the self-concentrated isolation of the foreign kings disappeared in Edward. +He was the first English ruler since the Conquest who loved his people with +a personal love and craved for their love back again. To his trust in them +we owe our Parliament, to his care for them the great statutes which stand +in the forefront of our laws. Even in his struggles with her England +understood a temper which was so perfectly her own, and the quarrels +between king and people during his reign are quarrels where, doggedly as +they fought, neither disputant doubted for a moment the worth or affection +of the other. Few scenes in our history are more touching than a scene +during the long contest over the Charter, when Edward stood face to face +with his people in Westminster Hall, and with a sudden burst of tears owned +himself frankly in the wrong. + + +[Sidenote: Influence of Chivalry] + +But it was just this sensitiveness, this openness to outer impressions and +outer influences, that led to the strange contradictions which meet us in +Edward's career. His reign was a time in which a foreign, influence told +strongly on our manners, our literature, our national spirit, for the +sudden rise of France into a compact and organized monarchy was now making +its influence dominant in Western Europe. The "chivalry" so familiar to us +in the pages of Froissart, that picturesque mimicry of high sentiment, of +heroism, love, and courtesy before which all depth and reality of nobleness +disappeared to make room for the coarsest profligacy, the narrowest +caste-spirit, and a brutal indifference to human suffering, was specially +of French creation. There was a nobleness in Edward's nature from which the +baser influences of this chivalry fell away. His life was pure, his piety, +save when it stooped to the superstition of the time, manly and sincere, +while his high sense of duty saved him from the frivolous self-indulgence +of his successors. But he was far from being wholly free from the taint of +his age. His passionate desire was to be a model of the fashionable +chivalry of his day. His frame was that of a born soldier--tall, +deep-chested, long of limb, capable alike of endurance or action, and he +shared to the full his people's love of venture and hard fighting. When he +encountered Adam Gurdon after Evesham he forced him single-handed to beg +for mercy. At the opening of his reign he saved his life by sheer fighting +in a tournament at Challon. It was this love of adventure which lent itself +to the frivolous unreality of the new chivalry. His fame as a general +seemed a small thing to Edward when compared with his fame as a knight. At +his "Round Table of Kenilworth" a hundred lords and ladies, "clad all in +silk," renewed the faded glories of Arthur's Court. The false air of +romance which was soon to turn the gravest political resolutions into +outbursts of sentimental feeling appeared in his "Vow of the Swan," when +rising at the royal board he swore on the dish before him to avenge on +Scotland the murder of Comyn. Chivalry exerted on him a yet more fatal +influence in its narrowing of his sympathy to the noble class and in its +exclusion of the peasant and the craftsman from all claim to pity. "Knight +without reproach" as he was, he looked calmly on at the massacre of the +burghers of Berwick, and saw in William Wallace nothing but a common +robber. + + +[Sidenote: Influence of Legality] + +The French notion of chivalry had hardly more power over Edward's mind than +the French conception of kingship, feudality, and law. The rise of a lawyer +class was everywhere hardening customary into written rights, allegiance +into subjection, loose ties such as commendation into a definite vassalage. +But it was specially through French influence, the influence of St. Lewis +and his successors, that the imperial theories of the Roman Law were +brought to bear upon this natural tendency of the time. When the "sacred +majesty" of the Cæsars was transferred by a legal fiction to the royal head +of a feudal baronage every constitutional relation was changed. The +"defiance" by which a vassal renounced service to his lord became treason, +his after resistance "sacrilege." That Edward could appreciate what was +sound and noble in the legal spirit around him was shown in his reforms of +our judicature and our Parliament; but there was something as congenial to +his mind in its definiteness, its rigidity, its narrow technicalities. He +was never wilfully unjust, but he was too often captious in his justice, +fond of legal chicanery, prompt to take advantage of the letter of the law. +The high conception of royalty which he borrowed from St. Lewis united with +this legal turn of mind in the worst acts of his reign. Of rights or +liberties unregistered in charter or roll Edward would know nothing, while +his own good sense was overpowered by the majesty of his crown. It was +incredible to him that Scotland should revolt against a legal bargain which +made her national independence conditional on the terms extorted from a +claimant of her throne; nor could he view in any other light but as treason +the resistance of his own baronage to an arbitrary taxation which their +fathers had borne. + + +[Sidenote: His Moral Grandeur] + +It is in the anomalies of such a character as this, in its strange mingling +of justice and wrong-doing, of grandeur and littleness, that we must look +for any fair explanation of much that has since been bitterly blamed in +Edward's conduct and policy. But what none of these anomalies can hide from +us is the height of moral temper which shows itself in the tenor of his +rule. Edward was every inch a king; but his notion of kingship was a lofty +and a noble one. He loved power; he believed in his sovereign rights and +clung to them with a stubborn tenacity. But his main end in clinging to +them was the welfare of his people. Nothing better proves the self-command +which he drew from the purpose he set before him than his freedom from the +common sin of great rulers--the lust of military glory. He was the first of +our kings since William the Conqueror who combined military genius with +political capacity; but of the warrior's temper, of the temper that finds +delight in war, he had little or none. His freedom from it was the more +remarkable that Edward was a great soldier. His strategy in the campaign +before Evesham marked him as a consummate general. Earl Simon was forced to +admire the skill of his advance on the fatal field, and the operations by +which he met the risings that followed it were a model of rapidity and +military grasp. In his Welsh campaigns he was soon to show a tenacity and +force of will which wrested victory out of the midst of defeat. He could +head a furious charge of horse as at Lewes, or organize a commissariat +which enabled him to move army after army across the harried Lowlands. In +his old age he was quick to discover the value of the English archery and +to employ it as a means of victory at Falkirk. But master as he was of the +art of war, and forced from time to time to show his mastery in great +campaigns, in no single instance was he the assailant. He fought only when +he was forced to fight; and when fighting was over he turned back quietly +to the work of administration and the making of laws. + + +[Sidenote: His Political Genius] + +War in fact was with Edward simply a means of carrying out the ends of +statesmanship, and it was in the character of his statesmanship that his +real greatness made itself felt. His policy was an English policy; he was +firm to retain what was left of the French dominion of his race, but he +abandoned from the first all dreams of recovering the wider dominions which +his grandfather had lost. His mind was not on that side of the Channel, but +on this. He concentrated his energies on the consolidation and good +government of England itself. We can only fairly judge the annexation of +Wales or his attempt to annex Scotland if we look on his efforts in either +quarter as parts of the same scheme of national administration to which we +owe his final establishment of our judicature, our legislation, our +parliament. The character of his action was no doubt determined in great +part by the general mood of his age, an age whose special task and aim +seemed to be that of reducing to distinct form the principles which had +sprung into a new and vigorous life during the age which preceded it. As +the opening of the thirteenth century had been an age of founders, +creators, discoverers, so its close was an age of lawyers, of rulers such +as St. Lewis of France or Alfonso the Wise of Castille, organizers, +administrators, framers of laws and institutions. It was to this class that +Edward himself belonged. He had little of creative genius, of political +originality, but he possessed in a high degree the passion for order and +good government, the faculty of organization, and a love of law which broke +out even in the legal chicanery to which he sometimes stooped. In the +judicial reforms to which so much of his attention was directed he showed +himself, if not an "English Justinian," at any rate a clear-sighted and +judicious man of business, developing, reforming, bringing into a shape +which has borne the test of five centuries' experience the institutions of +his predecessors. If the excellence of a statesman's work is to be measured +by its duration and the faculty it has shown of adapting itself to the +growth and developement of a nation, then the work of Edward rises to the +highest standard of excellence. Our law courts preserve to this very day +the form which he gave them. Mighty as has been the growth of our +Parliament, it has grown on the lines which he laid down. The great roll of +English Statutes reaches back in unbroken series to the Statutes of Edward. +The routine of the first Henry, the administrative changes which had been +imposed on the nation by the clear head and imperious will of the second, +were transformed under Edward into a political organization with +carefully-defined limits, directed not by the king's will alone but by the +political impulse of the people at large. His social legislation was based +in the same fashion on principles which had already been brought into +practical working by Henry the Second. It was no doubt in great measure +owing to this practical sense of its financial and administrative value +rather than to any foresight of its political importance that we owe +Edward's organization of our Parliament. But if the institutions which we +commonly associate with his name owe their origin to others, they owe their +form and their perpetuity to him. + + +[Sidenote: Constitutional Aspect of his Reign] + +The king's English policy, like his English name, was in fact the sign of a +new epoch. England was made. The long period of national formation had come +practically to an end. With the reign of Edward begins the constitutional +England in which we live. It is not that any chasm separates our history +before it from our history after it as the chasm of the Revolution divides +the history of France, for we have traced the rudiments of our constitution +to the first moment of the English settlement in Britain. But it is with +these as with our language. The tongue of Ælfred is the very tongue we +speak, but in spite of its identity with modern English it has to be +learned like the tongue of a stranger. On the other hand, the English of +Chaucer is almost as intelligible as our own. In the first the historian +and philologer can study the origin and developement of our national +speech, in the last a schoolboy can enjoy the story of Troilus and Cressida +or listen to the gay chat of the Canterbury Pilgrims. In precisely the same +way a knowledge of our earliest laws is indispensable for the right +understanding of later legislation, its origin and its developement, while +the principles of our Parliamentary system must necessarily be studied in +the Meetings of Wise Men before the Conquest or the Great Council of barons +after it. But the Parliaments which Edward gathered at the close of his +reign are not merely illustrative of the history of later Parliaments, they +are absolutely identical with those which still sit at St. Stephen's. At +the close of his reign King, Lords, Commons, the Courts of Justice, the +forms of public administration, the relations of Church and State, all +local divisions and provincial jurisdictions, in great measure the +framework of society itself, have taken the shape which they essentially +retain. In a word the long struggle of the constitution for actual +existence has come to an end. The contests which follow are not contests +that tell, like those that preceded them, on the actual fabric of our +institutions; they are simply stages in the rough discipline by which +England has learned and is still learning how best to use and how wisely to +develope the latent powers of its national life, how to adjust the balance +of its social and political forces, how to adapt its constitutional forms +to the varying conditions of the time. + + +[Sidenote: The Earlier Finance] + +The news of his father's death found Edward at Capua in the opening of +1273; but the quiet of his realm under a regency of which Roger Mortimer +was the practical head left him free to move slowly homewards. Two of his +acts while thus journeying through Italy show that his mind was already +dwelling on the state of English finance and of English law. His visit to +the Pope at Orvieto was with a view of gaining permission to levy from the +clergy a tenth of their income for the three coming years, while he drew +from Bologna its most eminent jurist, Francesco Accursi, to aid in the task +of legal reform. At Paris he did homage to Philip the Third for his French +possessions, and then turning southward he devoted a year to the ordering +of Gascony. It was not till the summer of 1274 that the king reached +England. But he had already planned the work he had to do, and the measures +which he laid before the Parliament of 1275 were signs of the spirit in +which he was to set about it. The First Statute of Westminster was rather a +code than a statute. It contained no less than fifty-one clauses, and was +an attempt to summarize a number of previous enactments contained in the +Great Charter, the Provisions of Oxford, and the Statute of Marlborough, as +well as to embody some of the administrative measures of Henry the Second +and his son. But a more pressing need than that of a codification of the +law was the need of a reorganization of finance. While the necessities of +the Crown were growing with the widening of its range of administrative +action, the revenues of the Crown admitted of no corresponding expansion. +In the earliest times of our history the outgoings of the Crown were as +small as its income. All local expenses, whether for justice or road-making +or fortress-building, were paid by local funds; and the national "fyrd" +served at its own cost in the field. The produce of a king's private +estates with the provisions due to him from the public lands scattered over +each county, whether gathered by the king himself as he moved over his +realm, or as in later days fixed at a stated rate and collected by his +sheriff, were sufficient to defray the mere expenses of the Court. The +Danish wars gave the first shock to this simple system. To raise a ransom +which freed the land from the invader, the first land-tax, under the name +of the Danegeld, was laid on every hide of ground; and to this national +taxation the Norman kings added the feudal burthens of the new military +estates created by the Conquest, reliefs paid on inheritance, profits of +marriages and wardship, and the three feudal aids. But foreign warfare soon +exhausted these means of revenue; the barons and bishops in their Great +Council were called on at each emergency for a grant from their lands, and +at each grant a corresponding demand was made by the king as a landlord on +the towns, as lying for the most part in the royal demesne. The cessation +of Danegeld under Henry the Second and his levy of scutage made little +change in the general incidence of taxation: it still fell wholly on the +land, for even the townsmen paid as holders of their tenements. But a new +principle of taxation was disclosed in the tithe levied for a Crusade at +the close of Henry's reign. Land was no longer the only source of wealth. +The growth of national prosperity, of trade and commerce, was creating a +mass of personal property which offered irresistible temptations to the +Angevin financiers. The old revenue from landed property was restricted and +lessened by usage and compositions. Scutage was only due for foreign +campaigns: the feudal aids only on rare and stated occasions: and though +the fines from the shire-courts grew with the growth of society the dues +from the public lands were fixed and incapable of developement. But no +usage fettered the Crown in dealing with personal property, and its growth +in value promised a growing revenue. From the close of Henry the Second's +reign therefore this became the most common form of taxation. Grants of +from a seventh to a thirtieth of moveables, household-property, and stock +were demanded; and it was the necessity of procuring their assent to these +demands which enabled the baronage through the reign of Henry the Third to +bring a financial pressure to bear on the Crown. + + +[Sidenote: Indirect Taxation] + +But in addition to these two forms of direct taxation indirect taxation +also was coming more and more to the front. The right of the king to grant +licences to bring goods into or to trade within the realm, a right +springing from the need for his protection felt by the strangers who came +there for purposes of traffic, laid the foundation of our taxes on imports. +Those on exports were only a part of the general system of taxing personal +property which we have already noticed. How tempting this source of revenue +was proving we see from a provision of the Great Charter which forbids the +levy of more than the ancient customs on merchants entering or leaving the +realm. Commerce was in fact growing with the growing wealth of the people. +The crowd of civil and ecclesiastical buildings which date from this period +shows the prosperity of the country. Christian architecture reached its +highest beauty in the opening of Edward's reign; a reign marked by the +completion of the abbey church of Westminster and of the cathedral church +at Salisbury. An English noble was proud to be styled "an incomparable +builder," while some traces of the art which was rising into life across +the Alps flowed in, it may be, with the Italian ecclesiastics whom the +Papacy forced on the English Church. The shrine of the Confessor at +Westminster, the mosaic pavement beside the altar of the abbey, the +paintings on the walls of its chapterhouse remind us of the schools which +were springing up under Giotto and the Pisans. But the wealth which this +art progress shows drew trade to English shores. England was as yet simply +an agricultural country. Gascony sent her wines; her linens were furnished +by the looms of Ghent and Liége; Genoese vessels brought to her fairs the +silks, the velvets, the glass of Italy. In the barks of the Hanse merchants +came fur and amber from the Baltic, herrings, pitch, timber, and naval +stores from the countries of the north. Spain sent us iron and war-horses. +Milan sent armour. The great Venetian merchant-galleys touched the southern +coasts and left in our ports the dates of Egypt, the figs and currants of +Greece, the silk of Sicily, the sugar of Cyprus and Crete, the spices of +the Eastern seas. Capital too came from abroad. The bankers of Florence and +Lucca were busy with loans to the court or vast contracts with the +wool-growers. The bankers of Cahors had already dealt a death-blow to the +usury of the Jew. Against all this England had few exports to set. The lead +supplied by the mines of Derbyshire, the salt of the Worcestershire +springs, the iron of the Weald, were almost wholly consumed at home. The +one metal export of any worth was that of tin from the tin-mines of +Cornwall. But the production of wool was fast becoming a main element of +the nation's wealth. Flanders, the great manufacturing country of the time, +lay fronting our eastern coast; and with this market close at hand the +pastures of England found more and more profit in the supply of wool. The +Cistercian order which possessed vast ranges of moorland in Yorkshire +became famous as wool-growers; and their wool had been seized for Richard's +ransom. The Florentine merchants were developing this trade by their +immense contracts; we find a single company of merchants contracting for +the purchase of the Cistercian wool throughout the year. It was after +counsel with the Italian bankers that Edward devised his scheme for drawing +a permanent revenue from this source. In the Parliament of 1275 he obtained +the grant of half a mark, or six shillings and eightpence, on each sack of +wool exported; and this grant, a grant memorable as forming the first legal +foundation of our customs-revenue, at once relieved the necessities of the +Crown. + + +[Sidenote: Welsh Campaign] + +The grant of the wool tax enabled Edward in fact to deal with the great +difficulty of his realm. The troubles of the Barons' war, the need which +Earl Simon felt of Llewelyn's alliance to hold in check the Marcher Barons, +had all but shaken off from Wales the last traces of dependence. Even at +the close of the war the threat of an attack from the now united kingdom +only forced Llewelyn to submission on a practical acknowledgement of his +sovereignty. Although the title which Llewelyn ap Jorwerth claimed of +Prince of North Wales was recognized by the English court in the earlier +days of Henry the Third, it was withdrawn after 1229 and its claimant known +only as Prince of Aberffraw. But the loftier title of Prince of Wales which +Llewelyn ap Gruffydd assumed in 1256 was formally conceded to him in 1267, +and his right to receive homage from the other nobles of his principality +was formally sanctioned. Near however as he seemed to the final realization +of his aims, Llewelyn was still a vassal of the English Crown, and the +accession of Edward to the throne was at once followed by the demand of +homage. But the summons was fruitless; and the next two years were wasted +in as fruitless negotiation. The kingdom, however, was now well in hand. +The royal treasury was filled again, and in 1277 Edward marched on North +Wales. The fabric of Welsh greatness fell at a single blow. The chieftains +who had so lately sworn fealty to Llewelyn in the southern and central +parts of the country deserted him to join his English enemies in their +attack; an English fleet reduced Anglesea; and the Prince was cooped up in +his mountain fastnesses and forced to throw himself on Edward's mercy. With +characteristic moderation the conqueror contented himself with adding to +the English dominions the coast-district as far as Conway and with +providing that the title of Prince of Wales should cease at Llewelyn's +death. A heavy fine which he had incurred by his refusal to do homage was +remitted; and Eleanor, a daughter of Earl Simon of Montfort whom he had +sought as his wife but who had been arrested on her way to him, was wedded +to the Prince at Edward's court. + + +[Sidenote: Judicial Reforms] + +For four years all was quiet across the Welsh Marches, and Edward was able +again to turn his attention to the work of internal reconstruction. It is +probably to this time, certainly to the earlier years of his reign, that we +may attribute his modification of our judicial system. The King's Court was +divided into three distinct tribunals, the Court of Exchequer which took +cognizance of all causes in which the royal revenue was concerned; the +Court of Common Pleas for suits between private persons; and the King's +Bench, which had jurisdiction in all matters that affected the sovereign as +well as in "pleas of the crown" or criminal causes expressly reserved for +his decision. Each court was now provided with a distinct staff of judges. + +Of yet greater importance than this change, which was in effect but the +completion of a process of severance that had long been going on, was the +establishment of an equitable jurisdiction side by side with that of the +common law. In his reform of 1178 Henry the Second broke up the older +King's Court, which had till then served as the final Court of Appeal, by +the severance of the purely legal judges who had been gradually added to it +from the general body of his councillors. The judges thus severed from the +Council retained the name and the ordinary jurisdiction of "the King's +Court," but the mere fact of their severance changed in an essential way +the character of the justice they dispensed. The King in Council wielded a +power which was not only judicial but executive; his decisions though based +upon custom were not fettered by it, they wore the expressions of his will, +and it was as his will that they were carried out by officers of the Crown. +But the separate bench of judges had no longer this unlimited power at +their command. They had not the king's right as representative of the +community to make the law for the redress of a wrong. They professed simply +to declare what the existing law was, even if it was insufficient for the +full purpose of redress. The authority of their decision rested mainly on +their adhesion to ancient custom or as it was styled the "common law" which +had grown up in the past. They could enforce their decisions only by +directions to an independent officer, the sheriff, and here again their +right was soon rigidly bounded by set form and custom. These bonds in fact +became tighter every day, for their decisions were now beginning to be +reported, and the cases decided by one bench of judges became authorities +for their successors. It is plain that such a state of things has the +utmost value in many ways, whether in creating in men's minds that +impersonal notion of a sovereign law which exercises its imaginative force +on human action, or in furnishing by the accumulation and sacredness of +precedents a barrier against the invasion of arbitrary power. But it threw +a terrible obstacle in the way of the actual redress of wrong. The +increasing complexity of human action as civilization advanced outstripped +the efforts of the law. Sometimes ancient custom furnished no redress for a +wrong which sprang from modern circumstances. Sometimes the very pedantry +and inflexibility of the law itself became in individual cases the highest +injustice. + + +[Sidenote: Equitable Jurisdiction] + +It was the consciousness of this that made men cling even from the first +moment of the independent existence of these courts to the judicial power +which still remained inherent in the Crown itself. If his courts fell short +in any matter the duty of the king to do justice to all still remained, and +it was this obligation which was recognized in the provision of Henry the +Second by which all cases in which his judges failed to do justice were +reserved for the special cognizance of the royal Council itself. To this +final jurisdiction of the King in Council Edward gave a wide developement. +His assembly of the ministers, the higher permanent officials, and the law +officers of the Crown for the first time reserved to itself in its judicial +capacity the correction of all breaches of the law which the lower courts +had failed to repress, whether from weakness, partiality, or corruption, +and especially of those lawless outbreaks of the more powerful baronage +which defied the common authority of the judges. Such powers were of course +capable of terrible abuse, and it shows what real need there was felt to be +for their exercise that though regarded with jealousy by Parliament the +jurisdiction of the royal Council appears to have been steadily put into +force through the two centuries which followed. In the reign of Henry the +Seventh it took legal and statutory form in the shape of the Court of Star +Chamber, and its powers are still exercised in our own day by the Judicial +Committee of the Privy Council. But the same duty of the Crown to do +justice where its courts fell short of giving due redress for wrong +expressed itself in the jurisdiction of the Chancellor. This great officer +of State, who had perhaps originally acted only as President of the Council +when discharging its judicial functions, acquired at a very early date an +independent judicial position of the same nature. It is by remembering this +origin of the Court of Chancery that we understand the nature of the powers +it gradually acquired. All grievances of the subject, especially those +which sprang from the misconduct of government officials or of powerful +oppressors, fell within its cognizance as they fell within that of the +Royal Council, and to these were added disputes respecting the wardship of +infants, dower, rent-charges, or tithes. Its equitable jurisdiction sprang +from the defective nature and the technical and unbending rules of the +common law. As the Council had given redress in cases where law became +injustice, so the Court of Chancery interfered without regard to the rules +of procedure adopted by the common law courts on the petition of a party +for whose grievance the common law provided no adequate remedy. An +analogous extension of his powers enabled the Chancellor to afford relief +in cases of fraud, accident, or abuse of trust, and this side of his +jurisdiction was largely extended at a later time by the results of +legislation on the tenure of land by ecclesiastical bodies. The separate +powers of the Chancellor, whatever was the original date at which they were +first exercised, seem to have been thoroughly established under Edward the +First. + + +[Sidenote: Law and the Baronage] + +What reconciled the nation to the exercise of powers such as these by the +Crown and its council was the need which was still to exist for centuries +of an effective means of bringing the baronage within the reach of the law. +Constitutionally the position of the English nobles had now become +established. A king could no longer make laws or levy taxes or even make +war without their assent. The nation reposed in them an unwavering trust, +for they were no longer the brutal foreigners from whose violence the +strong hand of a Norman ruler had been needed to protect his subjects; they +were as English as the peasant or the trader. They had won English liberty +by their swords, and the tradition of their order bound them to look on +themselves as its natural guardians. The close of the Barons' War solved +the problem which had so long troubled the realm, the problem how to ensure +the government of the realm in accordance with the provisions of the Great +Charter, by the transfer of the business of administration into the hands +of a standing committee of the greater barons and prelates, acting as chief +officers of state in conjunction with specially appointed ministers of the +Crown. The body thus composed was known as the Continual Council; and the +quiet government of the kingdom by this body in the long interval between +the death of Henry the Third and his son's return shows how effective this +rule of the nobles was. It is significant of the new relation which they +were to strive to establish between themselves and the Crown that in the +brief which announced Edward's accession the Council asserted that the new +monarch mounted his throne "by the will of the peers." But while the +political influence of the baronage as a leading element in the whole +nation thus steadily mounted, the personal and purely feudal power of each +individual baron on his own estates as steadily fell. The hold which the +Crown gained on every noble family by its rights of wardship and marriage, +the circuits of the royal judges, the ever-narrowing bounds within which +baronial justice saw itself circumscribed, the blow dealt by scutage at +their military power, the prompt intervention of the Council in their +feuds, lowered the nobles more and more to the common level of their fellow +subjects. Much yet remained to be done; for within the general body of the +baronage there existed side by side with the nobles whose aims were purely +national nobles who saw in the overthrow of the royal despotism simply a +chance of setting up again their feudal privileges; and different as the +English baronage, taken as a whole, was from a feudal _noblesse_ like that +of Germany or France there is in every military class a natural drift +towards violence and lawlessness. Throughout Edward's reign his strong hand +was needed to enforce order on warring nobles. Great earls, such as those +of Gloucester and Hereford, carried on private war; in Shropshire the Earl +of Arundel waged his feud with Fulk Fitz Warine. To the lesser and poorer +nobles the wealth of the trader, the long wain of goods as it passed along +the highway, remained a tempting prey. Once, under cover of a mock +tournament of monks against canons, a band of country gentlemen succeeded +in introducing themselves into the great merchant fair at Boston; at +nightfall every booth was on fire, the merchants robbed and slaughtered, +and the booty carried off to ships which lay ready at the quay. Streams of +gold and silver, ran the tale of popular horror, flowed melted down the +gutters to the sea; "all the money in England could hardly make good the +loss." Even at the close of Edward's reign lawless bands of +"trail-bastons," or club-men, maintained themselves by general outrage, +aided the country nobles in their feuds, and wrested money and goods from +the great tradesmen. + + +[Sidenote: Edward and the Baronage] + +The king was strong enough to face and imprison the warring earls, to hang +the chiefs of the Boston marauders, and to suppress the outlaws by rigorous +commissions. But the repression of baronial outrage was only a part of +Edward's policy in relation to the Baronage. Here, as elsewhere, he had to +carry out the political policy of his house, a policy defined by the great +measures of Henry the Second, his institution of scutage, his general +assize of arms, his extension of the itinerant judicature of the royal +judges. Forced by the first to an exact discharge of their military duties +to the Crown, set by the second in the midst of a people trained equally +with the nobles to arms, their judicial tyranny curbed and subjected to the +king's justice by the third, the barons had been forced from their old +standpoint of an isolated class to the new and nobler position of a +people's leaders. Edward watched jealously over the ground which the Crown +had gained. Immediately after his landing he appointed a commission of +enquiry into the judicial franchises then existing, and on its report (of +which the existing "Hundred-Rolls" are the result) itinerant justices were +sent in 1278 to discover by what right these franchises were held. The +writs of "quo warranto" were roughly met here and there. Earl Warenne bared +a rusty sword and flung it on the justices' table. "This, sirs," he said, +"is my warrant. By the sword our fathers won their lands when they came +over with the Conqueror, and by the sword we will keep them." But the king +was far from limiting himself to the mere carrying out of the plans of +Henry the Second. Henry had aimed simply at lowering the power of the great +feudatories; Edward aimed rather at neutralizing their power by raising the +whole body of landowners to the same level. We shall see at a later time +the measures which were the issues of this policy, but in the very opening +of his reign a significant step pointed to the king's drift. In the summer +of 1278 a royal writ ordered all freeholders who held lands to the value of +twenty pounds to receive knighthood at the king's hands. + + +[Sidenote: Edward and the Church] + +Acts as significant announced Edward's purpose of carrying out another side +of Henry's policy, that of limiting in the same way the independent +jurisdiction of the Church. He was resolute to force it to become +thoroughly national by bearing its due part of the common national +burthens, and to break its growing dependence upon Rome. But the +ecclesiastical body was jealous of its position as a power distinct from +the power of the Crown, and Edward's policy had hardly declared itself when +in 1279 Archbishop Peckham obtained a canon from the clergy by which copies +of the Great Charter, with its provisions in favour of the liberties of the +Church, were to be affixed to the doors of churches. The step was meant as +a defiant protest against all interference, and it was promptly forbidden. +An order issued by the Primate to the clergy to declare to their flocks the +sentences of excommunication directed against all who obtained royal writs +to obstruct suits in church courts, or who, whether royal officers or no, +neglected to enforce their sentences, was answered in a yet more emphatic +way. By falling into the "dead hand" or "mortmain" of the Church land +ceased to render its feudal services; and in 1279 the Statute "de +Religiosis," or as it is commonly called "of Mortmain," forbade any further +alienation of land to religious bodies in such wise that it should cease to +render its due service to the king. The restriction was probably no +beneficial one to the country at large, for Churchmen were the best +landlords, and it was soon evaded by the ingenuity of the clerical lawyers; +but it marked the growing jealousy of any attempt to set aside what was +national from serving the general need and profit of the nation. Its +immediate effect was to stir the clergy to a bitter resentment. But Edward +remained firm, and when the bishops proposed to restrict the royal courts +from dealing with cases of patronage or causes which touched the chattels +of Churchmen he met their proposals by an instant prohibition. + + +[Sidenote: Conquest of Wales] + +The resentment of the clergy had soon the means of showing itself during a +new struggle with Wales. The persuasions of his brother David, who had +deserted him in the previous war but who deemed his desertion +insufficiently rewarded by an English lordship, roused Llewelyn to a fresh +revolt. A prophecy of Merlin was said to promise that when English money +became round a Prince of Wales should be crowned in London; and at this +moment a new coinage of copper money, coupled with a prohibition to break +the silver penny into halves and quarters, as had been commonly done, was +supposed to fulfil the prediction. In 1282 Edward marched in overpowering +strength into the heart of Wales. But Llewelyn held out in Snowdon with the +stubbornness of despair, and the rout of an English force which had crossed +into Anglesea prolonged the contest into the winter. The cost of the war +fell on the king's treasury. Edward had called for but one general grant +through the past eight years of his reign; but he was now forced to appeal +to his people, and by an expedient hitherto without precedent two +provincial Councils were called for this purpose. That for Southern England +met at Northampton, that for Northern at York; and clergy and laity were +summoned, though in separate session, to both. Two knights came from every +shire, two burgesses from every borough, while the bishops brought their +archdeacons, abbots, and the proctors of their cathedral clergy. The grant +of the laity was quick and liberal. But both at York and Northampton the +clergy showed their grudge at Edward's measures by long delays in supplying +his treasury. Pinched however as were his resources and terrible as were +the sufferings of his army through the winter Edward's firmness remained +unbroken; and rejecting all suggestions of retreat he issued orders for the +formation of a new army at Caermarthen to complete the circle of investment +round Llewelyn. But the war came suddenly to an end. The Prince sallied +from his mountain hold for a raid upon Radnorshire and fell in a petty +skirmish on the banks of the Wye. With him died the independence of his +race. After six months of flight his brother David was made prisoner; and a +Parliament summoned at Shrewsbury in the autumn of 1283, to which each +county again sent its two knights and twenty boroughs their two burgesses, +sentenced him to a traitor's death. The submission of the lesser chieftains +soon followed: and the country was secured by the building of strong +castles at Conway and Caernarvon, and the settlement of English barons on +the confiscated soil. The Statute of Wales which Edward promulgated at +Rhuddlan in 1284 proposed to introduce English law and the English +administration of justice and government into Wales. But little came of the +attempt; and it was not till the time of Henry the Eighth that the country +was actually incorporated with England and represented in the English +Parliament. What Edward had really done was to break the Welsh resistance. +The policy with which he followed up his victory (for the "massacre of the +bards" is a mere fable) accomplished its end, and though two later +rebellions and a ceaseless strife of the natives with the English towns in +their midst showed that the country was still far from being reconciled to +its conquest, it ceased to be any serious danger to England for a hundred +years. + + +[Sidenote: New Legislation] + +From the work of conquest Edward again turned to the work of legislation. +In the midst of his struggle with Wales he had shown his care for the +commercial classes by a Statute of Merchants in 1283, which provided for +the registration of the debts of leaders and for their recovery by +distraint of the debtor's goods and the imprisonment of his person. The +close of the war saw two measures of even greater importance. The second +Statute of Westminster which appeared in 1285 is a code of the same sort as +the first, amending the Statutes of Mortmain, of Merton, and of Gloucester, +as well as the laws of dower and advowson, remodelling the system of +justices of assize, and curbing the abuses of manorial jurisdiction. In the +same year appeared the greatest of Edward's measures for the enforcement of +public order. The Statute of Winchester revived and reorganized the old +institutions of national police and national defence. It regulated the +action of the hundred, the duty of watch and ward, and the gathering of the +fyrd or militia of the realm as Henry the Second had moulded it into form +in his Assize of Arms. Every man was bound to hold himself in readiness, +duly armed, for the king's service in case of invasion or revolt, and to +pursue felons when hue and cry was made after them. Every district was held +responsible for crimes committed within its bounds; the gates of each town +were to be shut at nightfall; and all strangers were required to give an +account of themselves to the magistrates of any borough which they entered. +By a provision which illustrates at once the social and physical condition +of the country at the time all brushwood was ordered to be destroyed within +a space of two hundred feet on either side of the public highway as a +security for travellers against sudden attacks from robbers. To enforce the +observance of this act knights were appointed in every shire under the name +of Conservators of the Peace, a name which as the benefit of these local +magistrates was more sensibly felt and their powers were more largely +extended was changed into that which they still retain of Justices of the +Peace. So orderly however was the realm that Edward was able in 1286 to +pass over sea to his foreign dominions, and to spend the next three years +in reforming their government. But the want of his guiding hand was at last +felt; and the Parliament of 1289 refused a new tax till the king came home +again. + + +[Sidenote: "Quia Emptores"] + +He returned to find the Earls of Gloucester and Hereford at war, and his +judges charged with violence and corruption. The two Earls were brought to +peace, and Earl Gilbert allied closely to the royal house by a marriage +with the king's daughter Johanna. After a careful investigation the +judicial abuses were recognized and amended. Two of the chief justices were +banished from the realm and their colleagues imprisoned and fined. But +these administrative measures were only preludes to a great legislative act +which appeared in 1290. The Third Statute of Westminster, or, to use the +name by which it is more commonly known, the Statute "Quia Emptores," is +one of those legislative efforts which mark the progress of a wide social +revolution in the country at large. The number of the greater barons was +diminishing every day, while the number of the country gentry and of the +more substantial yeomanry was increasing with the increase of the national +wealth. The increase showed itself in a growing desire to become +proprietors of land. Tenants of the barons received under-tenants on +condition of their rendering them similar services to those which they +themselves rendered to their lords; and the baronage, while duly receiving +the services in compensation for which they had originally granted their +lands in fee, saw with jealousy the feudal profits of these new +under-tenants, the profits of wardships or of reliefs and the like, in a +word the whole increase in the value of the estate consequent on its +subdivision and higher cultivation, passing into other hands than their +own. The purpose of the statute "Quia Emptores" was to check this process +by providing that in any case of alienation the sub-tenant should +henceforth hold, not of the tenant, but directly of the superior lord. But +its result was to promote instead of hindering the transfer and subdivision +of land. The tenant who was compelled before the passing of the statute to +retain in any case so much of the estate as enabled him to discharge his +feudal services to the overlord of whom he held it, was now enabled by a +process analogous to the modern sale of "tenant-right," to transfer both +land and services to new holders. However small the estates thus created +might be, the bulk were held directly of the Crown; and this class of +lesser gentry and freeholders grew steadily from this time in numbers and +importance. + + +[Sidenote: The Crown and the Jews] + +The year which saw "Quia Emptores" saw a step which remains the great blot +upon Edward's reign. The work abroad had exhausted the royal treasury, and +he bought a grant from his Parliament by listening to their wishes in the +matter of the Jews. Jewish traders had followed William the Conqueror from +Normandy, and had been enabled by his protection to establish themselves in +separate quarters or "Jewries" in all larger English towns. The Jew had no +right or citizenship in the land. The Jewry in which he lived was exempt +from the common law. He was simply the king's chattel, and his life and +goods were at the king's mercy. But he was too valuable a possession to be +lightly thrown away. If the Jewish merchant had no standing-ground in the +local court the king enabled him to sue before a special justiciary; his +bonds were deposited for safety in a chamber of the royal palace at +Westminster; he was protected against the popular hatred in the free +exercise of his religion and allowed to build synagogues and to manage his +own ecclesiastical affairs by means of a chief rabbi. The royal protection +was dictated by no spirit of tolerance or mercy. To the kings the Jew was a +mere engine of finance. The wealth which he accumulated was wrung from him +whenever the crown had need, and torture and imprisonment were resorted to +when milder means failed. It was the gold of the Jew that filled the royal +treasury at the outbreak of war or of revolt. It was in the Hebrew coffers +that the foreign kings found strength, to hold their baronage at bay. + + +[Sidenote: Popular Hatred of the Jews] + +That the presence of the Jew was, at least in the earlier years of his +settlement, beneficial to the nation at large there can be little doubt. +His arrival was the arrival of a capitalist; and heavy as was the usury he +necessarily exacted in the general insecurity of the time his loans gave an +impulse to industry. The century which followed the Conquest witnessed an +outburst of architectural energy which covered the land with castles and +cathedrals; but castle and cathedral alike owed their erection to the loans +of the Jew. His own example gave a new vigour to domestic architecture. The +buildings which, as at Lincoln and Bury St. Edmund's, still retain their +name of "Jews' Houses" were almost the first houses of stone which +superseded the mere hovels of the English burghers. Nor was their influence +simply industrial. Through their connexion with the Jewish schools in Spain +and the East they opened a way for the revival of physical sciences. A +Jewish medical school seems to have existed at Oxford; Roger Bacon himself +studied under English rabbis. But the general progress of civilization now +drew little help from the Jew, while the coming of the Cahorsine and +Italian bankers drove him from the field of commercial finance. He fell +back on the petty usury of loans to the poor, a trade necessarily +accompanied with much of extortion and which roused into fiercer life the +religious hatred against their race. Wild stories floated about of children +carried off to be circumcised or crucified, and a Lincoln boy who was found +slain in a Jewish house was canonized by popular reverence as "St. Hugh." +The first work of the Friars was to settle in the Jewish quarters and +attempt their conversion, but the popular fury rose too fast for these +gentler means of reconciliation. When the Franciscans saved seventy Jews +from hanging by their prayer to Henry the Third the populace angrily +refused the brethren alms. + + +[Sidenote: The Jewish Defiance] + +But all this growing hate was met with a bold defiance. The picture which +is commonly drawn of the Jew as timid, silent, crouching under oppression, +however truly it may represent the general position of his race throughout +mediæval Europe, is far from being borne out by historical fact on this +side the Channel. In England the attitude of the Jew, almost to the very +end, was an attitude of proud and even insolent defiance. He knew that the +royal policy exempted him from the common taxation, the common justice, the +common obligations of Englishmen. Usurer, extortioner as the realm held him +to be, the royal justice would secure him the repayment of his bonds. A +royal commission visited with heavy penalties any outbreak of violence +against the king's "chattels." The Red King actually forbade the conversion +of a Jew to the Christian faith; it was a poor exchange, he said, that +would rid him of a valuable property and give him only a subject. We see in +such a case as that of Oxford the insolence that grew out of this +consciousness of the royal protection. Here as elsewhere the Jewry was a +town within a town, with its own language, its own religion and law, its +peculiar commerce, its peculiar dress. No city bailiff could penetrate into +the square of little alleys which lay behind the present Town Hall; the +Church itself was powerless to prevent a synagogue from rising in haughty +rivalry over against the cloister of St. Frideswide. Prior Philip of St. +Frideswide complains bitterly of a certain Hebrew who stood at his door as +the procession of the saint passed by, mocking at the miracles which were +said to be wrought at her shrine. Halting and then walking firmly on his +feet, showing his hands clenched as if with palsy and then flinging open +his fingers, the Jew claimed gifts and oblations from the crowd that +flocked to St. Frideswide's shrine on the ground that such recoveries of +life and limb were quite as real as any that Frideswide ever wrought. +Sickness and death in the prior's story avenge the saint on her blasphemer, +but no earthly power, ecclesiastical or civil, seems to have ventured to +deal with him. A more daring act of fanaticism showed the temper of the +Jews even at the close of Henry the Third's reign. As the usual procession +of scholars and citizens returned from St. Frideswide's on the Ascension +Day of 1268 a Jew suddenly burst from a group of his comrades in front of +the synagogue, and wrenching the crucifix from its bearer trod it under +foot. But even in presence of such an outrage as this the terror of the +Crown sheltered the Oxford Jews from any burst of popular vengeance. The +sentence of the king condemned them to set up a cross of marble on the spot +where the crime was committed, but even this sentence was in part remitted, +and a less offensive place was found for the cross in an open plot by +Merton College. + + +[Sidenote: Expulsion of the Jews] + +Up to Edward's day indeed the royal protection had never wavered. Henry the +Second granted the Jews a right of burial outside every city where they +dwelt. Richard punished heavily a massacre of the Jews at York, and +organized a mixed court of Jews and Christians for the registration of +their contracts. John suffered none to plunder them save himself, though he +once wrested from them a sum equal to a year's revenue of his realm. The +troubles of the next reign brought in a harvest greater than even the royal +greed could reap; the Jews grew wealthy enough to acquire estates; and only +a burst of popular feeling prevented a legal decision which would have +enabled them to own freeholds. But the sack of Jewry after Jewry showed the +popular hatred during the Barons' war, and at its close fell on the Jews +the more terrible persecution of the law. To the cry against usury and the +religious fanaticism which threatened them was now added the jealousy with +which the nation that had grown up round the Charter regarded all +exceptional jurisdictions or exemptions from the common law and the common +burthens of the realm. As Edward looked on the privileges of the Church or +the baronage, so his people looked on the privileges of the Jews. The +growing weight of the Parliament told against them. Statute after statute +hemmed them in. They were forbidden to hold real property, to employ +Christian servants, to move through the streets without the two white +tablets of wool on their breasts which distinguished their race. They were +prohibited from building new synagogues or eating with Christians or acting +as physicians to them. Their trade, already crippled by the rivalry of the +bankers of Cahors, was annihilated by a royal order which bade them +renounce usury under pain of death. At last persecution could do no more, +and Edward, eager at the moment to find supplies for his treasury and +himself swayed by the fanaticism of his subjects, bought the grant of a +fifteenth from clergy and laity by consenting to drive the Jews from his +realm. No share of the enormities which accompanied this expulsion can fall +upon the king, for he not only suffered the fugitives to take their +personal wealth with them but punished with the halter those who plundered +them at sea. But the expulsion was none the less cruel. Of the sixteen +thousand who preferred exile to apostasy few reached the shores of France. +Many were wrecked, others robbed and flung overboard. One shipmaster turned +out a crew of wealthy merchants on to a sandbank and bade them call a new +Moses to save them from the sea. + +[Illustration: Scotland in 1290 (v2-map-1t.jpg)] + + +[Sidenote: Scotland] + +From the expulsion of the Jews, as from his nobler schemes of legal and +administrative reforms, Edward was suddenly called away to face complex +questions which awaited him in the North. At the moment which we have +reached the kingdom of the Scots was still an aggregate of four distinct +countries, each with its different people, its different tongue, its +different history. The old Pictish kingdom across the Firth of Forth, the +original Scot kingdom in Argyle, the district of Cumbria or Strathclyde, +and the Lowlands which stretched from the Firth of Forth to the English +border, had become united under the kings of the Scots; Pictland by +inheritance, Cumbria by a grant from the English king Eadmund, the Lowlands +by conquest, confirmed as English tradition alleged by a grant from Cnut. +The shadowy claim of dependence on the English Crown which dated from the +days when a Scotch king "commended" himself and his people to Ælfred's son +Eadward, a claim strengthened by the grant of Cumbria to Malcolm as a +"fellow worker" of the English sovereign "by sea and land," may have been +made more real through this last convention. But whatever change the +acquisition of the Lowlands made in the relation of the Scot kings to the +English sovereigns, it certainly affected in a very marked way their +relation both to England and to their own realm. Its first result was the +fixing of the royal residence in their new southern dominion at Edinburgh; +and the English civilization which surrounded them from the moment of this +settlement on what was purely English ground changed the Scot kings in all +but blood into Englishmen. The marriage of King Malcolm with Margaret, the +sister of Eadgar Ætheling, not only hastened this change but opened a way +to the English crown. Their children were regarded by a large party within +England as representatives of the older royal race and as claimants of the +throne, and this danger grew as William's devastation of the North not only +drove fresh multitudes of Englishmen to settle in the Lowlands but filled +the Scotch court with English nobles who fled thither for refuge. So +formidable indeed became the pretensions of the Scot kings that they forced +the ablest of our Norman sovereigns into a complete change of policy. The +Conqueror and William the Red had met the threats of the Scot sovereigns by +invasions which ended again and again in an illusory homage, but the +marriage of Henry the First with the Scottish Matilda robbed the claims of +the Scottish line of much of their force while it enabled him to draw their +kings into far closer relations with the Norman throne. King David not only +abandoned the ambitious dreams of his predecessors to place himself at the +head of his niece Matilda's party in her contest with Stephen, but as +Henry's brother-in-law he figured as the first noble of the English Court +and found English models and English support in the work of organization +which he attempted within his own dominions. As the marriage with Margaret +had changed Malcolm from a Celtic chieftain into an English king, so that +of Matilda brought about the conversion of David into a Norman and feudal +sovereign. His court was filled with Norman nobles from the South, such as +the Balliols and Bruces who were destined to play so great a part +afterwards but who now for the first time obtained fiefs in the Scottish +realm, and a feudal jurisprudence modelled on that of England was +introduced into the Lowlands. + + +[Sidenote: Scotch and English Crowns] + +A fresh connexion between Scotland and the English sovereigns began with +the grant of lordships within England itself to the Scot kings or their +sons. The Earldom of Northumberland was held by David's son Henry, that of +Huntingdon by David, brother of William the Lion. Homage was sometimes +rendered, whether for these lordships, for the Lowlands, or for the whole +Scottish realm, but it was the capture of William the Lion during the +revolt of the English baronage which first suggested to the ambition of +Henry the Second the project of a closer dependence of Scotland on the +English Crown. To gain his freedom William consented to hold his kingdom of +Henry and his heirs. The prelates and lords of Scotland did homage to Henry +as to their direct lord, and a right of appeal in all Scotch causes was +allowed to the superior court of the English suzerain. From this bondage +however Scotland was freed by the prodigality of Richard who allowed her to +buy back the freedom she had forfeited. Both sides fell into their old +position, but both were ceasing gradually to remember the distinctions +between the various relations in which the Scot king stood for his +different provinces to the English Crown. Scotland had come to be thought +of as a single country; and the court of London transferred to the whole of +it those claims of direct feudal suzerainty which at most applied only to +Strathclyde, while the court of Edinburgh looked on the English Lowlands as +holding no closer relation to England than the Pictish lands beyond the +Forth. Any difficulties which arose were evaded by a legal compromise. The +Scot kings repeatedly did homage to the English sovereign but with a +reservation of rights which were prudently left unspecified. The English +king accepted the homage on the assumption that it was rendered to him as +overlord of the Scottish realm, and this assumption was neither granted nor +denied. For nearly a hundred years the relations of the two countries were +thus kept peaceful and friendly, and the death of Alexander the Third +seemed destined to remove even the necessity of protests by a closer union +of the two kingdoms. Alexander had wedded his only daughter to the King of +Norway, and after long negotiation the Scotch Parliament proposed the +marriage of Margaret, "The Maid of Norway," the girl who was the only issue +of this marriage and so heiress of the kingdom, with the son of Edward the +First. It was however carefully provided in the marriage treaty which was +concluded at Brigham in 1290 that Scotland should remain a separate and +free kingdom, and that its laws and customs should be preserved inviolate. +No military aid was to be claimed by the English king, no Scotch appeal to +be carried to an English court. But this project was abruptly frustrated by +the child's death during her voyage to Scotland in the following October, +and with the rise of claimant after claimant of the vacant throne Edward +was drawn into far other relations to the Scottish realm. + + +[Sidenote: The Scotch Succession] + +Of the thirteen pretenders to the throne of Scotland only three could be +regarded as serious claimants. By the extinction of the line of William the +Lion the right of succession passed to the daughters of his brother David. +The claim of John Balliol, Lord of Galloway, rested on his descent from the +elder of these; that of Robert Bruce, Lord of Annandale, on his descent +from the second; that of John Hastings, Lord of Abergavenny, on his descent +from the third. It is clear that at this crisis every one in Scotland or +out of it recognized some sort of overlordship in Edward, for the Norwegian +king, the Primate of St. Andrews, and seven of the Scotch Earls had already +appealed to him before Margaret's death; and her death was followed by the +consent both of the claimants and the Council of Regency to refer the +question of the succession to his decision in a Parliament at Norham. But +the overlordship which the Scots acknowledged was something far less direct +and definite than the superiority which Edward claimed at the opening of +this conference in May 1291. His claim was supported by excerpts from +monastic chronicles and by the slow advance of an English army; while the +Scotch lords, taken by surprise, found little help in the delay which was +granted them. At the opening of June therefore in common with nine of the +claimants they formally admitted Edward's direct suzerainty. To the nobles +in fact the concession must have seemed a small one, for like the principal +claimants they were for the most part Norman in blood, with estates in both +countries, and looking for honours and pensions from the English Court. +From the Commons who were gathered with the nobles at Norham no such +admission of Edward's claims could be extorted; but in Scotland, feudalized +as it had been by David, the Commons were as yet of little weight and their +opposition was quietly passed by. All the rights of a feudal suzerain were +at once assumed by the English king; he entered into the possession of the +country as into that of a disputed fief to be held by its overlord till the +dispute was settled, his peace was sworn throughout the land, its castles +delivered into his charge, while its bishops and nobles swore homage to him +directly as their lord superior. Scotland was thus reduced to the +subjection which she had experienced under Henry the Second; but the full +discussion which followed over the various claims to the throne showed that +while exacting to the full what he believed to be his right Edward desired +to do justice to the country itself. The body of commissioners which the +king named to report on the claims to the throne were mainly Scotch. A +proposal for the partition of the realm among the claimants was rejected as +contrary to Scotch law. On the report of the commissioners after a +twelvemonth's investigation in favour of Balliol as representative of the +elder branch at the close of the year 1292, his homage was accepted for the +whole kingdom of Scotland with a full acknowledgement of the services due +from him to its overlord. The castles were at once delivered to the new +monarch, and for a time there was peace. + + +[Sidenote: Edward and Scotland] + +With the accession of Balliol and the rendering of his homage for the +Scottish realm the greatness of Edward reached its height. He was lord of +Britain as no English king had been before. The last traces of Welsh +independence were trodden under foot. The shadowy claims of supremacy over +Scotland were changed into a direct overlordship. Across the one sea Edward +was lord of Guienne, across the other of Ireland, and in England itself a +wise and generous policy had knit the whole nation round his throne. Firmly +as he still clung to prerogatives which the baronage were as firm not to +own, the main struggle for the Charter was over. Justice and good +government were secured. The personal despotism which John had striven to +build up, the imperial autocracy which had haunted the imagination of Henry +the Third, were alike set aside. The rule of Edward, vigorous and effective +as it was, was a rule of law, and of law enacted not by the royal will, but +by the common council of the realm. Never had English ruler reached a +greater height of power, nor was there any sign to warn the king of the +troubles which awaited him. France, jealous as it was of his greatness and +covetous of his Gascon possessions, he could hold at bay. Wales was growing +tranquil. Scotland gave few signs of discontent or restlessness in the +first year that followed the homage of its king. Under John Balliol it had +simply fallen back into the position of dependence which it held under +William the Lion; and Edward had no purpose of pushing further his rights +as suzerain than Henry the Second had done. One claim of the English Crown +indeed was soon a subject of dispute between the lawyers of the Scotch and +of the English Council boards. Edward would have granted as freely as +Balliol himself that though Scotland was a dependent kingdom it was far +from being an ordinary fief of the English Crown. By feudal custom a +distinction had always been held to exist between the relations of a +dependent king to a superior lord and those of a vassal noble to his +sovereign. At Balliol's homage indeed Edward had disclaimed any right to +the ordinary feudal incidents of a fief, those of wardship or marriage, and +in this disclaimer he was only repeating the reservations of the marriage +treaty of Brigham. There were other customs of the Scotch realm as +incontestable as these. Even after the treaty of Falaise the Scotch king +had not been held bound to attend the council of the English baronage, to +do service in English warfare, or to contribute on the part of his Scotch +realm to English aids. If no express acknowledgement of these rights had +been made by Edward, for some time after his acceptance of Balliol's homage +they were practically observed. The claim of independent justice was more +doubtful, as it was of higher import than these. The judicial independence +of Scotland had been expressly reserved in the marriage treaty. It was +certain that no appeal from a Scotch King's Court to that of his overlord +had been allowed since the days of William the Lion. But in the +jurisprudence of the feudal lawyers the right of ultimate appeal was the +test of sovereignty, and Edward regarded Balliol's homage as having placed +him precisely in the position of William the Lion and subjected his +decisions to those of his overlord. He was resolute therefore to assert the +supremacy of his court and to receive Scotch appeals. + + +[Sidenote: The French Attack] + +Even here however the quarrel seemed likely to end only in legal bickering. +Balliol at first gave way, and it was not till 1293 that he alleged himself +forced by the resentment both of his Baronage and his people to take up an +attitude of resistance. While appearing therefore formally at Westminster +he refused to answer an appeal before the English courts save by advice of +his Council. But real as the resentment of his barons may have been, it was +not Scotland which really spurred Balliol to this defiance. His wounded +pride had made him the tool of a power beyond the sea. The keenness with +which France had watched every step of Edward's success in the north sprang +not merely from a natural jealousy of his greatness but from its bearing on +a great object of French ambition. One fragment of Eleanor's inheritance +still remained to her descendants, Guienne and Gascony, the fair lands +along the Garonne and the territory which stretched south of that river to +the Pyrenees. It was this territory that now tempted the greed of Philip +the Fair, and it was in feeding the strife between England and the Scotch +king that Philip saw an opening for winning it. French envoys therefore +brought promises of aid to the Scotch Court; and no sooner had these +intrigues moved Balliol to resent the claims of his overlord than Philip +found a pretext for open quarrel with Edward in the frays which went +constantly on in the Channel between the mariners of Normandy and those of +the Cinque Ports. They culminated at this moment in a great sea-fight which +proved fatal to eight thousand Frenchmen, and for this Philip haughtily +demanded redress. Edward saw at once the danger of his position. He did his +best to allay the storm by promise of satisfaction to France, and by +addressing threats of punishment to the English seamen. But Philip still +clung to his wrong, while the national passion which was to prove for a +hundred years to come strong enough to hold down the royal policy of peace +showed itself in a characteristic defiance with which the seamen of the +Cinque Ports met Edward's menaces. "Be the King's Council well advised," +ran this remonstrance, "that if wrong or grievance be done them in any +fashion against right, they will sooner forsake wives, children, and all +that they have, and go seek through the seas where they shall think to make +their profit." In spite therefore of Edward's efforts the contest +continued, and Philip found in it an opportunity to cite the king before +his court at Paris for wrongs done to him as suzerain. It was hard for +Edward to dispute the summons without weakening the position which his own +sovereign courts had taken up towards the Scotch king, and in a final +effort to avert the conflict the king submitted to a legal decision of the +question, and to a formal cession of Guienne into Philip's hands for forty +days in acknowledgement of his supremacy. Bitter as the sacrifice must have +been it failed to win peace. The forty days had no sooner passed than +Philip refused to restore the fortresses which had been left in pledge. In +February 1294 he declared the English king contumacious, and in May +declared his fiefs forfeited to the French Crown. Edward was driven to take +up arms, but a revolt in Wales deferred the expedition to the following +year. No sooner however was it again taken in hand than it became clear +that a double danger had to be met. The summons which Edward addressed to +the Scotch barons to follow him in arms to Guienne was disregarded. It was +in truth, as we have seen, a breach of customary law, and was probably +meant to force Scotland into an open declaration of its connexion with +France. A second summons was followed by a more formal refusal. The +greatness of the danger threw Edward on England itself. For a war in +Guienne and the north he needed supplies; but he needed yet more the firm +support of his people in a struggle which, little as he foresaw its +ultimate results, would plainly be one of great difficulty and danger. In +1295 he called a Parliament to counsel with him on the affairs of the +realm, but with the large statesmanship which distinguished him he took +this occasion of giving the Parliament a shape and organization which has +left its assembly the most important event in English history. + + +[Sidenote: The Great Council] + +To realize its importance we must briefly review the changes by which the +Great Council of the Norman kings had been gradually transforming itself +into what was henceforth to be known as the English Parliament. Neither the +Meeting of the Wise Men before the Conquest nor the Great Council of the +Barons after it had been in any legal or formal way representative bodies. +The first theoretically included all free holders of land, but it shrank at +an early time into a gathering of earls, higher nobles, and bishops, with +the officers and thegns of the royal household. Little change was made in +the composition of this assembly by the Conquest, for the Great Council of +the Norman kings was supposed to include all tenants who held directly of +the Crown, the bishops and greater abbots (whose character as independent +spiritual members tended more and more to merge in their position as +barons), and the high officers of the Court. But though its composition +remained the same, the character of the assembly was essentially altered; +from a free gathering of "Wise Men" it sank to a Royal Court of feudal +vassals. Its functions too seem to have become almost nominal and its +powers to have been restricted to the sanctioning, without debate or +possibility of refusal, all grants demanded from it by the Crown. But +nominal as such a sanction might be, the "counsel and consent" of the Great +Council was necessary for the legal validity of every considerable fiscal +or political measure. Its existence therefore remained an effectual protest +against the imperial theories advanced by the lawyers of Henry the Second +which declared all legislative power to reside wholly in the sovereign. It +was in fact under Henry that these assemblies became more regular, and +their functions more important. The reforms which marked his reign were +issued in the Great Council, and even financial matters were suffered to be +debated there. But it was not till the grant of the Great Charter that the +powers of this assembly over taxation were formally recognized, and the +principle established that no burthen beyond the customary feudal aids +might be imposed "save by the Common Council of the Realm." + + +[Sidenote: Greater and Lesser Barons] + +The same document first expressly regulated its form. In theory, as we have +seen, the Great Council consisted of all who held land directly of the +Crown. But the same causes which restricted attendance at the Witenagemot +to the greater nobles told on the actual composition of the Council of +Barons. While the attendance of the ordinary tenants in chief, the Knights +or "Lesser Barons" as they were called, was burthensome from its expense to +themselves, their numbers and their dependence on the higher nobles made +the assembly of these knights dangerous to the Crown. As early therefore as +the time of Henry the First we find a distinction recognized between the +"Greater Barons," of whom the Council was usually composed, and the "Lesser +Barons" who formed the bulk of the tenants of the Crown. But though the +attendance of the latter had become rare their right of attendance remained +intact. While enacting that the prelates and greater barons should be +summoned by special writs to each gathering of the Council a remarkable +provision of the Great Charter orders a general summons to be issued +through the Sheriff to all direct tenants of the Crown. The provision was +probably intended to rouse the lesser Baronage to the exercise of rights +which had practically passed into desuetude, but as the clause is omitted +in later issues of the Charter we may doubt whether the principle it +embodied ever received more than a very limited application. There are +traces of the attendance of a few of the lesser knighthood, gentry perhaps +of the neighbourhood where the assembly was held, in some of its meetings +under Henry the Third, but till a late period in the reign of his successor +the Great Council practically remained a gathering of the greater barons, +the prelates, and the high officers of the Crown. + + +[Sidenote: Constitutional Influence of Finance] + +The change which the Great Charter had failed to accomplish was now however +brought about by the social circumstances of the time. One of the most +remarkable of these was a steady decrease in the number of the greater +nobles. The bulk of the earldoms had already lapsed to the Crown through +the extinction of the families of their possessors; of the greater +baronies, many had practically ceased to exist by their division among +female co-heiresses, many through the constant struggle of the poorer +nobles to rid themselves of their rank by a disclaimer so as to escape the +burthen of higher taxation and attendance in Parliament which it involved. +How far this diminution had gone we may see from the fact that hardly more +than a hundred barons sat in the earlier Councils of Edward's reign. But +while the number of those who actually exercised the privilege of assisting +in Parliament was rapidly diminishing, the numbers and wealth of the +"lesser baronage," whose right of attendance had become a mere +constitutional tradition, was as rapidly increasing. The long peace and +prosperity of the realm, the extension of its commerce and the increased +export of wool, were swelling the ranks and incomes of the country gentry +as well as of the freeholders and substantial yeomanry. We have already +noticed the effects of the increase of wealth in begetting a passion for +the possession of land which makes this reign so critical a period in the +history of the English freeholder; but the same tendency had to some extent +existed in the preceding century, and it was a consciousness of the growing +importance of this class of rural proprietors which induced the barons at +the moment of the Great Charter to make their fruitless attempt to induce +them to take part in the deliberations of the Great Council. But while the +barons desired their presence as an aid against the Crown, the Crown itself +desired it as a means of rendering taxation more efficient. So long as the +Great Council remained a mere assembly of magnates it was necessary for the +King's ministers to treat separately with the other orders of the state as +to the amount and assessment of their contributions. The grant made in the +Great Council was binding only on the barons and prelates who made it; but +before the aids of the boroughs, the Church, or the shires could reach the +royal treasury, a separate negotiation had to be conducted by the officers +of the Exchequer with the reeves of each town, the sheriff and shire-court +of each county, and the archdeacons of each diocese. Bargains of this sort +would be the more tedious and disappointing as the necessities of the Crown +increased in the later years of Edward, and it became a matter of fiscal +expediency to obtain the sanction of any proposed taxation through the +presence of these classes in the Great Council itself. + +The effort however to revive the old personal attendance of the lesser +baronage which had broken down half a century before could hardly be +renewed at a time when the increase of their numbers made it more +impracticable than ever; but a means of escape from this difficulty was +fortunately suggested by the very nature of the court through which alone a +summons could be addressed to the landed knighthood. Amidst the many +judicial reforms of Henry or Edward the Shire Court remained unchanged. The +haunted mound or the immemorial oak round which the assembly gathered (for +the court was often held in the open air) were the relics of a time before +the free kingdom had sunk into a shire and its Meetings of the Wise into a +County Court. But save that the king's reeve had taken the place of the +king and that the Norman legislation had displaced the Bishop and set four +Coroners by the Sheriff's side, the gathering of the freeholders remained +much as of old. The local knighthood, the yeomanry, the husbandmen of the +county, were all represented in the crowd that gathered round the Sheriff, +as guarded by his liveried followers he published the king's writs, +announced his demand of aids, received the presentment of criminals and the +inquest of the local jurors, assessed the taxation of each district, or +listened solemnly to appeals for justice, civil and criminal, from all who +held themselves oppressed in the lesser courts of the hundred or the soke. +It was in the County Court alone that the Sheriff could legally summon the +lesser baronage to attend the Great Council, and it was in the actual +constitution of this assembly that the Crown found a solution of the +difficulty which we have stated. For the principle of representation by +which it was finally solved was coeval with the Shire Court itself. In all +cases of civil or criminal justice the twelve sworn assessors of the +Sheriff, as members of a class, though not formally deputed for that +purpose, practically represented the judicial opinion of the county at +large. From every hundred came groups of twelve sworn deputies, the +"jurors" through whom the presentments of the district were made to the +royal officer and with whom the assessment of its share in the general +taxation was arranged. The husbandmen on the outskirts of the crowd, clad +in the brown smock frock which still lingers in the garb of our carters and +ploughmen, were broken up into little knots of five, a reeve and four +assistants, each of which knots formed the representative of a rural +township. If in fact we regard the Shire Courts as lineally the descendants +of our earliest English Witenagemots, we may justly claim the principle of +parliamentary representation as among the oldest of our institutions. + + +[Sidenote: Knights of the Shire] + +It was easy to give this principle a further extension by the choice of +representatives of the lesser barons in the shire courts to which they were +summoned; but it was only slowly and tentatively that this process was +applied to the reconstitution of the Great Council. As early as the close +of John's reign there are indications of the approaching change in the +summons of "four discreet knights" from every county. Fresh need of local +support was felt by both parties in the conflict of the succeeding reign, +and Henry and his barons alike summoned knights from each shire "to meet on +the common business of the realm." It was no doubt with the same purpose +that the writs of Earl Simon ordered the choice of knights in each shire +for his famous Parliament of 1265. Something like a continuous attendance +may be dated from the accession of Edward, but it was long before the +knights were regarded as more than local deputies for the assessment of +taxation or admitted to a share in the general business of the Great +Council. The statute "Quia Emptores," for instance, was passed in it before +the knights who had been summoned could attend. Their participation in the +deliberative power of Parliament, as well as their regular and continuous +attendance, dates only from the Parliament of 1295. But a far greater +constitutional change in their position had already taken place through the +extension of electoral rights to the freeholders at large. The one class +entitled to a seat in the Great Council was, as we have seen, that of the +lesser baronage; and it was of the lesser baronage alone that the knights +were in theory the representatives. But the necessity of holding their +election in the County Court rendered any restriction of the electoral body +physically impossible. The court was composed of the whole body of +freeholders, and no sheriff could distinguish the "aye, aye" of the yeoman +from the "aye, aye" of the lesser baron. From the first moment therefore of +their attendance we find the knights regarded not as mere representatives +of the baronage but as knights of the shire, and by this silent revolution +the whole body of the rural freeholders were admitted to a share in the +government of the realm. + + +[Sidenote: Boroughs and the Crown] + +The financial difficulties of the Crown led to a far more radical +revolution in the admission into the Great Council of representatives from +the boroughs. The presence of knights from each shire was the recognition +of an older right, but no right of attendance or share in the national +"counsel and assent" could be pleaded for the burgesses of the towns. On +the other hand the rapid developement of their wealth made them every day +more important as elements in the national taxation. From all payment of +the dues or fines exacted by the king as the original lord of the soil on +which they had in most cases grown up the towns had long since freed +themselves by what was called the purchase of the "farm of the borough"; in +other words, by the commutation of these uncertain dues for a fixed sum +paid annually to the Crown and apportioned by their own magistrates among +the general body of the burghers. All that the king legally retained was +the right enjoyed by every great proprietor of levying a corresponding +taxation on his tenants in demesne under the name of "a free aid" whenever +a grant was made for the national necessities by the barons of the Great +Council. But the temptation of appropriating the growing wealth of the +mercantile class proved stronger than legal restrictions, and we find both +Henry the Third and his son assuming a right of imposing taxes at pleasure +and without any authority from the Council even over London itself. The +burgesses could refuse indeed the invitation to contribute to the "free +aids" demanded by the royal officers, but the suspension of their markets +or trading privileges brought them in the end to submission. Each of these +"free aids" however had to be extorted after a long wrangle between the +borough and the officers of the Exchequer; and if the towns were driven to +comply with what they considered an extortion they could generally force +the Crown by evasions and delays to a compromise and abatement of its +original demands. + + +[Sidenote: Burgesses in Parliament] + +The same financial reasons therefore existed for desiring the presence of +borough representatives in the Great Council as existed in the case of the +shires; but it was the genius of Earl Simon which first broke through the +older constitutional tradition and summoned two burgesses from each town to +the Parliament of 1265. Time had indeed to pass before the large and +statesmanlike conception of the great patriot could meet with full +acceptance. Through the earlier part of Edward's reign we find a few +instances of the presence of representatives from the towns, but their +scanty numbers and the irregularity of their attendance show that they were +summoned rather to afford financial information to the Great Council than +as representatives in it of an Estate of the Realm. But every year pleaded +stronger and stronger for their inclusion, and in the Parliament of 1295 +that of 1265 found itself at last reproduced. "It was from me that he +learnt it," Earl Simon had cried, as he recognized the military skill of +Edward's onset at Evesham; "it was from me that he learnt it," his spirit +might have exclaimed as he saw the king gathering at last two burgesses +"from every city, borough, and leading town" within his realm to sit side +by side with the knights, nobles, and barons of the Great Council. To the +Crown the change was from the first an advantageous one. The grants of +subsidies by the burgesses in Parliament proved more profitable than the +previous extortions of the Exchequer. The proportions of their grant +generally exceeded that of the other estates. Their representatives too +proved far more compliant with the royal will than the barons or knights of +the shire; only on one occasion during Edward's reign did the burgesses +waver from their general support of the Crown. + + +[Sidenote: Reluctance to attend] + +It was easy indeed to control them, for the selection of boroughs to be +represented remained wholly in the king's hands, and their numbers could be +increased or diminished at the king's pleasure. The determination was left +to the sheriff, and at a hint from the royal Council a sheriff of Wilts +would cut down the number of represented boroughs in his shire from eleven +to three, or a sheriff of Bucks declare he could find but a single borough, +that of Wycombe, within the bounds of his county. Nor was this exercise of +the prerogative hampered by any anxiety on the part of the towns to claim +representative privileges. It was hard to suspect that a power before which +the Crown would have to bow lay in the ranks of soberly-clad traders, +summoned only to assess the contributions of their boroughs, and whose +attendance was as difficult to secure as it seemed burthensome to +themselves and the towns who sent them. The mass of citizens took little or +no part in their choice, for they were elected in the county court by a few +of the principal burghers deputed for the purpose; but the cost of their +maintenance, the two shillings a day paid to the burgess by his town as +four were paid to the knight by his county, was a burden from which the +boroughs made desperate efforts to escape. Some persisted in making no +return to the sheriff. Some bought charters of exemption from the +troublesome privilege. Of the 165 who were summoned by Edward the First +more than a third ceased to send representatives after a single compliance +with the royal summons. During the whole time from the reign of Edward the +Third to the reign of Henry the Sixth the sheriff of Lancashire declined to +return the names of any boroughs at all within that county "on account of +their poverty." Nor were the representatives themselves more anxious to +appear than their boroughs to send them. The busy country squire and the +thrifty trader were equally reluctant to undergo the trouble and expense of +a journey to Westminster. Legal measures were often necessary to ensure +their presence. Writs still exist in abundance such as that by which Walter +le Rous is "held to bail in eight oxen and four cart-horses to come before +the King on the day specified" for attendance in Parliament. But in spite +of obstacles such as these the presence of representatives from the +boroughs may be regarded as continuous from the Parliament of 1295. As the +representation of the lesser barons had widened through a silent change +into that of the shire, so that of the boroughs--restricted in theory to +those in the royal demesne--seems practically from Edward's time to have +been extended to all who were in a condition to pay the cost of their +representatives' support. By a change as silent within the Parliament +itself the burgess, originally summoned to take part only in matters of +taxation, was at last admitted to a full share in the deliberations and +authority of the other orders of the State. + + +[Sidenote: Parliament and the Clergy] + +The admission of the burgesses and knights of the shire to the assembly of +1295 completed the fabric of our representative constitution. The Great +Council of the Barons became the Parliament of the Realm. Every order of +the state found itself represented in this assembly, and took part in the +grant of supplies, the work of legislation, and in the end the control of +government. But though in all essential points the character of Parliament +has remained the same from that time to this, there were some remarkable +particulars in which the assembly of 1295 differed widely from the present +Parliament at St. Stephen's. Some of these differences, such as those which +sprang from the increased powers and changed relations of the different +orders among themselves, we shall have occasion to consider at a later +time. But a difference of a far more startling kind than these lay in the +presence of the clergy. If there is any part in the parliamentary scheme of +Edward the First which can be regarded as especially his own, it is his +project for the representation of the ecclesiastical order. The King had +twice at least summoned its "proctors" to Great Councils before 1295, but +it was then only that the complete representation of the Church was +definitely organized by the insertion of a clause in the writ which +summoned a bishop to Parliament requiring the personal attendance of all +archdeacons, deans, or priors of cathedral churches, of a proctor for each +cathedral chapter, and two for the clergy within his diocese. The clause is +repeated in the writs of the present day, but its practical effect was +foiled almost from the first by the resolute opposition of those to whom it +was addressed. What the towns failed in doing the clergy actually did. Even +when forced to comply with the royal summons, as they seem to have been +forced during Edward's reign, they sat jealously by themselves, and their +refusal to vote supplies in any but their own provincial assemblies, or +convocations, of Canterbury and York left the Crown without a motive for +insisting on their continued attendance. Their presence indeed, though +still at times granted on some solemn occasions, became so pure a formality +that by the end of the fifteenth century it had sunk wholly into desuetude. +In their anxiety to preserve their existence as an isolated and privileged +order the clergy flung away a power which, had they retained it, would have +ruinously hampered the healthy developement of the state. To take a single +instance, it is difficult to see how the great changes of the Reformation +could have been brought about had a good half of the House of Commons +consisted purely of churchmen, whose numbers would have been backed by the +weight of their property as possessors of a third of the landed estates of +the realm. + + +[Sidenote: Parliament at Westminster] + +A hardly less important difference may be found in the gradual restriction +of the meetings of Parliament to Westminster. The names of Edward's +statutes remind us of its convocation at the most various quarters, at +Winchester, Acton Burnell, Northampton. It was at a later time that +Parliament became settled in the straggling village which had grown up in +the marshy swamp of the Isle of Thorns beside the palace whose embattled +pile towered over the Thames and the new Westminster which was still rising +in Edward's day on the site of the older church of the Confessor. It is +possible that, while contributing greatly to its constitutional importance, +this settlement of the Parliament may have helped to throw into the +background its character as a supreme court of appeal. The proclamation by +which it was called together invited "all who had any grace to demand of +the King in Parliament, or any plaint to make of matters which could not be +redressed or determined by ordinary course of law, or who had been in any +way aggrieved by any of the King's ministers or justices or sheriffs, or +their bailiffs, or any other officer, or have been unduly assessed, rated, +charged, or surcharged to aids, subsidies, or taxes," to deliver their +petitions to receivers who sat in the Great Hall of the Palace of +Westminster. The petitions were forwarded to the King's Council, and it was +probably the extension of the jurisdiction of that body and the rise of the +Court of Chancery which reduced this ancient right of the subject to the +formal election of "Triers of Petitions" at the opening of every new +Parliament by the House of Lords, a usage which is still continued. But it +must have been owing to some memory of the older custom that the subject +always looked for redress against injuries from the Crown or its ministers +to the Parliament of the realm. + + +[Sidenote: Conquest of Scotland] + +The subsidies granted by the Parliament of 1295 furnished the king with the +means of warfare with both Scotland and France while they assured him of +the sympathy of his people in the contest. But from the first the +reluctance of Edward to enter on the double war was strongly marked. The +refusal of the Scotch baronage to obey his summons had been followed on +Balliol's part by two secret steps which made a struggle inevitable, by a +request to Rome for absolution from his oath of fealty and by a treaty of +alliance with Philip the Fair. As yet however no open breach had taken +place, and while Edward in 1296 summoned his knighthood to meet him in the +north he called a Parliament at Newcastle in the hope of bringing about an +accommodation with the Scot king. But all thought of accommodation was +roughly ended by the refusal of Balliol to attend the Parliament, by the +rout of a small body of English troops, and by the Scotch investment of +Carlisle. Taken as he was by surprise, Edward showed at once the vigour and +rapidity of his temper. His army marched upon Berwick. The town was a rich +and well-peopled one, and although a wooden stockade furnished its only +rampart the serried ranks of citizens behind it gave little hope of an easy +conquest. Their taunts indeed stung the king to the quick. As his engineers +threw up rough entrenchments for the besieging army the burghers bade him +wait till he won the town before he began digging round it. "Kynge Edward," +they shouted, "waune thou havest Berwick, pike thee; waune thou havest +geten, dike thee." But the stockade was stormed with the loss of a single +knight, nearly eight thousand of the citizens were mown down in a ruthless +carnage, and a handful of Flemish traders who held the town-hall stoutly +against all assailants were burned alive in it. The massacre only ceased +when a procession of priests bore the host to the king's presence, praying +for mercy. Edward with a sudden and characteristic burst of tears called +off his troops; but the town was ruined for ever, and the greatest merchant +city of northern Britain sank from that time into a petty seaport. + +At Berwick Edward received Balliol's formal defiance. "Has the fool done +this folly?" the king cried in haughty scorn; "if he will not come to us, +we will come to him." The terrible slaughter however had done its work, and +his march northward was a triumphal progress. Edinburgh, Stirling, and +Perth opened their gates, Bruce joined the English army, and Balliol +himself surrendered and passed without a blow from his throne to an English +prison. No further punishment however was exacted from the prostrate realm. +Edward simply treated it as a fief, and declared its forfeiture to be the +legal consequence of Balliol's treason. It lapsed in fact to its suzerain; +and its earls, barons, and gentry swore homage in Parliament at Berwick to +Edward as their king. The sacred stone on which its older sovereigns had +been installed, an oblong block of limestone which legend asserted to have +been the pillow of Jacob as angels ascended and descended upon him, was +removed from Scone and placed in Westminster by the shrine of the +Confessor. It was enclosed by Edward's order in a stately seat, which +became from that hour the coronation chair of English kings. To the king +himself the whole business must have seemed another and easier conquest of +Wales, and the mercy and just government which had followed his first +success followed his second also. The government of the new dependency was +entrusted to John of Warenne, Earl of Surrey, at the head of an English +Council of Regency. Pardon was freely extended to all who had resisted the +invasion, and order and public peace were rigidly enforced. + + +[Sidenote: Confirmation of the Charters] + +But the triumph, rapid and complete as it was, had more than exhausted the +aids granted by the Parliament. The treasury was utterly drained. The +struggle indeed widened as every month went on; the costly fight with the +French in Gascony called for supplies, while Edward was planning a yet +costlier attack on northern France with the aid of Flanders. Need drove him +on his return from Scotland in 1297 to measures of tyrannical extortion +which seemed to recall the times of John. His first blow fell on the +Church. At the close of 1294 he had already demanded half their annual +income from the clergy, and so terrible was his wrath at their resistance +that the Dean of St. Paul's, who stood forth to remonstrate, dropped dead +of sheer terror at his feet. "If any oppose the King's demand," said a +royal envoy in the midst of the Convocation, "let him stand up that he may +be noted as an enemy to the King's peace." The outraged Churchmen fell back +on an untenable plea that their aid was due solely to Rome, and alleged the +bull of "Clericis Laicos," issued by Boniface the Eighth at this moment, a +bull which forbade the clergy to pay secular taxes from their +ecclesiastical revenues, as a ground for refusing to comply with further +taxation. In 1297 Archbishop Winchelsey refused on the ground of this bull +to make any grant, and Edward met his refusal by a general outlawry of the +whole order. The King's Courts were closed, and all justice denied to those +who refused the king aid. By their actual plea the clergy had put +themselves formally in the wrong, and the outlawry soon forced them to +submission; but their aid did little to recruit the exhausted treasury. The +pressure of the war steadily increased, and far wider measures of arbitrary +taxation were needful to equip an expedition which Edward prepared to lead +in person to Flanders. The country gentlemen were compelled to take up +knighthood or to compound for exemption from the burthensome honour, and +forced contributions of cattle and corn were demanded from the counties. +Edward no doubt purposed to pay honestly for these supplies, but his +exactions from the merchant class rested on a deliberate theory of his +royal rights. He looked on the customs as levied absolutely at his +pleasure, and the export duty on wool--now the staple produce of the +country--was raised to six times its former amount. Although he infringed +no positive provision of charter or statute in his action, it was plain +that his course really undid all that had been gained by the Barons' war. +But the blow had no sooner been struck than Edward found stout resistance +within his realm. The barons drew together and called a meeting for the +redress of their grievances. The two greatest of the English nobles, +Humfrey de Bohun, Earl of Hereford, and Roger Bigod, Earl of Norfolk, +placed themselves at the head of the opposition. The first was Constable, +the second Earl Marshal, and Edward bade them lead a force to Gascony as +his lieutenants while he himself sailed to Flanders. Their departure would +have left the Baronage without leaders, and the two earls availed +themselves of a plea that they were not bound to foreign service save in +attendance on the king to refuse obedience to the royal orders. "By God, +Sir Earl," swore the king to the Earl Marshal, "you shall either go or +hang!" "By God, Sir King," was the cool reply, "I will neither go nor +hang!" Both parties separated in bitter anger; the king to seize fresh +wool, to outlaw the clergy, and to call an army to his aid; the barons to +gather in arms, backed by the excommunication of the Primate. But the +strife went no further than words. Ere the Parliament he had convened could +meet, Edward had discovered his own powerlessness; Winchelsey offered his +mediation; and Edward confirmed the Great Charter and the Charter of +Forests as the price of a grant from the clergy and a subsidy from the +Commons. With one of those sudden revulsions of feeling of which his nature +was capable the king stood before his people in Westminster Hall and owned +with a burst of tears that he had taken their substance without due warrant +of law. His passionate appeal to their loyalty wrested a reluctant assent +to the prosecution, of the war, and in August Edward sailed for Flanders, +leaving his son regent of the realm. But the crisis had taught the need of +further securities against the royal power, and as Edward was about to +embark the barons demanded his acceptance of additional articles to the +Charter, expressly renouncing his right of taxing the nation without its +own consent. The king sailed without complying, but Winchelsey joined the +two earls and the citizens of London in forbidding any levy of supplies +till the Great Charter with these clauses was again confirmed, and the +trouble in Scotland as well as the still pending strife with France left +Edward helpless in the barons' hands. The Great Charter and the Charter of +the Forests were solemnly confirmed by him at Ghent in November; and formal +pardon was issued to the Earls of Hereford and Norfolk. + + +[Sidenote: Revolt of Scotland] + +The confirmation of the Charter, the renunciation of any right to the +exactions by which the people were aggrieved, the pledge that the king +would no more take "such aids, tasks, and prizes but by common assent of +the realm," the promise not to impose on wool any heavy customs or +"maltôte" without the same assent, was the close of the great struggle +which had begun at Runnymede. The clauses so soon removed from the Great +Charter were now restored; and, evade them as they might, the kings were +never able to free themselves from the obligation to seek aid solely from +the general consent of their subjects. It was Scotland which had won this +victory for English freedom. At the moment when Edward and the earls stood +face to face the king saw his work in the north suddenly undone. Both the +justice and injustice of the new rule proved fatal to it. The wrath of the +Scots, already kindled by the intrusion of English priests into Scotch +livings and by the grant of lands across the border to English barons, was +fanned to fury by the strict administration of law and the repression of +feuds and cattle-lifting. The disbanding too of troops, which was caused by +the penury of the royal exchequer, united with the licence of the soldiery +who remained to quicken the national sense of wrong. The disgraceful +submission of their leaders brought the people themselves to the front. In +spite of a hundred years of peace the farmer of Fife or the Lowlands and +the artizan of the towns remained stout-hearted Northumbrian Englishmen. +They had never consented to Edward's supremacy, and their blood rose +against the insolent rule of the stranger. The genius of an outlaw knight, +William Wallace, saw in their smouldering discontent a hope of freedom for +his country, and his daring raids on outlying parties of the English +soldiery roused the country at last into revolt. + + +[Sidenote: Wallace] + +Of Wallace himself, of his life or temper, we know little or nothing; the +very traditions of his gigantic stature and enormous strength are dim and +unhistorical. But the instinct of the Scotch people has guided it aright in +choosing him for its national hero. He was the first to assert freedom as a +national birthright, and amidst the despair of nobles and priests to call +the people itself to arms. At the head of an army drawn principally from +the coast districts north of the Tay, which were inhabited by a population +of the same blood as that of the Lowlands, Wallace in September 1297 +encamped near Stirling, the pass between the north and the south, and +awaited the English advance. It was here that he was found by the English +army. The offers of John of Warenne were scornfully rejected: "We have +come," said the Scottish leader, "not to make peace, but to free our +country." The position of Wallace behind a loop of Forth was in fact chosen +with consummate skill. The one bridge which crossed the river was only +broad enough to admit two horsemen abreast; and though the English army had +been passing from daybreak but half its force was across at noon when +Wallace closed on it and cut it after a short combat to pieces in sight of +its comrades. The retreat of the Earl of Surrey over the border left +Wallace head of the country he had freed, and for a few months he acted as +"Guardian of the Realm" in Balliol's name, and headed a wild foray into +Northumberland in which the barbarous cruelties of his men left a bitter +hatred behind them which was to wreak its vengeance in the later bloodshed +of the war. His reduction of Stirling Castle at last called Edward to the +field. In the spring of 1298 the king's diplomacy had at last wrung a truce +for two years from Philip the Fair; and he at once returned to England to +face the troubles in Scotland. Marching northward with a larger host than +had ever followed his banner, he was enabled by treachery to surprise +Wallace as he fell back to avoid an engagement, and to force him on the +twenty-second of July to battle near Falkirk. The Scotch force consisted +almost wholly of foot, and Wallace drew up his spearmen in four great +hollow circles or squares, the outer ranks kneeling and the whole supported +by bowmen within, while a small force of horse were drawn up as a reserve +in the rear. It was the formation of Waterloo, the first appearance in our +history since the day of Senlac of "that unconquerable British infantry" +before which chivalry was destined to go down. For a moment it had all +Waterloo's success. "I have brought you to the ring, hop (dance) if you +can," are words of rough humour that reveal the very soul of the patriot +leader, and the serried ranks answered well to his appeal. The Bishop of +Durham who led the English van shrank wisely from the look of the squares. +"Back to your mass, Bishop," shouted the reckless knights behind him, but +the body of horse dashed itself vainly on the wall of spears. Terror spread +through the English army, and its Welsh auxiliaries drew off in a body from +the field. But the generalship of Wallace was met by that of the king. +Drawing his bowmen to the front, Edward riddled the Scottish ranks with +arrows and then hurled his cavalry afresh on the wavering line. In a moment +all was over, the maddened knights rode in and out of the broken ranks, +slaying without mercy. Thousands fell on the field, and Wallace himself +escaped with difficulty, followed by a handful of men. + + +[Sidenote: Second Conquest of Scotland] + +But ruined as the cause of freedom seemed, his work was done. He had roused +Scotland into life, and even a defeat like Falkirk left her unconquered. +Edward remained master only of the ground he stood on: want of supplies +forced him at last to retreat; and in the summer of the following year, +1299, when Balliol, released from his English prison, withdrew into France, +a regency of the Scotch nobles under Robert Bruce and John Comyn continued +the struggle for independence. Troubles at home and danger from abroad +stayed Edward's hand. The barons still distrusted his sincerity, and though +at their demand he renewed the Confirmation in the spring of 1299, his +attempt to add an evasive clause saving the right of the Crown proved the +justice of their distrust. In spite of a fresh and unconditional renewal of +it a strife over the Forest Charter went on till the opening of 1301 when a +new gathering of the barons in arms with the support of Archbishop +Winchelsey wrested from him its full execution. What aided freedom within +was as of old the peril without. France was still menacing, and a claim +advanced by Pope Boniface the Eighth at its suggestion to the feudal +superiority over Scotland arrested a new advance of the king across the +border. A quarrel however which broke out between Philip le Bel and the +Papacy removed all obstacles. It enabled Edward to defy Boniface and to +wring from France a treaty in which Scotland was abandoned. In 1304 he +resumed the work of invasion, and again the nobles flung down their arms as +he marched to the North. Comyn, at the head of the Regency, acknowledged +his sovereignty, and the surrender of Stirling completed the conquest of +Scotland. But the triumph of Edward was only the prelude to the carrying +out of his designs for knitting the two countries together by a generosity +and wisdom which reveal the greatness of his statesmanship. A general +amnesty was extended to all who had shared in the resistance. Wallace, who +refused to avail himself of Edward's mercy, was captured and condemned to +death at Westminster on charges of treason, sacrilege, and robbery. The +head of the great patriot, crowned in mockery with a circlet of laurel, was +placed upon London Bridge. But the execution of Wallace was the one blot on +Edward's clemency. With a masterly boldness he entrusted the government of +the country to a council of Scotch nobles, many of whom were freshly +pardoned for their share in the war, and anticipated the policy of Cromwell +by allotting ten representatives to Scotland in the Common Parliament of +his realm. A Convocation was summoned at Perth for the election of these +representatives, and a great judicial scheme which was promulgated in this +assembly adopted the amended laws of King David as the base of a new +legislation, and divided the country for judicial purposes into four +districts, Lothian, Galloway, the Highlands, and the land between the +Highlands and the Forth, at the head of each of which were placed two +justiciaries, the one English and the other Scotch. + + +[Sidenote: Rising of Bruce] + +With the conquest and settlement of Scotland the glory of Edward seemed +again complete. The bitterness of his humiliation at home indeed still +preyed upon him, and in measure after measure we see his purpose of +renewing the strife with the baronage. In 1303 he found a means of evading +his pledge to levy no new taxes on merchandise save by assent of the realm +in a consent of the foreign merchants, whether procured by royal pressure +or no, to purchase by stated payments certain privileges of trading. In +this "New Custom" lay the origin of our import duties. A formal absolution +from his promises which he obtained from Pope Clement the Fifth in 1305 +showed that he looked on his triumph in the North as enabling him to reopen +the questions which he had yielded. But again Scotland stayed his hand. +Only four months had passed since its submission, and he was preparing for +a joint Parliament of the two nations at Carlisle, when the conquered +country suddenly sprang again to arms. Its new leader was Robert Bruce, a +grandson of one of the original claimants of the crown. The Norman house of +Bruce formed a part of the Yorkshire baronage, but it had acquired through +intermarriages the Earldom of Carrick and the Lordship of Annandale. Both +the claimant and his son had been pretty steadily on the English side in +the contest with Balliol and Wallace, and Robert had himself been trained +in the English court and stood high in the king's favour. But the +withdrawal of Balliol gave a new force to his claims upon the crown, and +the discovery of an intrigue which he had set on foot with the Bishop of +St. Andrews so roused Edward's jealousy that Bruce fled for his life across +the border. Early in 1306 he met Comyn, the Lord of Badenoch, to whose +treachery he attributed the disclosure of his plans, in the church of the +Grey Friars at Dumfries, and after the interchange of a few hot words +struck him with his dagger to the ground. It was an outrage that admitted +of no forgiveness, and Bruce for very safety was forced to assume the crown +six weeks after in the Abbey of Scone. The news roused Scotland again to +arms, and summoned Edward to a fresh contest with his unconquerable foe. +But the murder of Comyn had changed the king's mood to a terrible +pitilessness. He threatened death against all concerned in the outrage, and +exposed the Countess of Buchan, who had set the crown on Bruce's head, in a +cage or open chamber built for the purpose in one of the towers of Berwick. +At the solemn feast which celebrated his son's knighthood Edward vowed on +the swan which formed the chief dish at the banquet to devote the rest of +his days to exact vengeance from the murderer himself. But even at the +moment of the vow Bruce was already flying for his life to the western +islands. "Henceforth" he said to his wife at their coronation "thou art +Queen of Scotland and I King." "I fear" replied Mary Bruce "we are only +playing at royalty like children in their games." The play was soon turned +into bitter earnest. A small English force under Aymer de Valence sufficed +to rout the disorderly levies which gathered round the new monarch, and the +flight of Bruce left his followers at Edward's mercy. Noble after noble was +sent to the block. The Earl of Athole pleaded kindred with royalty. "His +only privilege," burst forth the king, "shall be that of being hanged on a +higher gallows than the rest." Knights and priests were strung up side by +side by the English justiciaries; while the wife and daughters of Robert +Bruce were flung into Edward's prisons. Bruce himself had offered to +capitulate to Prince Edward. But the offer only roused the old king to +fury. "Who is so bold," he cried, "as to treat with our traitors without +our knowledge?" and rising from his sick-bed he led his army northwards in +the summer of 1307 to complete the conquest. But the hand of death was upon +him, and in the very sight of Scotland the old man breathed his last at +Burgh-upon-Sands. + + + + + +BOOK IV +THE PARLIAMENT +1307-1461 + + +AUTHORITIES FOR BOOK IV + + +For Edward the Second we have three important contemporaries: Thomas de la +More, Trokelowe's Annals, and the life by a monk of Malmesbury printed by +Hearne. The sympathies of the first are with the King, those of the last +two with the Barons. Murimuth's short Chronicle is also contemporary. John +Barbour's "Bruce," the great legendary storehouse for his hero's +adventures, is historically worthless. + +Important as it is, the reign of Edward the Third is by no means fortunate +in its annalists. The concluding part of the Chronicle of Walter of +Hemingford or Heminburgh seems to have been jotted down as news of the +passing events reached its author: it ends at the battle of Crécy. Hearne +has published another contemporary account, that of Robert of Avesbury, +which closes in 1356. A third account by Knyghton, a canon of Leicester, +will be found in the collection of Twysden. At the end of this century and +the beginning of the next the annals which had been carried on in the Abbey +of St. Albans were thrown together by Walsingham in the "Historia +Anglicana" which bears his name, a compilation whose history may be found +in the prefaces to the "Chronica Monasterii S. Albani" issued in the Rolls +Series. An anonymous chronicler whose work is printed in the 22nd volume of +the "Archæologia" has given us the story of the Good Parliament, another +account is preserved in the "Chronica Angliæ from 1328 to 1388," published +in the Rolls Series, and fresh light has been recently thrown on the time +by the publication of a Chronicle by Adam of Usk which extends from 1377 to +1404. Fortunately the scantiness of historical narrative is compensated by +the growing fulness and abundance of our State papers. Rymer's Foedera is +rich in diplomatic and other documents for this period, and from this time +we have a storehouse of political and social information in the +Parliamentary Rolls. + +For the French war itself our primary authority is the Chronicle of Jehan +le Bel, a canon of the church of St. Lambert of Liége, who himself served +in Edward's campaign against the Scots and spent the rest of his life at +the court of John of Hainault. Up to the Treaty of Brétigny, where it +closes, Froissart has done little more than copy this work, making however +large additions from his own enquiries, especially in the Flemish and +Breton campaigns and in the account of Crécy. Froissart was himself a +Hainaulter of Valenciennes; he held a post in Queen Philippa's household +from 1361 to 1369, and under this influence produced in 1373 the first +edition of his well-known Chronicle. A later edition is far less English in +tone, and a third version, begun by him in his old age after long absence +from England, is distinctly French in its sympathies. Froissart's vivacity +and picturesqueness blind us to the inaccuracy of his details; as an +historical authority he is of little value. The "Fasciculi Zizaniorum" in +the Rolls Series with the documents appended to it is a work of primary +authority for the history of Wyclif and his followers: a selection from his +English tracts has been made by Mr. T. Arnold for the University of Oxford, +which has also published his "Trias." The version of the Bible that bears +his name has been edited with a valuable preface by the Rev. J. Forshall +and Sir F. Madden. William Langland's poem, "The Complaint of Piers the +Ploughman" (edited by Mr. Skeat for the Early English Text Society), throws +a flood of light on the social state of England after the Treaty of +Brétigny. + +The "Annals of Richard the Second and Henry the Fourth," now published by +the Master of the Rolls, are our main authority for the period which +follows Edward's death. They serve as the basis of the St. Albans +compilation which bears the name of Walsingham, and from which the "Life of +Richard" by a monk of Evesham is for the most part derived. The same +violent Lancastrian sympathy runs through Walsingham and the fifth book of +Knyghton's Chronicle. The French authorities on the other hand are +vehemently on Richard's side. Froissart, who ends at this time, is +supplemented by the metrical history of Creton ("Archæologia," vol. xx.), +and by the "Chronique de la Traison et Mort de Richart" (English Historical +Society), both works of French authors and published in France in the time +of Henry the Fourth, probably with the aim of arousing French feeling +against the House of Lancaster and the war-policy which it had revived. The +popular feeling in England may be seen in "Political Songs from Edward III. +to Richard III." (Rolls Series). A poem on "The Deposition of Richard II." +which has been published by the Camden Society is now ascribed to William +Langland. + +With Henry the Fifth our historic materials become more abundant. We have +the "Gesta Henrici Quinti" by Titus Livius, a chaplain in the royal army; a +life by Elmham, prior of Lenton, simpler in style but identical in +arrangement and facts with the former work; a biography by Robert Redman; a +metrical chronicle by Elmham (published in Rolls Series in "Memorials of +Henry the Fifth"); and the meagre chronicles of Hardyng and Otterbourne. +The King's Norman campaigns may be studied in M. Puiseux's "Siége de Rouen" +(Caen, 1867). The "Wars of the English in France" and Blondel's work "De +Reductione Normanniæ" (both in Rolls Series) give ample information on the +military side of this and the next reign. But with the accession of Henry +the Sixth we again enter on a period of singular dearth in its historical +authorities. The "Procès de Jeanne d'Arc" (published by the Société de +l'Histoire de France) is the only real authority for her history. For +English affairs we are reduced to the meagre accounts of William of +Worcester, of the Continuator of the Crowland Chronicle, and of Fabyan. +Fabyan is a London alderman with a strong bias in favour of the House of +Lancaster, and his work is useful for London only. The Continuator is one +of the best of his class; and though connected with the house of York, the +date of his work, which appeared soon after Bosworth Field, makes him +fairly impartial; but he is sketchy and deficient in information. The more +copious narrative of Polydore Vergil is far superior to these in literary +ability, but of later date, and strongly Lancastrian in tone. For the +struggle between Edward and Warwick, the valuable narrative of "The Arrival +of Edward the Fourth" (Camden Society) may be taken as the official account +on the royal side. The Paston Letters are the first instance in English +history of a family correspondence, and throw great light on the social +condition of the time. + + + + + +CHAPTER I +EDWARD II +1307-1327 + + + +[Sidenote: Parliament and the Kings] + +In his calling together the estates of the realm Edward the First +determined the course of English history. From the first moment of its +appearance the Parliament became the centre of English affairs. The hundred +years indeed which follow its assembly at Westminster saw its rise into a +power which checked and overawed the Crown. + +Of the kings in whose reigns the Parliament gathered this mighty strength +not one was likely to look with indifference on the growth of a rival +authority, and the bulk of them were men who in other times would have +roughly checked it. What held their hand was the need of the Crown. The +century and a half that followed the gathering of the estates at +Westminster was a time of almost continual war, and of the financial +pressure that springs from war. It was indeed war that had gathered them. +In calling his Parliament Edward the First sought mainly an effective means +of procuring supplies for that policy of national consolidation which had +triumphed in Wales and which seemed to be triumphing in Scotland. But the +triumph in Scotland soon proved a delusive one, and the strife brought +wider strifes in its train. When Edward wrung from Balliol an +acknowledgement of his suzerainty he foresaw little of the war with France, +the war with Spain, the quarrel with the Papacy, the upgrowth of social, of +political, of religious revolution within England itself, of which that +acknowledgement was to be the prelude. But the thicker troubles gathered +round England the more the royal treasury was drained, and now that +arbitrary taxation was impossible the one means of filling it lay in a +summons of the Houses. The Crown was chained to the Parliament by a tie of +absolute need. From the first moment of parliamentary existence the life +and power of the estates assembled at Westminster hung on the question of +supplies. So long as war went on no ruler could dispense with the grants +which fed the war and which Parliament alone could afford. But it was +impossible to procure supplies save by redressing the grievances of which +Parliament complained and by granting the powers which Parliament demanded. +It was in vain that king after king, conscious that war bound them to the +Parliament, strove to rid themselves of the war. So far was the ambition of +our rulers from being the cause of the long struggle that, save in the one +case of Henry the Fifth, the desperate effort of every ruler was to arrive +at peace. Forced as they were to fight, their restless diplomacy strove to +draw from victory as from defeat a means of escape from the strife that was +enslaving the Crown. The royal Council, the royal favourites, were always +on the side of peace. But fortunately for English freedom peace was +impossible. The pride of the English people, the greed of France, foiled +every attempt at accommodation. The wisest ministers sacrificed themselves +in vain. King after king patched up truces which never grew into treaties, +and concluded marriages which brought fresh discord instead of peace. War +went ceaselessly on, and with the march of war went on the ceaseless growth +of the Parliament. + + +[Sidenote: Robert Bruce] + +The death of Edward the First arrested only for a moment the advance of his +army to the north. The Earl of Pembroke led it across the border, and found +himself master of the country without a blow. Bruce's career became that of +a desperate adventurer, for even the Highland chiefs in whose fastnesses he +found shelter were bitterly hostile to one who claimed to be king of their +foes in the Lowlands. It was this adversity that transformed the murderer +of Comyn into the noble leader of a nation's cause. Strong and of +commanding presence, brave and genial in temper, Bruce bore the hardships +of his career with a courage and hopefulness that never failed. In the +legends that clustered round his name we see him listening in Highland +glens to the bay of the bloodhounds on his track, or holding a pass +single-handed against a crowd of savage clansmen. Sometimes the small band +which clung to him were forced to support themselves by hunting and +fishing, sometimes to break up for safety as their enemies tracked them to +their lair. Bruce himself had more than once to fling off his coat-of-mail +and scramble barefoot for very life up the crags. Little by little, +however, the dark sky cleared. The English pressure relaxed. James Douglas, +the darling of Scottish story, was the first of the Lowland Barons to rally +to the Bruce, and his daring gave heart to the king's cause. Once he +surprised his own house, which had been given to an Englishman, ate the +dinner which was prepared for its new owner, slew his captives, and tossed +their bodies on to a pile of wood at the castle gate. Then he staved in the +wine-vats that the wine might mingle with their blood, and set house and +wood-pile on fire. + + +[Sidenote: Edward the Second] + +A ferocity like this degraded everywhere the work of freedom; but the +revival of the country went steadily on. Pembroke and the English forces +were in fact paralyzed by a strife which had broken out in England between +the new king and his baronage. The moral purpose which had raised his +father to grandeur was wholly wanting in Edward the Second; he was showy, +idle, and stubborn in temper; but he was far from being destitute of the +intellectual quickness which seemed inborn in the Plantagenets. He had no +love for his father, but he had seen him in the later years of his reign +struggling against the pressure of the baronage, evading his pledges as to +taxation, and procuring absolution from his promise to observe the clauses +added to the Charter. The son's purpose was the same, that of throwing off +what he looked on as the yoke of the baronage; but the means by which he +designed to bring about his purpose was the choice of a minister wholly +dependent on the Crown. We have already noticed the change by which the +"clerks of the King's chapel," who had been the ministers of arbitrary +government under the Norman and Angevin sovereigns, had been quietly +superseded by the prelates and lords of the Continual Council. At the close +of the late reign a direct demand on the part of the barons to nominate the +great officers of state had been curtly rejected, but the royal choice had +been practically limited in the selection of its ministers to the class of +prelates and nobles, and however closely connected with royalty they might +be such officers always to a great extent shared the feelings and opinions +of their order. The aim of the young king seems to have been to undo the +change which had been silently brought about, and to imitate the policy of +the contemporary sovereigns of France by choosing as his ministers men of +an inferior position, wholly dependent on the Crown for their power, and +representatives of nothing but the policy and interests of their master. +Piers Gaveston, a foreigner sprung from a family of Guienne, had been his +friend and companion during his father's reign, at the close of which he +had been banished from the realm for his share in intrigues which divided +Edward from his son. At the accession of the new king he was at once +recalled, created Earl of Cornwall, and placed at the head of the +administration. When Edward crossed the sea to wed Isabella of France, the +daughter of Philip the Fair, a marriage planned by his father to provide +against any further intervention of France in his difficulties with +Scotland, the new minister was left as Regent in his room. The offence +given by this rapid promotion was embittered by his personal temper. Gay, +genial, thriftless, Gaveston showed in his first acts the quickness and +audacity of Southern Gaul. The older ministers were dismissed, all claims +of precedence or inheritance were set aside in the distribution of offices +at the coronation, while taunts and defiances goaded the proud baronage to +fury. The favourite was a fine soldier, and his lance unhorsed his +opponents in tourney after tourney. His reckless wit flung nicknames about +the Court, the Earl of Lancaster was "the Actor," Pembroke "the Jew," +Warwick "the Black Dog." But taunt and defiance broke helplessly against +the iron mass of the baronage. After a few months of power the formal +demand of the Parliament for his dismissal could not be resisted, and in +May 1308 Gaveston was formally banished from the realm. + + +[Sidenote: Thomas of Lancaster] + +But Edward was far from abandoning his favourite. In Ireland he was +unfettered by the baronage, and here Gaveston found a refuge as the King's +Lieutenant while Edward sought to obtain his recall by the intervention of +France and the Papacy. But the financial pressure of the Scotch war again +brought the king and his Parliament together in the spring of 1309. It was +only by conceding the rights which his father had sought to establish of +imposing import duties on the merchants by their own assent that he +procured a subsidy. The firmness of the baronage sprang from their having +found a head. In no point had the policy of Henry the Third more utterly +broken down than in his attempt to weaken the power of the nobles by +filling the great earldoms with kinsmen of the royal house. He had made +Simon of Montfort his brother-in-law only to furnish a leader to the nation +in the Barons' war. In loading his second son, Edmund Crouchback, with +honours and estates he raised a family to greatness which overawed the +Crown. Edmund had been created Earl of Lancaster; after Evesham he had +received the forfeited Earldom of Leicester; he had been made Earl of Derby +on the extinction of the house of Ferrers. His son, Thomas of Lancaster, +was the son-in-law of Henry de Lacy, and was soon to add to these lordships +the Earldom of Lincoln. And to the weight of these great baronies was added +his royal blood. The father of Thomas had been a titular king of Sicily. +His mother was dowager queen of Navarre. His half-sister by the mother's +side was wife of the French king Philip le Bel and mother of the English +queen Isabella. He was himself a grandson of Henry the Third and not far +from the succession to the throne. Had Earl Thomas been a wiser and a +nobler man, his adhesion to the cause of the baronage might have guided the +king into a really national policy. As it was his weight proved +irresistible. When Edward at the close of the Parliament recalled Gaveston +the Earl of Lancaster withdrew from the royal Council, and a Parliament +which met in the spring of 1310 resolved that the affairs of the realm +should be entrusted for a year to a body of twenty-one "Ordainers" with +Archbishop Winchelsey at their head. + + +[Sidenote: Edward and the Ordainers] + +Edward with Gaveston withdrew sullenly to the North. A triumph in Scotland +would have given him strength to baffle the Ordainers, but he had little of +his father's military skill, the wasted country made it hard to keep an +army together, and after a fruitless campaign he fell back to his southern +realm to meet the Parliament of 1311 and the "Ordinances" which the +twenty-one laid before it. By this long and important statute Gaveston was +banished, other advisers were driven from the Council, and the Florentine +bankers whose loans had enabled Edward to hold the baronage at bay sent out +of the realm. The customs duties imposed by Edward the First were declared +to be illegal. Its administrative provisions showed the relations which the +barons sought to establish between the new Parliament and the Crown. +Parliaments were to be called every year, and in these assemblies the +king's servants were to be brought, if need were, to justice. The great +officers of state were to be appointed with the counsel and consent of the +baronage, and to be sworn in Parliament. The same consent of the barons in +Parliament was to be needful ere the king could declare war or absent +himself from the realm. As the Ordinances show, the baronage still looked +on Parliament rather as a political organization of the nobles than as a +gathering of the three Estates of the realm. The lower clergy pass +unnoticed; the Commons are regarded as mere taxpayers whose part was still +confined to the presentation of petitions of grievances and the grant of +money. But even in this imperfect fashion the Parliament was a real +representation of the country. The barons no longer depended for their +force on the rise of some active leader, or gathered in exceptional +assemblies to wrest reforms from the Crown by threat of war. Their action +was made regular and legal. Even if the Commons took little part in forming +decisions, their force when formed hung on the assent of the knights and +burgesses to them; and the grant which alone could purchase from the Crown +the concessions which the Baronage demanded lay absolutely within the +control of the Third Estate. It was this which made the king's struggles so +fruitless. He assented to the Ordinances, and then withdrawing to the North +recalled Gaveston and annulled them. But Winchelsey excommunicated the +favourite, and the barons, gathering in arms, besieged him in Scarborough. +His surrender in May 1312 ended the strife. The "Black Dog" of Warwick had +sworn that the favourite should feel his teeth; and Gaveston flung himself +in vain at the feet of the Earl of Lancaster, praying for pity "from his +gentle lord." In defiance of the terms of his capitulation he was beheaded +on Blacklow Hill. + + +[Sidenote: Bannockburn] + +The king's burst of grief was as fruitless as his threats of vengeance; a +feigned submission of the conquerors completed the royal humiliation, and +the barons knelt before Edward in Westminster Hall to receive a pardon +which seemed the deathblow of the royal power. But if Edward was powerless +to conquer the baronage he could still by evading the observance of the +Ordinances throw the whole realm into confusion. The two years that follow +Gaveston's death are among the darkest in our history. A terrible +succession of famines intensified the suffering which sprang from the utter +absence of all rule as dissension raged between the barons and the king. At +last a common peril drew both parties together. The Scots had profited by +the English troubles, and Bruce's "harrying of Buchan" after his defeat of +its Earl, who had joined the English army, fairly turned the tide of +success in his favour. Edinburgh, Roxburgh, Perth, and most of the Scotch +fortresses fell one by one into King Robert's hands. The clergy met in +council and owned him as their lawful lord. Gradually the Scotch barons who +still held to the English cause were coerced into submission, and Bruce +found himself strong enough to invest Stirling, the last and the most +important of the Scotch fortresses which held out for Edward. Stirling was +in fact the key of Scotland, and its danger roused England out of its civil +strife to an effort for the recovery of its prey. At the close of 1313 +Edward recognized the Ordinances, and a liberal grant from the Parliament +enabled him to take the field. Lancaster indeed still held aloof on the +ground that the king had not sought the assent of Parliament to the war, +but thirty thousand men followed Edward to the North, and a host of wild +marauders were summoned from Ireland and Wales. The army which Bruce +gathered to oppose this inroad was formed almost wholly of footmen, and was +stationed to the south of Stirling on a rising ground flanked by a little +brook, the Bannockburn, which gave its name to the engagement. The battle +took place on the twenty-fourth of June 1314. Again two systems of warfare +were brought face to face as they had been brought at Falkirk, for Robert +like Wallace drew up his forces in hollow squares or circles of spearmen. +The English were dispirited at the very outset by the failure of an attempt +to relieve Stirling and by the issue of a single combat between Bruce and +Henry de Bohun, a knight who bore down upon him as he was riding peacefully +along the front of his army. Robert was mounted on a small hackney and held +only a light battle-axe in his hand, but warding off his opponent's spear +he cleft his skull with so terrible a blow that the handle of his axe was +shattered in his grasp. At the opening of the battle the English archers +were thrown forward to rake the Scottish squares, but they were without +support and were easily dispersed by a handful of horse whom Bruce held in +reserve for the purpose. The body of men-at-arms next flung themselves on +the Scottish front, but their charge was embarrassed by the narrow space +along which the line was forced to move, and the steady resistance of the +squares soon threw the knighthood into disorder. "The horses that were +stickit," says an exulting Scotch writer, "rushed and reeled right rudely." +In the moment of failure the sight of a body of camp-followers, whom they +mistook for reinforcements to the enemy, spread panic through the English +host. It broke in a headlong rout. Its thousands of brilliant horsemen were +soon floundering in pits which guarded the level ground to Bruce's left, or +riding in wild haste for the border. Few however were fortunate enough to +reach it. Edward himself, with a body of five hundred knights, succeeded in +escaping to Dunbar and the sea. But the flower of his knighthood fell into +the hands of the victors, while the Irishry and the footmen were ruthlessly +cut down by the country folk as they fled. For centuries to come the rich +plunder of the English camp left its traces on the treasure-rolls and the +vestment-rolls of castle and abbey throughout the Lowlands. + + +[Sidenote: Fall of Lancaster] + +Bannockburn left Bruce the master of Scotland: but terrible as the blow was +England could not humble herself to relinquish her claim on the Scottish +crown. Edward was eager indeed for a truce, but with equal firmness Bruce +refused all negotiation while the royal title was withheld from him and +steadily pushed on the recovery of his southern dominions. His progress was +unhindered. Bannockburn left Edward powerless, and Lancaster at the head of +the Ordainers became supreme. But it was still impossible to trust the king +or to act with him, and in the dead-lock of both parties the Scots +plundered as they would. Their ravages in the North brought shame on +England such as it had never known. At last Bruce's capture of Berwick in +the spring of 1318 forced the king to give way. The Ordinances were +formally accepted, an amnesty granted, and a small number of peers +belonging to the barons' party added to the great officers of state. Had a +statesman been at the head of the baronage the weakness of Edward might +have now been turned to good purpose. But the character of the Earl of +Lancaster seems to have fallen far beneath the greatness of his position. +Distrustful of his cousin, yet himself incapable of governing, he stood +sullenly aloof from the royal Council and the royal armies, and Edward was +able to lay his failure in recovering Berwick during the campaign of 1319 +to the Earl's charge. His influence over the country was sensibly weakened; +and in this weakness the new advisers on whom the king was leaning saw a +hope of destroying his power. These were a younger and elder Hugh Le +Despenser, son and grandson of the Justiciar who had fallen beside Earl +Simon at Evesham. Greedy and ambitious as they may have been, they were +able men, and their policy was of a higher stamp than the wilful defiance +of Gaveston. It lay, if we may gather it from the faint indications which +remain, in a frank recognition of the power of the three Estates as opposed +to the separate action of the baronage. The rise of the younger Hugh, on +whom the king bestowed the county of Glamorgan with the hand of one of its +coheiresses, a daughter of Earl Gilbert of Gloucester, was rapid enough to +excite general jealousy; and in 1321 Lancaster found little difficulty in +extorting by force of arms his exile from the kingdom. But the tide of +popular sympathy was already wavering, and it was turned to the royal cause +by an insult offered to the queen, against whom Lady Badlesmere closed the +doors of Ledes Castle. The unexpected energy shown by Edward in avenging +this insult gave fresh strength to his cause. At the opening of 1322 he +found himself strong enough to recall Despenser, and when Lancaster +convoked the baronage to force him again into exile, the weakness of their +party was shown by some negotiations into which the Earl entered with the +Scots and by his precipitate retreat to the north on the advance of the +royal army. At Boroughbridge his forces were arrested and dispersed, and +Thomas himself, brought captive before Edward at Pontefract, was tried and +condemned to death as a traitor. "Have mercy on me, King of Heaven," cried +Lancaster, as, mounted on a grey pony without a bridle, he was hurried to +execution, "for my earthly king has forsaken me." His death was followed by +that of a number of his adherents and by the captivity of others; while a +Parliament at York annulled the proceedings against the Despensers and +repealed the Ordinances. + + +[Sidenote: The Despensers] + +It is to this Parliament however, and perhaps to the victorious confidence +of the royalists, that we owe the famous provision which reveals the policy +of the Despensers, the provision that all laws concerning "the estate of +our Lord the King and his heirs or for the estate of the realm and the +people shall be treated, accorded, and established in Parliaments by our +Lord the King and by the consent of the prelates, earls, barons, and +commonalty of the realm according as hath been hitherto accustomed." It +would seem from the tenor of this remarkable enactment that much of the +sudden revulsion of popular feeling had been owing to the assumption of all +legislative action by the baronage alone. The same policy was seen in a +reissue in the form of a royal Ordinance of some of the most beneficial +provisions of the Ordinances which had been formally repealed. But the +arrogance of the Despensers gave new offence; and the utter failure of a +fresh campaign against Scotland again weakened the Crown. The barbarous +forays in which the borderers under Earl Douglas were wasting +Northumberland woke a general indignation; and a grant from the Parliament +at York enabled Edward to march with a great army to the North. But Bruce +as of old declined an engagement till the wasted Lowlands starved the +invaders into a ruinous retreat. The failure forced England in the spring +of 1323 to stoop to a truce for thirteen years, in the negotiation of which +Bruce was suffered to take the royal title. We see in this act of the +Despensers the first of a series of such attempts by which minister after +minister strove to free the Crown from the bondage under which the +war-pressure laid it to the growing power of Parliament; but it ended, as +these after attempts ended, only in the ruin of the counsellors who planned +it. The pride of the country had been roused by the struggle, and the +humiliation of such a truce robbed the Crown of its temporary popularity. +It led the way to the sudden catastrophe which closed this disastrous +reign. + + +[Sidenote: Isabella] + +In his struggle with the Scots Edward, like his father, had been hampered +not only by internal divisions but by the harassing intervention of France. +The rising under Bruce had been backed by French aid as well as by a +revival of the old quarrel over Guienne, and on the accession of Charles +the Fourth in 1322 a demand of homage for Ponthieu and Gascony called +Edward over sea. But the Despensers dared not let him quit the realm, and a +fresh dispute as to the right of possession in the Agénois brought about +the seizure of the bulk of Gascony by a sudden attack on the part of the +French. The quarrel verged upon open war, and to close it Edward's queen, +Isabella, a sister of the French king, undertook in 1325 to revisit her +home and bring about a treaty of peace between the two countries. Isabella +hated the Despensers; she was alienated from her husband; but hatred and +alienation were as yet jealously concealed. At the close of the year the +terms of peace seemed to be arranged; and though declining to cross the +sea, Edward evaded the difficulty created by the demand for personal homage +by investing his son with the Duchies of Aquitaine and Gascony, and +despatching him to join his mother at Paris. The boy did homage to King +Charles for the two Duchies, the question of the Agénois being reserved for +legal decision, and Edward at once recalled his wife and son to England. +Neither threats nor prayers however could induce either wife or child to +return to his court. Roger Mortimer, the most powerful of the Marcher +barons and a deadly foe to the Despensers, had taken refuge in France; and +his influence over the queen made her the centre of a vast conspiracy. With +the young Edward in her hands she was able to procure soldiers from the +Count of Hainault by promising her son's hand to his daughter; the Italian +bankers supplied funds; and after a year's preparation the Queen set sail +in the autumn of 1326. A secret conspiracy of the baronage was revealed +when the primate and nobles hurried to her standard on her landing at +Orwell. Deserted by all and repulsed by the citizens of London whose aid he +implored, the king fled hastily to the west and embarked with the +Despensers for Lundy Island, which Despenser had fortified as a possible +refuge; but contrary winds flung him again on the Welsh coast, where he +fell into the hands of Earl Henry of Lancaster, the brother of the Earl +whom they had slain. The younger Despenser, who accompanied him, was at +once hung on a gibbet fifty feet high, and the king placed in ward at +Kenilworth till his fate could be decided by a Parliament summoned for that +purpose at Westminster in January 1327. + + +[Sidenote: Deposition of Edward] + +The peers who assembled fearlessly revived the constitutional usage of the +earlier English freedom, and asserted their right to depose a king who had +proved himself unworthy to rule. Not a voice was raised in Edward's behalf, +and only four prelates protested when the young Prince was proclaimed king +by acclamation and presented as their sovereign to the multitudes without. +The revolution took legal form in a bill which charged the captive monarch +with indolence, incapacity, the loss of Scotland, the violation of his +coronation oath and oppression of the Church and baronage; and on the +approval of this it was resolved that the reign of Edward of Caernarvon had +ceased and that the crown had passed to his son, Edward of Windsor. A +deputation of the Parliament proceeded to Kenilworth to procure the assent +of the discrowned king to his own deposition, and Edward "clad in a plain +black gown" bowed quietly to his fate. Sir William Trussel at once +addressed him in words which better than any other mark the nature of the +step which the Parliament had taken. "I, William Trussel, proctor of the +earls, barons, and others, having for this full and sufficient power, do +render and give back to you, Edward, once King of England, the homage and +fealty of the persons named in my procuracy; and acquit and discharge them +thereof in the best manner that law and custom will give. And I now make +protestation in their name that they will no longer be in your fealty and +allegiance, nor claim to hold anything of you as king, but will account you +hereafter as a private person, without any manner of royal dignity." A +significant act followed these emphatic words. Sir Thomas Blount, the +steward of the household, broke his staff of office, a ceremony used only +at a king's death, and declared that all persons engaged in the royal +service were discharged. The act of Blount was only an omen of the fate +which awaited the miserable king. In the following September he was +murdered in Berkeley Castle. + + + + + +CHAPTER II +EDWARD THE THIRD +1327-1347 + + + +[Sidenote: Estate of the Commons] + +The deposition of Edward the Second proclaimed to the world the power which +the English Parliament had gained. In thirty years from their first +assembly at Westminster the Estates had wrested from the Crown the last +relic of arbitrary taxation, had forced on it new ministers and a new +system of government, had claimed a right of confirming the choice of its +councillors and of punishing their misconduct, and had established the +principle that redress of grievances precedes a grant of supply. Nor had +the time been less important in the internal growth of Parliament. Step by +step the practical sense of the Houses themselves completed the work of +Edward by bringing about change after change in its composition. The very +division into a House of Lords and a House of Commons formed no part of the +original plan of Edward the First; in the earlier Parliaments each of the +four orders of clergy, barons, knights, and burgesses met, deliberated, and +made their grants apart from each other. This isolation however of the +Estates soon showed signs of breaking down. Though the clergy held steadily +aloof from any real union with its fellow-orders, the knights of the shire +were drawn by the similarity of their social position into a close +connexion with the lords. They seem in fact to have been soon admitted by +the baronage to an almost equal position with themselves, whether as +legislators or counsellors of the Crown. The burgesses on the other hand +took little part at first in Parliamentary proceedings, save in those which +related to the taxation of their class. But their position was raised by +the strifes of the reign of Edward the Second when their aid was needed by +the baronage in its struggle with the Crown; and their right to share fully +in all legislative action was asserted in the statute of 1322. From this +moment no proceedings can have been considered as formally legislative save +those conducted in full Parliament of all the estates. In subjects of +public policy however the barons were still regarded as the sole advisers +of the Crown, though the knights of the shire were sometimes consulted with +them. But the barons and knighthood were not fated to be drawn into a +single body whose weight would have given an aristocratic impress to the +constitution. Gradually, through causes with which we are imperfectly +acquainted, the knights of the shire drifted from their older connexion +with the baronage into so close and intimate a union with the +representatives of the towns that at the opening of the reign of Edward the +Third the two orders are found grouped formally together, under the name of +"The Commons." It is difficult to overestimate the importance of this +change. Had Parliament remained broken up into its four orders of clergy, +barons, knights, and citizens, its power would have been neutralized at +every great crisis by the jealousies and difficulty of co-operation among +its component parts. A permanent union of the knighthood and the baronage +on the other hand would have converted Parliament into the mere +representative of an aristocratic caste, and would have robbed it of the +strength which it has drawn from its connexion with the great body of the +commercial classes. The new attitude of the knighthood, their social +connexion as landed gentry with the baronage, their political union with +the burgesses, really welded the three orders into one, and gave that unity +of feeling and action to our Parliament on which its power has ever since +mainly depended. + + +[Sidenote: Scotch War] + +The weight of the two Houses was seen in their settlement of the new +government by the nomination of a Council with Earl Henry of Lancaster at +its head. The Council had at once to meet fresh difficulties in the North. +The truce so recently made ceased legally with Edward's deposition; and the +withdrawal of his royal title in further offers of peace warned Bruce of +the new temper of the English rulers. Troops gathered on either side, and +the English Council sought to pave the way for an attack by dividing +Scotland against itself. Edward Balliol, a son of the former king John, was +solemnly received as a vassal-king of Scotland at the English court. Robert +was disabled by leprosy from taking the field in person, but the insult +roused him to hurl his marauders again over the border under Douglas and +Sir Thomas Randolph. The Scotch army has been painted for us by an +eye-witness whose description is embodied in the work of Jehan le Bel. "It +consisted of four thousand men-at-arms, knights, and esquires, well +mounted, besides twenty thousand men bold and hardy, armed after the manner +of their country, and mounted upon little hackneys that are never tied up +or dressed, but turned immediately after the day's march to pasture on the +heath or in the fields.... They bring no carriages with them on account of +the mountains they have to pass in Northumberland, neither do they carry +with them any provisions of bread or wine, for their habits of sobriety are +such in time of war that they will live for a long time on flesh +half-sodden without bread, and drink the river water without wine. They +have therefore no occasion for pots or pans, for they dress the flesh of +the cattle in their skins after they have flayed them, and being sure to +find plenty of them in the country which they invade they carry none with +them. Under the flaps of his saddle each man carries a broad piece of +metal, behind him a little bag of oatmeal: when they have eaten too much of +the sodden flesh and their stomach appears weak and empty, they set this +plate over the fire, knead the meal with water, and when the plate is hot +put a little of the paste upon it in a thin cake like a biscuit, which they +eat to warm their stomachs. It is therefore no wonder that they perform a +longer day's march than other soldiers." Though twenty thousand horsemen +and forty thousand foot marched under their boy-king to protect the border, +the English troops were utterly helpless against such a foe as this. At one +time the whole army lost its way in the border wastes: at another all +traces of the enemy disappeared, and an offer of knighthood and a hundred +marks was made to any who could tell where the Scots were encamped. But +when they were found their position behind the Wear proved unassailable, +and after a bold sally on the English camp Douglas foiled an attempt at +intercepting him by a clever retreat. The English levies broke hopelessly +up, and a fresh foray into Northumberland forced the English Court in 1328 +to submit to peace. By the treaty of Northampton which was solemnly +confirmed by Parliament in September the independence of Scotland was +recognized, and Robert Bruce owned as its king. Edward formally abandoned +his claim of feudal superiority over Scotland; while Bruce promised to make +compensation for the damage done in the North, to marry his son David to +Edward's sister Joan, and to restore their forfeited estates to those +nobles who had sided with the English king. + + +[Sidenote: Fall of Mortimer] + +But the pride of England had been too much roused by the struggle with the +Scots to bear this defeat easily, and the first result of the treaty of +Northampton was the overthrow of the government which concluded it. This +result was hastened by the pride of Roger Mortimer, who was now created +Earl of March, and who had made himself supreme through his influence over +Isabella and his exclusion of the rest of the nobles from all practical +share in the administration of the realm. The first efforts to shake +Roger's power were unsuccessful. The Earl of Lancaster stood, like his +brother, at the head of the baronage; the parliamentary settlement at +Edward's accession had placed him first in the royal Council; and it was to +him that the task of defying Mortimer naturally fell. At the close of 1328 +therefore Earl Henry formed a league with the Archbishop of Canterbury and +with the young king's uncles, the Earls of Norfolk and Kent, to bring +Mortimer to account for the peace with Scotland and the usurpation of the +government as well as for the late king's murder, a murder which had been +the work of his private partizans and which had profoundly shocked the +general conscience. But the young king clave firmly to his mother, the +Earls of Norfolk and Kent deserted to Mortimer, and powerful as it seemed +the league broke up without result. A feeling of insecurity however spurred +the Earl of March to a bold stroke at his opponents. The Earl of Kent, who +was persuaded that his brother, Edward the Second, still lived a prisoner +in Corfe Castle, was arrested on a charge of conspiracy to restore him to +the throne, tried before a Parliament filled with Mortimer's adherents, and +sent to the block. But the death of a prince of the royal blood roused the +young king to resentment at the greed and arrogance of a minister who +treated Edward himself as little more than a state-prisoner. A few months +after his uncle's execution the king entered the Council chamber in +Nottingham Castle with a force which he had introduced through a secret +passage in the rock on which it stands, and arrested Mortimer with his own +hands. A Parliament which was at once summoned condemned the Earl of March +to a traitor's death, and in November 1330 he was beheaded at Tyburn, while +the queen-mother was sent for the rest of her life into confinement at +Castle Rising. + + +[Sidenote: Edward and France] + +Young as he was, and he had only reached his eighteenth year, Edward at +once assumed the control of affairs. His first care was to restore good +order throughout the country, which under the late government had fallen +into ruin, and to free his hands by a peace with France for further +enterprises in the North. A formal peace had been concluded by Isabella +after her husband's fall; but the death of Charles the Fourth soon brought +about new jealousies between the two courts. The three sons of Philip the +Fair had followed him on the throne in succession, but all had now died +without male issue, and Isabella, as Philip's daughter, claimed the crown +for her son. The claim in any case was a hard one to make out. Though her +brothers had left no sons, they had left daughters, and if female +succession were admitted these daughters of Philip's sons would precede a +son of Philip's daughter. Isabella met this difficulty by a contention that +though females could transmit the right of succession they could not +themselves possess it, and that her son, as the nearest living male +descendant of Philip the Fair, and born in the lifetime of the king from +whom he claimed, could claim in preference to females who were related to +Philip in as near a degree. But the bulk of French jurists asserted that +only male succession gave right to the French throne. On such a theory the +right inheritable from Philip the Fair was exhausted; and the crown passed +to the son of Philip's younger brother, Charles of Valois, who in fact +peacefully mounted the throne as Philip the Sixth. Purely formal as the +claim which Isabella advanced seems to have been, it revived the irritation +between the two courts, and though Edward's obedience to a summons which +Philip addressed to him to do homage for Aquitaine brought about an +agreement that both parties should restore the gains they had made since +the last treaty the agreement was never carried out. Fresh threats of war +ended in the conclusion of a new treaty of peace, but the question whether +liege or simple homage was due for the duchies remained unsettled when the +fall of Mortimer gave the young king full mastery of affairs. His action +was rapid and decisive. Clad as a merchant, and with but fifteen horsemen +at his back, Edward suddenly made his appearance in 1331 at the French +court and did homage as fully as Philip required. The question of the +Agénois remained unsettled, though the English Parliament insisted that its +decision should rest with negotiation and not with war, but on all other +points a complete peace was made; and the young king rode back with his +hands free for an attack which he was planning on the North. + + +[Sidenote: New Scotch War] + +The provisions of the Treaty of Northampton for the restitution of estates +had never been fully carried out. Till this was done the English court held +that the rights of feudal superiority over Scotland which it had yielded in +the treaty remained in force; and at this moment an opening seemed to +present itself for again asserting these rights with success. Fortune +seemed at last to have veered to the English side. The death of Robert +Bruce only a year after the Treaty of Northampton left the Scottish throne +to his son David, a child of but eight years old. The death of the king was +followed by the loss of Randolph and Douglas; and the internal difficulties +of the realm broke out in civil strife. To the great barons on either side +the border the late peace involved serious losses, for many of the Scotch +houses held large estates in England as many of the English lords held +large estates in Scotland, and although the treaty had provided for their +claims they had in each case been practically set aside. It is this +discontent of the barons at the new settlement which explains the sudden +success of Edward Balliol in a snatch which he made at the Scottish throne. +Balliol's design was known at the English court, where he had found shelter +for some years; and Edward, whether sincerely or no, forbade his barons +from joining him and posted troops on the border to hinder his crossing it. +But Balliol found little difficulty in making his attack by sea. He sailed +from England at the head of a body of nobles who claimed estates in the +North, landed in August 1332 on the shores of Fife, and after repulsing +with immense loss an army which attacked him near Perth was crowned at +Scone two months after his landing, while David Bruce fled helplessly to +France. Edward had given no open aid to this enterprise, but the crisis +tempted his ambition, and he demanded and obtained from Balliol an +acknowledgement of the English suzerainty. The acknowledgement however was +fatal to Balliol himself. Surprised at Annan by a party of Scottish nobles, +their sudden attack drove him in December over the border after a reign of +but five months; and Berwick, which he had agreed to surrender to Edward, +was strongly garrisoned against an English attack. The sudden breakdown of +his vassal-king left Edward face to face with a new Scotch war. The +Parliament which he summoned to advise on the enforcement of his claim +showed no wish to plunge again into the contest and met him only with +evasions and delays. But Edward had gone too far to withdraw. In March 1333 +he appeared before Berwick, and besieged the town. A Scotch army under the +regent, Sir Archibald Douglas, brother to the famous Sir James, advanced to +its relief in July and attacked a covering force which was encamped on the +strong position of Halidon Hill. The English bowmen however vindicated the +fame they had first won at Falkirk and were soon to crown in the victory of +Crécy. The Scotch only struggled through the marsh which covered the +English front to be riddled with a storm of arrows and to break in utter +rout. The battle decided the fate of Berwick. From that time the town has +remained English territory. It was in fact the one part of Edward's +conquests which was preserved in the end by the English crown. But fragment +as it was, it was always viewed legally as representing the realm of which +it once formed a part. As Scotland, it had its chancellor, chamberlain, and +other officers of State: and the peculiar heading of Acts of Parliament +enacted for England "and the town of Berwick-upon-Tweed" still preserves +the memory of its peculiar position. But the victory did more than give +Berwick to England. The defeat of Douglas was followed by the submission of +a large part of the Scotch nobles, by the flight of the boy-king David, and +by the return of Balliol unopposed to the throne. Edward exacted a heavy +price for his aid. All Scotland south of the Firth of Forth was ceded to +England, and Balliol did homage as vassal-king for the rest. + + +[Sidenote: Scotland freed] + +It was at the moment of this submission that the young king reached the +climax of his success. A king at fourteen, a father at seventeen, he had +carried out at eighteen a political revolution in the overthrow of +Mortimer, and restored at twenty-two the ruined work of his grandfather. +The northern frontier was carried to its old line under the Northumbrian +kings. His kingdom within was peaceful and orderly; and the strife with +France seemed at an end. During the next three years Edward persisted in +the line of policy he had adopted, retaining his hold over Southern +Scotland, aiding his sub-king Balliol in campaign after campaign against +the despairing efforts of the nobles who still adhered to the house of +Bruce, a party who were now headed by Robert the Steward of Scotland and by +Earl Randolph of Moray. His perseverance was all but crowned with success, +when Scotland was again saved by the intervention of France. The successes +of Edward roused anew the jealousy of the French court. David Bruce found a +refuge with Philip; French ships appeared off the Scotch coast and brought +aid to the patriot nobles; and the old legal questions about the Agénois +and Aquitaine were mooted afresh by the French council. For a time Edward +staved off the contest by repeated embassies; but his refusal to accept +Philip as a mediator between England and the Scots stirred France to +threats of war. In 1335 fleets gathered on its coast; descents were made on +the English shores; and troops and galleys were hired in Italy and the +north for an invasion of England. The mere threat of war saved Scotland. +Edward's forces there were drawn to the south to meet the looked-for attack +from across the Channel; and the patriot party freed from their pressure at +once drew together again. The actual declaration of war against France at +the close of 1337 was the knell of Balliol's greatness; he found himself +without an adherent and withdrew two years later to the court of Edward, +while David returned to his kingdom in 1342 and won back the chief +fastnesses of the Lowlands. From that moment the freedom of Scotland was +secured. From a war of conquest and patriotic resistance the struggle died +into a petty strife between two angry neighbours, which became a mere +episode in the larger contest which it had stirred between England and +France. + + +[Sidenote: The Hundred Years War] + +Whether in its national or in its European bearings it is difficult to +overestimate the importance of the contest which was now to open between +these two nations. To England it brought a social, a religious, and in the +end a political revolution. The Peasant Revolt, Lollardry, and the New +Monarchy were direct issues of the Hundred Years War. With it began the +military renown of England; with it opened her struggle for the mastery of +the seas. The pride begotten by great victories and a sudden revelation of +warlike prowess roused the country not only to a new ambition, a new +resolve to assert itself as a European power, but to a repudiation of the +claims of the Papacy and an assertion of the ecclesiastical independence +both of Church and Crown which paved the way for and gave its ultimate form +to the English Reformation. The peculiar shape which English warfare +assumed, the triumph of the yeoman and archer over noble and knight, gave +new force to the political advance of the Commons. On the other hand the +misery of the war produced the first great open feud between labour and +capital. The glory of Crécy or Poitiers was dearly bought by the upgrowth +of English pauperism. The warlike temper nursed on foreign fields begot at +home a new turbulence and scorn of law, woke a new feudal spirit in the +baronage, and sowed in the revolution which placed a new house on the +throne the seeds of that fatal strife over the succession which troubled +England to the days of Elizabeth. Nor was the contest of less import in the +history of France. If it struck her for the moment from her height of +pride, it raised her in the end to the front rank among the states of +Europe. It carried her boundaries to the Rhone and the Pyrenees. It wrecked +alike the feudal power of her _noblesse_ and the hopes of constitutional +liberty which might have sprung from the emancipation of the peasant or the +action of the burgher. It founded a royal despotism which reached its +height in Richelieu and finally plunged France into the gulf of the +Revolution. + + +[Sidenote: The Imperial Alliance] + +Of these mighty issues little could be foreseen at the moment when Philip +and Edward declared war. But from the very first the war took European +dimensions. The young king saw clearly the greater strength of France. The +weakness of the Empire, the captivity of the Papacy at Avignon, left her +without a rival among European powers. The French chivalry was the envy of +the world, and its military fame had just been heightened by a victory over +the Flemish communes at Cassel. In numbers, in wealth, the French people +far surpassed their neighbours over the Channel. England can hardly have +counted more than four millions of inhabitants, France boasted of twenty. +The clinging of our kings to their foreign dominions is explained by the +fact that their subjects in Gascony, Aquitaine, and Poitou must have +equalled in number their subjects in England. There was the same +disproportion in the wealth of the two countries and, as men held then, in +their military resources. Edward could bring only eight thousand +men-at-arms to the field. Philip, while a third of his force was busy +elsewhere, could appear at the head of forty thousand. Of the revolution in +warfare which was to reverse this superiority, to make the footman rather +than the horseman the strength of an army, the world and even the English +king, in spite of Falkirk and Halidon, as yet recked little. Edward's whole +energy was bent on meeting the strength of France by a coalition of powers +against her, and his plans were helped by the dread which the great +feudatories of the empire who lay nearest to him, the Duke of Brabant, the +Counts of Hainault and Gelders, the Markgrave of Juliers, felt of French +annexation. They listened willingly enough to his offers. Sixty thousand +crowns purchased the alliance of Brabant. Lesser subsidies bought that of +the two counts and the Markgrave. The king's work was helped indeed by his +domestic relations. The Count of Hainault was Edward's father-in-law; he +was also the father-in-law of the Count of Gelders. But the marriage of a +third of the Count's daughters brought the English king a more important +ally. She was wedded to the Emperor, Lewis of Bavaria, and the connexion +that thus existed between the English and Imperial Courts facilitated the +negotiations which ended in a formal alliance. + + +[Sidenote: Its Relation to the Papacy] + +But the league had a more solid ground. The Emperor, like Edward, had his +strife with France. His strife sprang from the new position of the Papacy. +The removal of the Popes to Avignon which followed on the quarrel of +Boniface the Eighth with Philip le Bel and the subjection to the French +court which resulted from it affected the whole state of European politics. +In the ever-recurring contest between the Papacy and the Empire France had +of old been the lieutenant of the Roman See. But with the settlement at +Avignon the relation changed, and the Pope became the lieutenant of France. +Instead of the Papacy using the French kings in its war of ideas against +the Empire the French kings used the Papacy as an instrument in their +political rivalry with the Emperors. But if the position of the Pope drew +Lewis to the side of England, it had much to do with drawing Edward to the +side of Lewis. It was this that made the alliance, fruitless as it proved +in a military sense, so memorable in its religious results. Hitherto +England had been mainly on the side of the Popes in their strife against +the Emperors. Now that the Pope had become a tool in the hands of a power +which was to be its great enemy, the country was driven to close alliances +with the Empire and to an evergrowing alienation from the Roman See. In +Scotch affairs the hostility of the Popes had been steady and vexatious +ever since Edward the First's time, and from the moment that this fresh +struggle commenced they again showed their French partizanship. When Lewis +made a last appeal for peace, Philip of Valois made Benedict XII. lay down +as a condition that the Emperor should form no alliance with an enemy of +France. The quarrel of both England and Germany with the Papacy at once +grew ripe. The German Diet met to declare that the Imperial power came from +God alone, and that the choice of an Emperor needed no Papal confirmation, +while Benedict replied by a formal excommunication of Lewis. England on the +other hand entered on a religious revolution when she stood hand in hand +with an excommunicated power. It was significant that though worship ceased +in Flanders on the Pope's interdict, the English priests who were brought +over set the interdict at nought. + + +[Sidenote: Failure of the Alliance] + +The negotiation of this alliance occupied the whole of 1337; it ended in a +promise of the Emperor on payment of 3000 gold florins to furnish two +thousand men-at-arms. In the opening of 1338 an attack of Philip on the +Agénois forced Edward into open war. His profuse expenditure however +brought little fruit. Though Edward crossed to Antwerp in the summer, the +year was spent in negotiations with the princes of the Lower Rhine and in +an interview with the Emperor at Coblentz, where Lewis appointed him +Vicar-General of the Emperor for all territories on the left bank of the +Rhine. The occupation of Cambray, an Imperial fief, by the French king gave +a formal ground for calling the princes of this district to Edward's +standard. But already the great alliance showed signs of yielding. Edward, +uneasy at his connexion with an Emperor under the ban of the Church and +harassed by vehement remonstrances from the Pope, entered again into +negotiations with France in the winter of 1338; and Lewis, alarmed in his +turn, listened to fresh overtures from Benedict, who held out vague hopes +of reconciliation while he threatened a renewed excommunication if Lewis +persisted in invading France. The non-arrival of the English subsidy +decided the Emperor to take no personal part in the war, and the attitude +of Lewis told on the temper of Edward's German allies. Though all joined +him in the summer of 1339 on his formal summons of them as Vicar-General of +the Empire, and his army when it appeared before Cambray numbered forty +thousand men, their ardour cooled as the town held out. Philip approached +it from the south, and on Edward's announcing his resolve to cross the +river and attack him he was at once deserted by the two border princes who +had most to lose from a contest with France, the Counts of Hainault and +Namur. But the king was still full of hope. He pushed forward to the +country round St. Quentin between the head waters of the Somme and the Oise +with the purpose of forcing a decisive engagement. But he found Philip +strongly encamped, and declaring their supplies exhausted his allies at +once called for a retreat. It was in vain that Edward moved slowly for a +week along the French border. Philip's position was too strongly guarded by +marshes and entrenchments to be attacked, and at last the allies would stay +no longer. At the news that the French king had withdrawn to the south the +whole army in turn fell back upon Brussels. + + +[Sidenote: England and the Papacy] + +The failure of the campaign dispelled the hopes which Edward had drawn from +his alliance with the Empire. With the exhaustion of his subsidies the +princes of the Low Countries became inactive. The Duke of Brabant became +cooler in his friendship. The Emperor himself, still looking to an +accommodation with the Pope and justly jealous of Edward's own intrigues at +Avignon, wavered and at last fell away. But though the alliance ended in +disappointment it had given a new impulse to the grudge against the Papacy +which began with its extortions in the reign of Henry the Third. The hold +of Rome on the loyalty of England was sensibly weakening. Their transfer +from the Eternal City to Avignon robbed the Popes of half the awe which +they had inspired among Englishmen. Not only did it bring them nearer and +more into the light of common day, but it dwarfed them into mere agents of +French policy. The old bitterness at their exactions was revived by the +greed to which they were driven through their costly efforts to impose a +French and Papal Emperor on Germany as well as to secure themselves in +their new capital on the Rhone. The mighty building, half fortress, half +palace, which still awes the traveller at Avignon has played its part in +our history. Its erection was to the rise of Lollardry what the erection of +St. Peter's was to the rise of Lutheranism. Its massive walls, its stately +chapel, its chambers glowing with the frescoes of Simone Memmi, the garden +which covered its roof with a strange verdure, called year by year for +fresh supplies of gold; and for this as for the wider and costlier schemes +of Papal policy gold could be got only by pressing harder and harder on the +national churches the worst claims of the Papal court, by demands of +first-fruits and annates from rectory and bishoprick, by pretensions to the +right of bestowing all benefices which were in ecclesiastical patronage and +by the sale of these presentations, by the direct taxation of the clergy, +by the intrusion of foreign priests into English livings, by opening a mart +for the disposal of pardons, dispensations, and indulgences, and by +encouraging appeals from every ecclesiastical jurisdiction to the Papal +court. No grievance was more bitterly felt than this grievance of appeals. +Cases of the most trifling importance were called for decision out of the +realm to a tribunal whose delays were proverbial and whose fees were +enormous. The envoy of an Oxford College which sought only a formal licence +to turn a vicarage into a rectory had not only to bear the expense and toil +of a journey which then occupied some eighteen days but was kept dangling +at Avignon for three-and-twenty weeks. Humiliating and vexatious however as +these appeals were, they were but one among the means of extortion which +the Papal court multiplied as its needs grew greater. The protest of a +later Parliament, exaggerated as its statements no doubt are, shows the +extent of the national irritation, if not of the grievances which produced +it. It asserted that the taxes levied by the Pope amounted to five times +the amount of those levied by the king; that by reservations during the +life of actual holders the Pope disposed of the same bishoprick four or +five times over, receiving each time the first-fruits. "The brokers of the +sinful city of Rome promote for money unlearned and unworthy caitiffs to +benefices to the value of a thousand marks, while the poor and learned +hardly obtain one of twenty. So decays sound learning. They present aliens +who neither see nor care to see their parishioners, despise God's services, +convey away the treasure of the realm, and are worse than Jews or Saracens. +The Pope's revenue from England alone is larger than that of any prince in +Christendom. God gave his sheep to be pastured, not to be shaven and +shorn." At the close of this reign indeed the deaneries of Lichfield, +Salisbury, and York, the archdeaconry of Canterbury, which was reputed the +wealthiest English benefice, together with a host of prebends and +preferments, were held by Italian cardinals and priests, while the Pope's +collector from his office in London sent twenty thousand marks a year to +the Papal treasury. + + +[Sidenote: Protest of the Parliament] + +But the greed of the Popes was no new grievance, though the increase of +these exactions since the removal to Avignon gave it a new force. What +alienated England most was their connexion with and dependence on France. +From the first outset of the troubles in the North their attitude had been +one of hostility to the English projects. France was too useful a supporter +of the Papal court to find much difficulty in inducing it to aid in +hampering the growth of English greatness. Boniface the Eighth released +Balliol from his oath of fealty, and forbade Edward to attack Scotland on +the ground that it was a fief of the Roman See. His intervention was met by +a solemn and emphatic protest from the English Parliament; but it none the +less formed a terrible obstacle in Edward's way. The obstacle was at last +removed by the quarrel of Boniface with Philip the Fair; but the end of +this quarrel only threw the Papacy more completely into the hands of +France. Though Avignon remained imperial soil, the removal of the Popes to +this city on the verge of their dominions made them mere tools of the +French kings. Much no doubt of the endless negotiation which the Papal +court carried on with Edward the Third in his strife with Philip of Valois +was an honest struggle for peace. But to England it seemed the mere +interference of a dependant on behalf of "our enemy of France." The people +scorned a "French Pope," and threatened Papal legates with stoning when +they landed on English shores. The alliance of Edward with an +excommunicated Emperor, the bold defiance with which English priests said +mass in Flanders when an interdict reduced the Flemish priests to silence, +were significant tokens of the new attitude which England was taking up in +the face of Popes who were leagued with its enemy. The old quarrel over +ecclesiastical wrongs was renewed in a formal and decisive way. In 1343 the +Commons petitioned for the redress of the grievance of Papal appointments +to vacant livings in despite of the rights of patrons or the Crown; and +Edward formally complained to the Pope of his appointing "foreigners, most +of them suspicious persons, who do not reside on their benefices, who do +not know the faces of the flocks entrusted to them, who do not understand +their language, but, neglecting the cure of souls, seek as hirelings only +their worldly hire." In yet sharper words the king rebuked the Papal greed. +"The successor of the Apostles was set over the Lord's sheep to feed and +not to shear them." The Parliament declared "that they neither could nor +would tolerate such things any longer"; and the general irritation moved +slowly towards those statutes of Provisors and Praemunire which heralded +the policy of Henry the Eighth. + + +[Sidenote: Flanders] + +But for the moment the strife with the Papacy was set aside in the efforts +which were needed for a new struggle with France. The campaign of 1339 had +not only ended in failure, it had dispelled the trust of Edward in an +Imperial alliance. But as this hope faded away a fresh hope dawned on the +king from another quarter. Flanders, still bleeding from the defeat of its +burghers by the French knighthood, was his natural ally. England was the +great wool-producing country of the west, but few woollen fabrics were +woven in England. The number of weavers' gilds shows that the trade was +gradually extending, and at the very outset of his reign Edward had taken +steps for its encouragement. He invited Flemish weavers to settle in his +country, and took the new immigrants, who chose the eastern counties for +the seat of their trade, under his royal protection. But English +manufactures were still in their infancy and nine-tenths of the English +wool went to the looms of Bruges or of Ghent. We may see the rapid growth +of this export trade in the fact that the king received in a single year +more than £30,000 from duties levied on wool alone. The woolsack which +forms the Chancellor's seat in the House of Lords is said to witness to the +importance which the government attached to this new source of wealth. A +stoppage of this export threw half the population of the great Flemish +towns out of work, and the irritation caused in Flanders by the +interruption which this trade sustained through the piracies that Philip's +ships were carrying on in the Channel showed how effective the threat of +such a stoppage would be in securing their alliance. Nor was this the only +ground for hoping for aid from the Flemish towns. Their democratic spirit +jostled roughly with the feudalism of France. If their counts clung to the +French monarchy, the towns themselves, proud of their immense population, +their thriving industry, their vast wealth, drew more and more to +independence. Jacques van Arteveldt, a great brewer of Ghent, wielded the +chief influence in their councils, and his aim was to build up a +confederacy which might hold France in check along her northern border. + + +[Sidenote: The Flemish Alliance] + +His plans had as yet brought no help from the Flemish towns, but at the +close of 1339 they set aside their neutrality for open aid. The great plan +of Federation which Van Arteveldt had been devising as a check on the +aggression of France was carried out in a treaty concluded between Edward, +the Duke of Brabant, the cities of Brussels, Antwerp, Louvain, Ghent, +Bruges, Ypres, and seven others. By this remarkable treaty it was provided +that war should be begun and ended only by mutual consent, free commerce be +encouraged between Flanders and Brabant, and no change made in their +commercial arrangements save with the consent of the whole league. By a +subsequent treaty the Flemish towns owned Edward as King of France, and +declared war against Philip of Valois. But their voice was decisive on the +course of the campaign which opened in 1340. As Philip held the Upper +Scheldt by the occupation of Cambray, so he held the Lower Scheldt by that +of Tournay, a fortress which broke the line of commerce between Flanders +and Brabant. It was a condition of the Flemish alliance therefore that the +war should open with the capture of Tournay. It was only at the cost of a +fight however that Edward could now cross the Channel to undertake the +siege. France was as superior in force at sea as on land; and a fleet of +two hundred vessels gathered at Sluys to intercept him. But the fine +seamanship of the English sailors justified the courage of their king in +attacking this fleet with far smaller forces; the French ships were utterly +destroyed and twenty thousand Frenchmen slain in the encounter. It was with +the lustre of this great victory about him that Edward marched upon +Tournay. Its siege however proved as fruitless as that of Cambray in the +preceding year, and after two months of investment his vast army of one +hundred thousand men broke up without either capturing the town or bringing +Philip when he approached it to an engagement. Want of money forced Edward +to a truce for a year, and he returned beggared and embittered to England. + + +[Sidenote: Edward's distress] + +He had been worsted in war as in diplomacy. One naval victory alone +redeemed years of failure and expense. Guienne was all but lost, England +was suffering from the terrible taxation, from the ruin of commerce, from +the ravages of her coast. Five years of constant reverses were hard blows +for a king of twenty-eight who had been glorious and successful at +twenty-three. His financial difficulties indeed were enormous. It was in +vain that, availing himself of an Act which forbade the exportation of wool +"till by the King and his Council it is otherwise provided," he turned for +the time the wool-trade into a royal monopoly and became the sole wool +exporter, buying at £3 and selling at £20 the sack. The campaign of 1339 +brought with it a crushing debt: that of 1340 proved yet more costly. +Edward attributed his failure to the slackness of his ministers in sending +money and supplies, and this to their silent opposition to the war. But +wroth as he was on his return, a short struggle between the ministers and +the king ended in a reconciliation, and preparations for renewed +hostilities went on. Abroad indeed nothing could be done. The Emperor +finally withdrew from Edward's friendship. A new Pope, Clement the Sixth, +proved even more French in sentiment than his predecessor. Flanders alone +held true of all England's foreign allies. Edward was powerless to attack +Philip in the realm he claimed for his own; what strength he could gather +was needed to prevent the utter ruin of the English cause in Scotland on +the return of David Bruce. Edward's soldiers had been driven from the open +country and confined to the fortresses of the Lowlands. Even these were at +last reft away. Perth was taken by siege, and the king was too late to +prevent the surrender of Stirling. Edinburgh was captured by a stratagem. +Only Roxburgh and Berwick were saved by a truce which Edward was driven to +conclude with the Scots. + + +[Sidenote: Progress of Parliament] + +But with the difficulties of the Crown the weight of the two Houses made +itself more and more sensibly felt. The almost incessant warfare which had +gone on since the accession of Edward the Third consolidated and developed +the power which they had gained from the dissensions of his father's reign. +The need of continual grants brought about an assembly of Parliament year +by year, and the subsidies that were accorded to the king showed the +potency of the financial engine which the Crown could now bring into play. +In a single year the Parliament granted twenty thousand sacks, or half the +wool of the realm. Two years later the Commons voted an aid of thirty +thousand sacks. In 1339 the barons granted the tenth sheep and fleece and +lamb. The clergy granted two tenths in one year, and a tenth for three +years in the next. But with each supply some step was made to greater +political influence. In his earlier years Edward showed no jealousy of the +Parliament. His policy was to make the struggle with France a national one +by winning for it the sympathy of the people at large; and with this view +he not only published in the County Courts the efforts he had made for +peace, but appealed again and again for the sanction and advice of +Parliament in his enterprise. In 1331 he asked the Estates whether they +would prefer negotiation or war: in 1338 he declared that his expedition to +Flanders was made by the assent of the Lords and at the prayer of the +Commons. The part of the last in public affairs grew greater in spite of +their own efforts to remain obscure. From the opening of the reign a crowd +of enactments for the regulation of trade, whether wise or unwise, shows +the influence of the burgesses. But the final division of Parliament into +two Houses, a change which was completed by 1341, necessarily increased the +weight of the Commons. The humble trader who shrank from counselling the +Crown in great matters of policy gathered courage as he found himself +sitting side by side with the knights of the shire. It was at the moment +when this great change was being brought about that the disasters of the +war spurred the Parliament to greater activity. The enormous grants of 1340 +were bought by the king's assent to statutes which provided remedies for +grievances of which the Commons complained. The most important of these put +an end to the attempts which Edward had made like his grandfather to deal +with the merchant class apart from the Houses. No charge or aid was +henceforth to be made save by the common assent of the Estates assembled in +Parliament. The progress of the next year was yet more important. The +strife of the king with his ministers, the foremost of whom was Archbishop +Stratford, ended in the Primate's refusal to make answer to the royal +charges save in full Parliament, and in the assent of the king to a +resolution of the Lords that none of their number, whether ministers of the +Crown or no, should be brought to trial elsewhere than before his peers. +The Commons demanded and obtained the appointment of commissioners elected +in Parliament to audit the grants already made. Finally it was enacted that +at each Parliament the ministers should hold themselves accountable for all +grievances; that on any vacancy the king should take counsel with his lords +as to the choice of the new minister; and that, when chosen, each minister +should be sworn in Parliament. + + +[Sidenote: Close of the truce] + +At the moment which we have reached therefore the position of the +Parliament had become far more important than at Edward's accession. Its +form was settled. The third estate had gained a fuller parliamentary power. +The principle of ministerial responsibility to the Houses had been +established by formal statute. But the jealousy of Edward was at last +completely roused, and from this moment he looked on the new power as a +rival to his own. The Parliament of 1341 had no sooner broken up than he +revoked by Letters Patent the statutes it had passed as done in prejudice +of his prerogative and only assented to for the time to prevent worse +confusion. The regular assembly of the estates was suddenly interrupted, +and two years passed without a Parliament. It was only the continual +presence of war which from this time drove Edward to summon the Houses at +all. Though the truce still held good between England and France a quarrel +of succession to the Duchy of Britanny which broke out in 1341 and called +Philip to the support of one claimant, his cousin Charles of Blois, and +Edward to the support of a rival claimant, John of Montfort, dragged on +year after year. In Flanders things went ill for the English cause. The +dissensions between the great and the smaller towns, and in the greater +towns themselves between the weavers and fullers, dissensions which had +taxed the genius of Van Arteveldt through the nine years of his wonderful +rule, broke out in 1345 into a revolt at Ghent in which the great statesman +was slain. With him fell a design for the deposition of the Count of +Flanders and the reception of the Prince of Wales in his stead which he was +ardently pressing, and whose political results might have been immense. +Deputies were at once sent to England to excuse Van Arteveldt's murder and +to promise loyalty to Edward; but the king's difficulties had now reached +their height. His loans from the Florentine bankers amounted to half a +million. His claim on the French crown found not a single adherent save +among the burghers of the Flemish towns. The overtures which he made for +peace were contemptuously rejected, and the expiration of the truce in 1345 +found him again face to face with France. + + +[Sidenote: Edward marches on Paris] + +But it was perhaps this breakdown of all foreign hope that contributed to +Edward's success in the fresh outbreak of war. The war opened in Guienne, +and Henry of Lancaster, who was now known as the Earl of Derby, and who +with the Hainaulter Sir Walter Maunay took the command in that quarter, at +once showed the abilities of a great general. The course of the Garonne was +cleared by his capture of La Réole and Aiguillon, that of the Dordogne by +the reduction of Bergerac, and a way opened for the reconquest of Poitou by +the capture of Angoulême. These unexpected successes roused Philip to +strenuous efforts, and a hundred thousand men gathered under his son, John, +Duke of Normandy, for the subjugation of the South. Angoulême was won back, +and Aiguillon besieged when Edward sailed to the aid of his hard-pressed +lieutenant. It was with an army of thirty thousand men, half English, half +Irish and Welsh, that he commenced a march which was to change the whole +face of the war. His aim was simple. Flanders was still true to Edward's +cause, and while Derby was pressing on in the south a Flemish army besieged +Bouvines and threatened France from the north. The king had at first +proposed to land in Guienne and relieve the forces in the south; but +suddenly changing his design he disembarked at La Hogue and advanced +through Normandy. By this skilful movement Edward not only relieved Derby +but threatened Paris, and left himself able to co-operate with either his +own army in the south or the Flemings in the north. Normandy was totally +without defence, and after the sack of Caen, which was then one of the +wealthiest towns in France, Edward marched upon the Seine. His march +threatened Rouen and Paris, and its strategical value was seen by the +sudden panic of the French king. Philip was wholly taken by surprise. He +attempted to arrest Edward's march by an offer to restore the Duchy of +Aquitaine as Edward the Second had held it, but the offer was fruitless. +Philip was forced to call his son to the rescue. John at once raised the +siege of Aiguillon, and the French army moved rapidly to the north, its +withdrawal enabling Derby to capture Poitiers and make himself thorough +master of the south. But John was too distant from Paris for his forces to +avail Philip in his emergency, for Edward, finding the bridges on the Lower +Seine broken, pushed straight on Paris, rebuilt the bridge of Poissy, and +threatened the capital. + + +[Sidenote: Crécy] + +At this crisis however France found an unexpected help in a body of German +knights. The long strife between Lewis of Bavaria and the Papacy had ended +at last in Clement's carrying out his sentence of deposition by the +nomination and coronation as emperor of Charles of Luxemburg, a son of King +John of Bohemia, the well-known Charles IV. of the Golden Bull. But against +this Papal assumption of a right to bestow the German Crown Germany rose as +one man. Not a town opened its gates to the Papal claimant, and driven to +seek help and refuge from Philip of Valois he found himself at this moment +on the eastern frontier of France with his father and 500 knights. Hurrying +to Paris this German force formed the nucleus of an army which assembled at +St. Denys; and which was soon reinforced by 15,000 Genoese cross-bowmen who +had been hired from among the soldiers of the Lord of Monaco on the sunny +Riviera and arrived at this hour of need. With this host rapidly gathering +in his front Edward abandoned his march on Paris, which had already served +its purpose in relieving Derby, and threw himself across the Seine to carry +out the second part of his programme by a junction with the Flemings at +Gravelines and a campaign in the north. But the rivers in his path were +carefully guarded, and it was only by surprising the ford of Blanche-Taque +on the Somme that the king escaped the necessity of surrendering to the +vast host which was now hastening in pursuit. His communications however +were no sooner secured than he halted on the twenty-sixth of August at the +little village of Crécy in Ponthieu and resolved to give battle. Half of +his army, which had been greatly reduced in strength by his rapid marches, +consisted of light-armed footmen from Ireland and Wales; the bulk of the +remainder was composed of English bowmen. The king ordered his men-at-arms +to dismount, and drew up his forces on a low rise sloping gently to the +south-east, with a deep ditch covering its front, and its flanks protected +by woods and a little brook. From a windmill on the summit of this rise +Edward could overlook the whole field of battle. Immediately beneath him +lay his reserve, while at the base of the slope was placed the main body of +the army in two divisions, that to the right commanded by the young Prince +of Wales, Edward "the Black Prince," as he was called, that to the left by +the Earl of Northampton. A small ditch protected the English front, and +behind it the bowmen were drawn up "in the form of a harrow" with small +bombards between them "which with fire threw little iron balls to frighten +the horses," the first instance known of the use of artillery in +field-warfare. + +The halt of the English army took Philip by surprise, and he attempted for +a time to check the advance of his army. But the attempt was fruitless and +the disorderly host rolled on to the English front. The sight of his +enemies indeed stirred Philip's own blood to fury, "for he hated them." The +fight began at vespers. The Genoese cross-bowmen were ordered to open the +attack, but the men were weary with their march, a sudden storm wetted and +rendered useless their bowstrings, and the loud shouts with which they +leapt forward to the encounter were met with dogged silence in the English +ranks. Their first arrow-flight however brought a terrible reply. So rapid +was the English shot "that it seemed as if it snowed." "Kill me these +scoundrels," shouted Philip, as the Genoese fell back; and his men-at-arms +plunged butchering into their broken ranks while the Counts of Aleniçon and +Flanders at the head of the French knighthood fell hotly on the Prince's +line. For an instant his small force seemed lost, and he called his father +to support him. But Edward refused to send him aid. "Is he dead, or +unhorsed, or so wounded that he cannot help himself?" he asked the envoy. +"No, sir," was the reply, "but he is in a hard passage of arms, and sorely +needs your help." "Return to those that sent you," said the king, "and bid +them not send to me again so long as my son lives! Let the boy win his +spurs, for, if God so order it, I will that the day may be his and that the +honour may be with him and them to whom I have given it in charge." Edward +could see in fact from his higher ground that all went well. The English +bowmen and men-at-arms held their ground stoutly while the Welshmen stabbed +the French horses in the melly and brought knight after knight to the +ground. Soon the French host was wavering in a fatal confusion. "You are my +vassals, my friends," cried the blind John of Bohemia to the German nobles +around him, "I pray and beseech you to lead me so far into the fight that I +may strike one good blow with this sword of mine!" Linking their bridles +together, the little company plunged into the thick of the combat to fall +as their fellows were falling. The battle went steadily against the French. +At last Philip himself hurried from the field, and the defeat became a +rout. Twelve hundred knights and thirty thousand foot-men--a number equal +to the whole English force--lay dead upon the ground. + + +[Sidenote: The Yeoman] + +"God has punished us for our sins," cries the chronicler of St. Denys in a +passion of bewildered grief as he tells the rout of the great host which he +had seen mustering beneath his abbey walls. But the fall of France was +hardly so sudden or so incomprehensible as the ruin at a single blow of a +system of warfare, and with it of the political and social fabric which had +risen out of that system. Feudalism rested on the superiority of the +horseman to the footman, of the mounted noble to the unmounted churl. The +real fighting power of a feudal army lay in its knighthood, in the baronage +and landowners who took the field, each with his group of esquires and +mounted men-at-arms. A host of footmen followed them, but they were ill +armed, ill disciplined, and seldom called on to play any decisive part on +the actual battle-field. In France, and especially at the moment we have +reached, the contrast between the efficiency of these two elements of +warfare was more striking than elsewhere. Nowhere was the chivalry so +splendid, nowhere was the general misery and oppression of the poor more +terribly expressed in the worthlessness of the mob of footmen who were +driven by their lords to the camp. In England, on the other hand, the +failure of feudalism to win a complete hold on the country was seen in the +persistence of the older national institutions which based its defence on +the general levy of its freemen. If the foreign kings added to this a +system of warlike organization grounded on the service due from its +military tenants to the Crown, they were far from regarding this as +superseding the national "fyrd." The Assize of Arms, the Statute of +Winchester, show with what care the fyrd was held in a state of efficiency. +Its force indeed as an engine of war was fast rising between the age of +Henry the Second and that of Edward the Third. The social changes on which +we have already dwelt, the facilities given to alienation and the +subdivision of lands, the transition of the serf into a copyholder and of +the copyholder by redemption of his services into a freeholder, the rise of +a new class of "farmers" as the lords ceased to till their demesne by means +of bailiffs and adopted the practice of leasing it at a rent or "farm" to +one of the customary tenants, the general increase of wealth which was +telling on the social position even of those who still remained in +villenage, undid more and more the earlier process which had degraded the +free ceorl of the English Conquest into the villein of the Norman Conquest, +and covered the land with a population of yeomen, some freeholders, some +with services that every day became less weighty and already left them +virtually free. + + +[Sidenote: The Bow] + +Such men, proud of their right to justice and an equal law, called by +attendance in the county court to a share in the judicial, the financial, +and the political life of the realm, were of a temper to make soldiers of a +different sort from the wretched serfs who followed the feudal lords of the +Continent; and they were equipped with a weapon which as they wielded it +was enough of itself to make a revolution in the art of war. The bow, +identified as it became with English warfare, was the weapon not of +Englishmen but of their Norman conquerors. It was the Norman arrow-flight +that decided the day of Senlac. But in the organization of the national +army it had been assigned as the weapon of the poorer freeholders who were +liable to serve at the king's summons; and we see how closely it had become +associated with them in the picture of Chaucer's yeoman. "In his hand he +bore a mighty bow." Its might lay not only in the range of the heavy +war-shaft, a range we are told of four hundred yards, but in its force. The +English archer, taught from very childhood "how to draw, how to lay his +body to the bow," his skill quickened by incessant practice and constant +rivalry with his fellows, raised the bow into a terrible engine of war. +Thrown out along the front in a loose order that alone showed their vigour +and self-dependence, the bowmen faced and riddled the splendid line of +knighthood as it charged upon them. The galled horses "reeled right +rudely." Their riders found even the steel of Milan a poor defence against +the grey-goose shaft. Gradually the bow dictated the very tactics of an +English battle. If the mass of cavalry still plunged forward, the screen of +archers broke to right and left and the men-at-arms who lay in reserve +behind them made short work of the broken and disordered horsemen, while +the light troops from Wales and Ireland flinging themselves into the melly +with their long knives and darts brought steed after steed to the ground. +It was this new military engine that Edward the Third carried to the fields +of France. His armies were practically bodies of hired soldiery, for the +short period of feudal service was insufficient for foreign campaigns, and +yeoman and baron were alike drawn by a high rate of pay. An archer's daily +wages equalled some five shillings of our present money. Such payment when +coupled with the hope of plunder was enough to draw yeomen from thorpe and +farm; and though the royal treasury was drained as it had never been +drained before the English king saw himself after the day of Crécy the +master of a force without rival in the stress of war. + + +[Sidenote: Siege of Calais] + +To England her success was the beginning of a career of military glory, +which fatal as it was destined to prove to the higher sentiments and +interests of the nation gave it a warlike energy such as it had never known +before. Victory followed victory. A few months after Crécy a Scotch army +marched over the border and faced on the seventeenth of October an English +force at Neville's Cross. But it was soon broken by the arrow-flight of the +English archers, and the Scotch king David Bruce was taken prisoner. The +withdrawal of the French from the Garonne enabled Henry of Derby to recover +Poitou. Edward meanwhile with a decision which marks his military capacity +marched from the field of Crécy to form the siege of Calais. No measure +could have been more popular with the English merchant class, for Calais +was a great pirate-haven and in a single year twenty-two privateers from +its port had swept the Channel. But Edward was guided by weightier +considerations than this. In spite of his victory at Sluys the superiority +of France at sea had been a constant embarrassment. From this difficulty +the capture of Calais would do much to deliver him, for Dover and Calais +together bridled the Channel. Nor was this all. Not only would the +possession of the town give Edward a base of operations against France, but +it afforded an easy means of communication with the only sure allies of +England, the towns of Flanders. Flanders seemed at this moment to be +wavering. Its Count had fallen at Crécy, but his son Lewis le Mâle, though +his sympathies were as French as his father's, was received in November by +his subjects with the invariable loyalty which they showed to their rulers; +and his own efforts to detach them from England were seconded by the +influence of the Duke of Brabant. But with Edward close at hand beneath the +walls of Calais the Flemish towns stood true. They prayed the young Count +to marry Edward's daughter, imprisoned him on his refusal, and on his +escape to the French Court in the spring of 1347 they threw themselves +heartily into the English cause. A hundred thousand Flemings advanced to +Cassel and ravaged the French frontier. + +The danger of Calais roused Philip from the panic which had followed his +defeat, and with a vast army he advanced to the north. But Edward's lines +were impregnable. The French king failed in another attempt to dislodge the +Flemings, and was at last driven to retreat without a blow. Hopeless of +further succour, the town after a year's siege was starved into surrender +in August 1347. Mercy was granted to the garrison and the people on +condition that six of the citizens gave themselves into the English king's +hands. "On them," said Edward with a burst of bitter hatred, "I will do my +will." At the sound of the town bell, Jehan le Bel tells us, the folk of +Calais gathered round the bearer of these terms, "desiring to hear their +good news, for they were all mad with hunger. When the said knight told +them his news, then began they to weep and cry so loudly that it was great +pity. Then stood up the wealthiest burgess of the town, Master Eustache de +St. Pierre by name, and spake thus before all: 'My masters, great grief and +mishap it were for all to leave such a people as this is to die by famine +or otherwise; and great charity and grace would he win from our Lord who +could defend them from dying. For me, I have great hope in the Lord that if +I can save this people by my death I shall have pardon for my faults, +wherefore will I be the first of the six, and of my own will put myself +barefoot in my shirt and with a halter round my neck in the mercy of King +Edward.'" The list of devoted men was soon made up, and the victims were +led before the king. "All the host assembled together; there was great +press, and many bade hang them openly, and many wept for pity. The noble +King came with his train of counts and barons to the place, and the Queen +followed him, though great with child, to see what there would be. The six +citizens knelt down at once before the King, and Master Eustache spake +thus:--'Gentle King, here we be six who have been of the old bourgeoisie of +Calais and great merchants; we bring you the keys of the town and castle of +Calais, and render them to you at your pleasure. We set ourselves in such +wise as you see purely at your will, to save the remnant of the people that +has suffered much pain. So may you have pity and mercy on us for your high +nobleness' sake.' Certes there was then in that place neither lord nor +knight that wept not for pity, nor who could speak for pity; but the King +had his heart so hardened by wrath that for a long while he could not +reply; than he commanded to cut off their heads. All the knights and lords +prayed him with tears, as much as they could, to have pity on them, but he +would not hear. Then spoke the gentle knight, Master Walter de Maunay, and +said, 'Ha, gentle sire! bridle your wrath; you have the renown and good +fame of all gentleness; do not a thing whereby men can speak any villany of +you! If you have no pity, all men will say that you have a heart full of +all cruelty to put these good citizens to death that of their own will are +come to render themselves to you to save the remnant of the people.' At +this point the King changed countenance with wrath, and said 'Hold your +peace, Master Walter! it shall be none otherwise. Call the headsman. They +of Calais have made so many of my men die, that they must die themselves!' +Then did the noble Queen of England a deed of noble lowliness, seeing she +was great with child, and wept so tenderly for pity that she could no +longer stand upright; therefore she cast herself on her knees before her +lord the King and spake on this wise: 'Ah, gentle sire, from the day that I +passed over sea in great peril, as you know, I have asked for nothing: now +pray I and beseech you, with folded hands, for the love of our Lady's Son +to have mercy upon them.' The gentle King waited a while before speaking, +and looked on the Queen as she knelt before him bitterly weeping. Then +began his heart to soften a little, and he said, 'Lady, I would rather you +had been otherwhere; you pray so tenderly that I dare not refuse you; and +though I do it against my will, nevertheless take them, I give them to +you.' Then took he the six citizens by the halters and delivered them to +the Queen, and released from death all those of Calais for the love of her; +and the good lady bade them clothe the six burgesses and make them good +cheer." + + + + + +CHAPTER III +THE PEASANT REVOLT +1347-1381 + + + +[Sidenote: Edward the Third] + +Still in the vigour of manhood, for he was but thirty-five, Edward the +Third stood at the height of his renown. He had won the greatest victory of +his age. France, till now the first of European states, was broken and +dashed from her pride of place at a single blow. The kingdom seemed to lie +at Edward's mercy, for Guienne was recovered, Flanders was wholly on his +side, and Britanny, where the capture of Charles of Blois secured the +success of his rival and the English party which supported him, opened the +road to Paris. At home his government was popular, and Scotland, the one +enemy he had to dread, was bridled by the capture of her king. How great +his renown was in Europe was seen in 1347, when on the death of Lewis of +Bavaria the electors offered him the Imperial Crown. Edward was in truth a +general of a high order, and he had shown himself as consummate a +strategist in the campaign as a tactician in the field. But to the world +about him he was even more illustrious as the foremost representative of +the showy chivalry of his day. He loved the pomp of tournaments; he revived +the Round Table of the fabled Arthur; he celebrated his victories by the +creation of a new order of knighthood. He had varied the sterner operations +of the siege of Calais by a hand-to-hand combat with one of the bravest of +the French knights. A naval picture of Froissart sketches Edward for us as +he sailed to meet a Spanish fleet which was sweeping the narrow seas. We +see the king sitting on deck in his jacket of black velvet, his head +covered by a black beaver hat "which became him well," and calling on Sir +John Chandos to troll out the songs he had brought with him from Germany, +till the Spanish ships heave in sight and a furious fight begins which ends +in a victory that leaves Edward "King of the Seas." + +But beneath all this glitter of chivalry lay the subtle, busy diplomatist. +None of our kings was so restless a negotiator. From the first hour of +Edward's rule the threads of his diplomacy ran over Europe in almost +inextricable confusion. And to all who dealt with him he was equally false +and tricky. Emperor was played off against Pope and Pope against Emperor, +the friendship of the Flemish towns was adroitly used to put a pressure on +their counts, the national wrath against the exactions of the Roman See was +employed to bridle the French sympathies of the court of Avignon, and when +the statutes which it produced had served their purpose they were set aside +for a bargain in which King and Pope shared the plunder of the Church +between them. His temper was as false in his dealings with his people as in +his dealings with the European powers. Edward aired to country and +parliament his English patriotism. "Above all other lands and realms," he +made his chancellor say, "the King had most tenderly at heart his land of +England, a land more full of delight and honour and profit to him than any +other." His manners were popular; he donned on occasion the livery of a +city gild; he dined with a London merchant. His perpetual parliaments, his +appeals to them and to the country at large for counsel and aid, seemed to +promise a ruler who was absolutely one at heart with the people he ruled. +But when once Edward passed from sheer carelessness and gratification at +the new source of wealth which the Parliament opened to a sense of what its +power really was becoming, he showed himself as jealous of freedom as any +king that had gone before him. He sold his assent to its demands for heavy +subsidies, and when he had pocketed the money coolly declared the statutes +he had sanctioned null and void. The constitutional progress which was made +during his reign was due to his absorption in showy schemes of foreign +ambition, to his preference for war and diplomatic intrigue over the sober +business of civil administration. The same shallowness of temper, the same +showiness and falsehood, ran through his personal character. The king who +was a model of chivalry in his dealings with knight and noble showed +himself a brutal savage to the burgesses of Calais. Even the courtesy to +his Queen which throws its halo over the story of their deliverance went +hand in hand with a constant disloyalty to her. When once Philippa was dead +his profligacy threw all shame aside. He paraded a mistress as Queen of +Beauty through the streets of London, and set her in pomp over tournaments +as the Lady of the Sun. The nobles were quick to follow their lord's +example. "In those days," writes a chronicler of the time, "arose a rumour +and clamour among the people that wherever there was a tournament there +came a great concourse of ladies, of the most costly and beautiful but not +of the best in the kingdom, sometimes forty and fifty in number, as if they +were a part of the tournament, ladies clad in diverse and wonderful male +apparel, in parti-coloured tunics, with short caps and bands wound +cord-wise round their heads, and girdles bound with gold and silver, and +daggers in pouches across their body. And thus they rode on choice coursers +to the place of tourney; and so spent and wasted their goods and vexed +their bodies with scurrilous wantonness that the murmurs of the people +sounded everywhere. But they neither feared God nor blushed at the chaste +voice of the people." + + +[Sidenote: The Black Death] + +The "chaste voice of the people" was soon to grow into the stern moral +protest of the Lollards, but for the moment all murmurs were hushed by the +king's success. The truce which followed the capture of Calais seemed a +mere rest in the career of victories which opened before Edward. England +was drunk with her glory and with the hope of plunder. The cloths of Caen +had been brought after the sack of that town to London. "There was no +woman," says Walsingham, "who had not got garments, furs, feather-beds, and +utensils from the spoils of Calais and other foreign cities." The court +revelled in gorgeous tournaments and luxury of dress; and the establishment +in 1346 of the Order of the Garter which found its home in the new castle +that Edward was raising at Windsor marked the highest reach of the spurious +"Chivalry" of the day. But it was at this moment of triumph that the whole +colour of Edward's reign suddenly changed. The most terrible plague the +world has ever witnessed advanced from the East, and after devastating +Europe from the shores of the Mediterranean to the Baltic swooped at the +close of 1348 upon Britain. The traditions of its destructiveness and the +panic-struck words of the statutes passed after its visitation have been +amply justified by modern research. Of the three or four millions who then +formed the population of England more than one-half were swept away in its +repeated visitations. Its ravages were fiercest in the greater towns where +filthy and undrained streets afforded a constant haunt to leprosy and +fever. In the burial-ground which the piety of Sir Walter Maunay purchased +for the citizens of London, a spot whose site was afterwards marked by the +Charter House, more than fifty thousand corpses are said to have been +interred. Thousands of people perished at Norwich, while in Bristol the +living were hardly able to bury the dead. But the Black Death fell on the +villages almost as fiercely as on the towns. More than one-half of the +priests of Yorkshire are known to have perished; in the diocese of Norwich +two-thirds of the parishes changed their incumbents. The whole organization +of labour was thrown out of gear. The scarcity of hands produced by the +terrible mortality made it difficult for villeins to perform the services +due for their lands, and only a temporary abandonment of half the rent by +the landowners induced the farmers of their demesnes to refrain from the +abandonment of their farms. For a time cultivation became impossible. "The +sheep and cattle strayed through the fields and corn," says a contemporary, +"and there were none left who could drive them." Even when the first burst +of panic was over, the sudden rise of wages consequent on the enormous +diminution in the supply of labour, though accompanied by a corresponding +rise in the price of food, rudely disturbed the course of industrial +employments. Harvests rotted on the ground and fields were left untilled +not merely from scarcity of hands but from the strife which now for the +first time revealed itself between capital and labour. + + +[Sidenote: Its Social Results] + +Nowhere was the effect of the Black Death so keenly felt as in its bearing +on the social revolution which had been steadily going on for a century +past throughout the country. At the moment we have reached the lord of a +manor had been reduced over a large part of England to the position of a +modern landlord, receiving a rental in money from his tenants and supplying +their place in the cultivation of his demesne lands by paid labourers. He +was driven by the progress of enfranchisement to rely for the purposes of +cultivation on the supply of hired labour, and hitherto this supply had +been abundant and cheap. But with the ravages of the Black Death and the +decrease of population labour at once became scarce and dear. There was a +general rise of wages, and the farmers of the country as well as the +wealthier craftsmen of the town saw themselves threatened with ruin by what +seemed to their age the extravagant demands of the labour class. Meanwhile +the country was torn with riot and disorder. An outbreak of lawless +self-indulgence which followed everywhere in the wake of the plague told +especially upon the "landless men," workers wandering in search of work who +found themselves for the first time masters of the labour market; and the +wandering labourer or artizan turned easily into the "sturdy beggar," or +the bandit of the woods. A summary redress for these evils was at once +provided by the Crown in a royal proclamation. "Because a great part of the +people," runs this ordinance, "and principally of labourers and servants, +is dead of the plague, some, seeing the need of their lords and the +scarcity of servants, are unwilling to serve unless they receive excessive +wages, and others are rather begging in idleness than supporting themselves +by labour, we have ordained that any able-bodied man or woman, of +whatsoever condition, free or serf, under sixty years of age, not living of +merchandise nor following a trade nor having of his own wherewithal to +live, either his own land with the culture of which he could occupy +himself, and not serving another, shall if so required serve another for +such wages as was the custom in the twentieth year of our reign or five or +six years before." + + +[Sidenote: Statute of Labourers] + +It was the failure of this ordinance to effect its ends which brought about +at the close of 1349 the passing of the Statute of Labourers. "Every man or +woman," runs this famous provision, "of whatsoever condition, free or bond, +able in body, and within the age of threescore years, ... and not having of +his own whereof he may live, nor land of his own about the tillage of which +he may occupy himself, and not serving any other, shall be bound to serve +the employer who shall require him to do so, and shall take only the wages +which were accustomed to be taken in the neighbourhood where he is bound to +serve" two years before the plague began. A refusal to obey was punished by +imprisonment. But sterner measures were soon found to be necessary. Not +only was the price of labour fixed by the Parliament of 1351 but the labour +class was once more tied to the soil. The labourer was forbidden to quit +the parish where he lived in search of better paid employment; if he +disobeyed he became a "fugitive," and subject to imprisonment at the hands +of justices of the peace. To enforce such a law literally must have been +impossible, for corn rose to so high a price that a day's labour at the old +wages would not have purchased wheat enough for a man's support. But the +landowners did not flinch from the attempt. The repeated re-enactment of +the law shows the difficulty of applying it and the stubbornness of the +struggle which it brought about. The fines and forfeitures which were +levied for infractions of its provisions formed a large source of royal +revenue, but so ineffectual were the original penalties that the runaway +labourer was at last ordered to be branded with a hot iron on the forehead, +while the harbouring of serfs in towns was rigorously put down. Nor was it +merely the existing class of free labourers which was attacked by this +reactionary movement. The increase of their numbers by a commutation of +labour services for money payments was suddenly checked, and the ingenuity +of the lawyers who were employed as stewards of each manor was exercised in +striving to restore to the landowners that customary labour whose loss was +now severely felt. Manumissions and exemptions which had passed without +question were cancelled on grounds of informality, and labour services from +which they held themselves freed by redemption were again demanded from the +villeins. The attempt was the more galling that the cause had to be pleaded +in the manor-court itself, and to be decided by the very officer whose +interest it was to give judgement in favour of his lord. We can see the +growth of a fierce spirit of resistance through the statutes which strove +in vain to repress it. In the towns, where the system of forced labour was +applied with even more rigour than in the country, strikes and combinations +became frequent among the lower craftsmen. In the country the free +labourers found allies in the villeins whose freedom from manorial service +was questioned. These were often men of position and substance, and +throughout the eastern counties the gatherings of "fugitive serfs" were +supported by an organized resistance and by large contributions of money on +the part of the wealthier tenantry. + + +[Sidenote: Renewal of the War] + +With plague, famine, and social strife in the land, it was no time for +reaping the fruits even of such a victory as Crécy. Luckily for England the +pestilence had fallen as heavily on her foe as on herself. A common +suffering and exhaustion forced both countries to a truce, and though +desultory fighting went on along the Breton and Aquitanian borders, the +peace which was thus secured lasted with brief intervals of fighting for +seven years. It was not till 1355 that the failure of a last effort to turn +the truce into a final peace again drove Edward into war. The campaign +opened with a brilliant prospect of success. Charles the Bad, King of +Navarre, held as a prince of descent from the house of Valois large fiefs +in Normandy; and a quarrel springing suddenly up between him and John, who +had now succeeded his father Philip on the throne of France, Charles +offered to put his fortresses into Edward's hands. Master of Cherbourg, +Avranches, Pontaudemer, Evreux and Meulan, Mantes, Mortain, Pontoise, +Charles held in his hands the keys of France; and Edward grasped at the +opportunity of delivering a crushing blow. Three armies were prepared to +act in Normandy, Britanny, and Guienne. But the first two, with Edward and +Henry of Derby, who had been raised to the dukedom of Lancaster, at their +head, were detained by contrary winds, and Charles, despairing of their +arrival, made peace with John. Edward made his way to Calais to meet the +tidings of this desertion and to be called back to England by news of a +recapture of Berwick by the Scots. But his hopes of Norman co-operation +were revived in 1356. The treachery of John, his seizure of the King of +Navarre, and his execution of the Count of Harcourt who was looked upon as +the adviser of Charles in his policy of intrigue, stirred a general rising +throughout Normandy. Edward at once despatched troops under the Duke of +Lancaster to its support. But the insurgents were soon forced to fall back. +Conscious of the danger to which an English occupation of Normandy would +expose him, John hastened with a large army to the west, drove Lancaster to +Cherbourg, took Evreux, and besieged Breteuil. + + +[Sidenote: The Black Prince] + +Here however his progress was suddenly checked by news from the south. The +Black Prince, as the hero of Crécy was called, had landed in Guienne during +the preceding year and won a disgraceful success. Unable to pay his troops, +he staved off their demands by a campaign of sheer pillage. While plague +and war and the anarchy which sprang up under the weak government of John +were bringing ruin on the northern and central provinces of France, the +south remained prosperous and at peace. The young prince led his army of +freebooters up the Garonne into "what was before one of the fat countries +of the world, the people good and simple, who did not know what war was; +indeed no war had been waged against them till the Prince came. The English +and Gascons found the country full and gay, the rooms adorned with carpets +and draperies, the caskets and chests full of fair jewels. But nothing was +safe from these robbers. They, and especially the Gascons, who are very +greedy, carried off everything." Glutted by the sack of Carcassonne and +Narbonne the plunderers fell back to Bordeaux, "their horses so laden with +spoil that they could hardly move." Worthier work awaited the Black Prince +in the following year. In the plan of campaign for 1356 it had been +arranged that he should march upon the Loire, and there unite with a force +under the Duke of Lancaster which was to land in Britanny and push rapidly +into the heart of France. Delays however hindered the Prince from starting +from Bordeaux till July, and when his march brought him to the Loire the +plan of campaign had already broken down. The outbreak in Normandy had +tempted the English Council to divert the force under Lancaster from +Britanny to that province; and the Duke was now at Cherbourg, hard pressed +by the French army under John. But if its original purpose was foiled, the +march of the Black Prince on the Loire served still more effectively the +English cause. His advance pointed straight upon Paris, and again as in the +Crécy campaign John was forced to leave all for the protection of the +capital. Hasty marches brought the king to the Loire while Prince Edward +still lay at Vierzon on the Cher. Unconscious of John's designs, he wasted +some days in the capture of Romorantin while the French troops were +crossing the Loire along its course from Orleans to Tours and John with the +advance was hurrying through Loches upon Poitiers in pursuit, as he +supposed, of the retreating Englishmen. But the movement of the French +army, near as it was, was unknown in the English camp; and when the news of +it forced the Black Prince to order a retreat the enemy was already far +ahead of him. Edward reached the fields north of Poitiers to find his line +of retreat cut off and a French army of sixty thousand men interposed +between his forces and Bordeaux. + +If the Prince had shown little ability in his management of the campaign, +he showed tactical skill in the fight which was now forced on him. On the +nineteenth of September he took a strong position in the fields of +Maupertuis, where his front was covered by thick hedges and approachable +only by a deep and narrow lane which ran between vineyards. The vineyards +and hedges he lined with bowmen, and drew up his small body of men-at-arms +at the point where the lane opened upon the higher plain on which he was +himself encamped. Edward's force numbered only eight thousand men, and the +danger was great enough to force him to offer in exchange for a free +retreat the surrender of his prisoners and of the places he had taken, with +an oath not to fight against France for seven years to come. His offers +however were rejected, and the battle opened with a charge of three hundred +French knights up the narrow lane. But the lane was soon choked with men +and horses, while the front ranks of the advancing army fell back before a +galling fire of arrows from the hedgerows. In this moment of confusion a +body of English horsemen, posted unseen by their opponents on a hill to the +right, charged suddenly on the French flank, and the Prince watching the +disorder which was caused by the repulse and surprise fell boldly on their +front. The steady shot of the English archers completed the panic produced +by this sudden attack. The first French line was driven in, and on its rout +the second, a force of sixteen thousand men, at once broke in wild terror +and fled from the field. John still held his ground with the knights of the +reserve, whom he had unwisely ordered to dismount from their horses, till a +charge of the Black Prince with two thousand lances threw this last body +into confusion. The French king was taken, desperately fighting; and when +his army poured back at noon in utter rout to the gates of Poitiers eight +thousand of their number had fallen on the field, three thousand in the +flight, and two thousand men-at-arms, with a crowd of nobles, were taken +prisoners. The royal captive entered London in triumph, mounted on a big +white charger, while the Prince rode by his side on a little black hackney +to the palace of the Savoy, which was chosen as John's dwelling, and a +truce for two years seemed to give healing-time to France. + + +[Sidenote: Edward and the Scots] + +With the Scots Edward the Third had less good fortune. Recalled from Calais +by their seizure of Berwick, the king induced Balliol to resign into his +hands his shadowy sovereignty, and in the spring of 1356 marched upon +Edinburgh with an overpowering army, harrying and burning as he marched. +But the Scots refused an engagement, a fleet sent with provisions was +beaten off by a storm, and the famine-stricken army was forced to fall +rapidly back on the border in a disastrous retreat. The trial convinced +Edward that the conquest of Scotland was impossible, and by a rapid change +of policy which marks the man he resolved to seek the friendship of the +country he had wasted so long. David Bruce was released on promise of +ransom, a truce concluded for ten years, and the prohibition of trade +between the two kingdoms put an end to. But the fulness of this +reconciliation screened a dexterous intrigue. David was childless, and +Edward availed himself of the difficulty which the young king experienced +in finding means of providing the sum demanded for his ransom to bring him +over to a proposal which would have united the two countries for ever. The +scheme however was carefully concealed; and it was not till 1363 that David +proposed to his Parliament to set aside on his death the claims of the +Steward of Scotland to his crown, and to choose Edward's third son, Lionel, +Duke of Clarence, as his successor. Though the proposal was scornfully +rejected, negotiations were still carried on between the two kings for the +realization of this project, and were probably only put an end to by the +calamities of Edward's later years. + +[Illustration: France at the Treaty of Bretigny (v2-map-2t.jpg)] + + +[Sidenote: Peace of Brétigny] + +In France misery and misgovernment seemed to be doing Edward's work more +effectively than arms. The miserable country found no rest in itself. Its +routed soldiery turned into free companies of bandits, while the lords +captured at Crécy or Poitiers procured the sums needed for their ransom by +extortion from the peasantry. The reforms demanded by the States-General +which met in this agony of France were frustrated by the treachery of the +Regent, John's eldest son Charles, Duke of Normandy, till Paris, impatient +of his weakness and misrule, rose in arms against the Crown. The peasants +too, driven mad by oppression and famine, rose in wild insurrection, +butchering their lords and firing their castles over the whole face of +France. Paris and the Jacquerie, as this peasant rising was called, were at +last crushed by treachery and the sword: and, exhausted as it was, France +still backed the Regent in rejecting a treaty of peace by which John in +1359 proposed to buy his release. By this treaty Maine, Touraine, and +Poitou in the south, Normandy, Guisnes, Ponthieu, and Calais in the west +were ceded to the English king. On its rejection Edward in 1360 poured +ravaging over the wasted land. Famine however proved its best defence. "I +could not believe," said Petrarch of this time, "that this was the same +France which I had seen so rich and flourishing. Nothing presented itself +to my eyes but a fearful solitude, an utter poverty, land uncultivated, +houses in ruins. Even the neighbourhood of Paris showed everywhere marks of +desolation and conflagration. The streets are deserted, the roads overgrown +with weeds, the whole is a vast solitude." The utter desolation forced +Edward to carry with him an immense train of provisions, and thousands of +baggage waggons with mills, ovens, forges, and fishing-boats, formed a long +train which streamed for six miles behind his army. After a fruitless +attempt upon Reims he forced the Duke of Burgundy to conclude a treaty with +him by pushing forward to Tonnerre, and then descending the Seine appeared +with his army before Paris. But the wasted country forbade a siege, and +Edward after summoning the town in vain was forced to fall back for +subsistence on the Loire. It was during this march that the Duke of +Normandy's envoys overtook him with proposals of peace. The misery of the +land had at last bent Charles to submission, and in May a treaty was +concluded at Brétigny, a small place to the eastward of Chartres. By this +treaty the English king waived his claims on the crown of France and on the +Duchy of Normandy. On the other hand, his Duchy of Aquitaine, which +included Gascony, Guienne, Poitou, and Saintonge, the Limousin and the +Angoumois, Périgord and the counties of Bigorre and Rouergue, was not only +restored but freed from its obligations as a French fief and granted in +full sovereignty with Ponthieu, Edward's heritage from the second wife of +Edward the First, as well as with Guisnes and his new conquest of Calais. + + +[Sidenote: Misery of England] + +The Peace of Brétigny set its seal upon Edward's glory. But within England +itself the misery of the people was deepening every hour. Men believed the +world to be ending, and the judgement day to be near. A few months after +the Peace came a fresh swoop of the Black Death, carrying off the Duke of +Lancaster. The repressive measures of Parliament and the landowners only +widened the social chasm which parted employer from employed. We can see +the growth of a fierce spirit of resistance both to the reactionary efforts +which were being made to bring back labour services and to the enactments +which again bound labour to the soil in statutes which strove in vain to +repress the strikes and combinations which became frequent in the towns and +the more formidable gatherings of villeins and "fugitive serfs" in the +country at large. A statute of later date throws light on the nature of the +resistance of the last. It tells us that "villeins and holders of land in +villeinage withdrew their customs and services from their lords, having +attached themselves to other persons who maintained and abetted them, and +who under colour of exemplifications from Domesday of the manors and +villages where they dwelt claimed to be quit of all manner of services +either of their body or of their lands, and would suffer no distress or +other course of justice to be taken against them; the villeins aiding their +maintainers by threatening the officers of their lords with peril to life +and limb as well by open assemblies as by confederacies to support each +other." It would seem not only as if the villein was striving to resist the +reactionary tendency of the lords of manors to regain his labour service +but that in the general overturning of social institutions the copyholder +was struggling to make himself a freeholder, and the farmer to be +recognized as proprietor of the demesne he held on lease. + + +[Sidenote: John Ball] + +A more terrible outcome of the general suffering was seen in a new revolt +against the whole system of social inequality which had till then passed +unquestioned as the divine order of the world. The Peace was hardly signed +when the cry of the poor found a terrible utterance in the words of "a mad +priest of Kent" as the courtly Froissart calls him, who for twenty years to +come found audience for his sermons in spite of interdict and imprisonment +in the stout yeomen who gathered round him in the churchyards of Kent. +"Mad" as the landowners held him to be, it was in the preaching of John +Ball that England first listened to a declaration of the natural equality +and rights of man. "Good people," cried the preacher, "things will never be +well in England so long as goods be not in common, and so long as there be +villeins and gentlemen. By what right are they whom we call lords greater +folk than we? On what grounds have they deserved it? Why do they hold us in +serfage? If we all came of the same father and mother, of Adam and Eve, how +can they say or prove that they are better than we, if it be not that they +make us gain for them by our toil what they spend in their pride? They are +clothed in velvet and warm in their furs and their ermines, while we are +covered with rags. They have wine and spices and fair bread; and we +oat-cake and straw, and water to drink. They have leisure and fine houses; +we have pain and labour, the rain and the wind in the fields. And yet it is +of us and of our toil that these men hold their state." It was the tyranny +of property that then as ever roused the defiance of socialism. A spirit +fatal to the whole system of the Middle Ages breathed in the popular rime +which condensed the levelling doctrine of John Ball: + + "When Adam delved and Eve span, + Who was then the gentleman?" + + +[Sidenote: William Langland] + +More impressive, because of the very restraint and moderation of its tone, +is the poem in which William Langland began at the same moment to embody +with a terrible fidelity all the darker and sterner aspects of the time, +its social revolt, its moral and religious awakening, the misery of the +poor, the selfishness and corruption of the rich. Nothing brings more +vividly home to us the social chasm which in the fourteenth century severed +the rich from the poor than the contrast between his "Complaint of Piers +the Ploughman" and the "Canterbury Tales." The world of wealth and ease and +laughter through which the courtly Chaucer moves with, eyes downcast as in +a pleasant dream is a far-off world of wrong and of ungodliness to the +gaunt poet of the poor. Born probably in Shropshire, where he had been put +to school and received minor orders as a clerk, "Long Will," as Langland +was nicknamed from his tall stature, found his way at an early age to +London, and earned a miserable livelihood there by singing "placebos" and +"diriges" in the stately funerals of his day. Men took the moody clerk for +a madman; his bitter poverty quickened the defiant pride that made him +loth, as he tells us, to bow to the gay lords and dames who rode decked in +silver and minivere along the Cheap or to exchange a "God save you" with +the law sergeants as he passed their new house in the Temple. His world is +the world of the poor; he dwells on the poor man's life, on his hunger and +toil, his rough revelry and his despair, with the narrow intensity of a man +who has no outlook beyond it. The narrowness, the misery, the monotony of +the life he paints reflect themselves in his verse. It is only here and +there that a love of nature or a grim earnestness of wrath quickens his +rime into poetry; there is not a gleam of the bright human sympathy of +Chaucer, of his fresh delight in the gaiety, the tenderness, the daring of +the world about him, of his picturesque sense of even its coarsest +contrasts, of his delicate irony, of his courtly wit. The cumbrous +allegory, the tedious platitudes, the rimed texts from Scripture which form +the staple of Langland's work, are only broken here and there by phrases of +a shrewd common sense, by bitter outbursts, by pictures of a broad +Hogarthian humour. What chains one to the poem is its deep undertone of +sadness: the world is out of joint, and the gaunt rimer who stalks silently +along the Strand has no faith in his power to put it right. + + +[Sidenote: Piers Ploughman] + +Londoner as he is, Will's fancy flies far from the sin and suffering of the +great city to a May-morning in the Malvern Hills. "I was weary forwandered +and went me to rest under a broad bank by a burn side, and as I lay and +leaned and looked in the water I slumbered in a sleeping, it sweyved +(sounded) so merry." Just as Chaucer gathers the typical figures of the +world he saw into his pilgrim train, so the dreamer gathers into a wide +field his army of traders and chafferers, of hermits and solitaries, of +minstrels, "japers and jinglers," bidders and beggars, ploughmen that "in +setting and in sowing swonken (toil) full hard," pilgrims "with their +wenches after," weavers and labourers, burgess and bondman, lawyer and +scrivener, court-haunting bishops, friars, and pardoners "parting the +silver" with the parish priest. Their pilgrimage is not to Canterbury but +to Truth; their guide to Truth neither clerk nor priest but Peterkin the +Ploughman, whom they find ploughing in his field. He it is who bids the +knight no more wrest gifts from his tenant nor misdo with the poor. "Though +he be thine underling here, well may hap in heaven that he be worthier set +and with more bliss than thou.... For in charnel at church churles be evil +to know, or a knight from a knave there." The gospel of equality is backed +by the gospel of labour. The aim of the Ploughman is to work, and to make +the world work with him. He warns the labourer as he warns the knight. +Hunger is God's instrument in bringing the idlest to toil, and Hunger waits +to work her will on the idler and the waster. On the eve of the great +struggle between wealth and labour, Langland stands alone in his fairness +to both, in his shrewd political and religious common sense. In the face of +the popular hatred which was to gather round John of Gaunt, he paints the +Duke in a famous apologue as the cat who, greedy as she might be, at any +rate keeps the noble rats from utterly devouring the mice of the people. +Though the poet is loyal to the Church, he proclaims a righteous life to be +better than a host of indulgences, and God sends His pardon to Piers when +priests dispute it. But he sings as a man conscious of his loneliness and +without hope. It is only in a dream that he sees Corruption, "Lady Mede," +brought to trial, and the world repenting at the preaching of Reason. In +the waking life reason finds no listeners. The poet himself is looked +upon--he tells us bitterly--as a madman. There is a terrible despair in the +close of his later poem, where the triumph of Christ is only followed by +the reign of Antichrist; where Contrition slumbers amidst the revel of +Death and Sin; and Conscience, hard beset by Pride and Sloth, rouses +himself with a last effort, and seizing his pilgrim staff, wanders over the +world to find Piers Ploughman. + + +[Sidenote: Præmunire] + +The strife indeed which Langland would have averted raged only the fiercer +as the dark years went by. If the Statutes of Labourers were powerless for +their immediate ends, either in reducing the actual rate of wages or in +restricting the mass of floating labour to definite areas of employment, +they proved effective in sowing hatred between employer and employed, +between rich and poor. But this social rift was not the only rift which was +opening amidst the distress and misery of the time. The close of William +Langland's poem is the prophecy of a religious revolution; and the way for +such a revolution was being paved by the growing bitterness of strife +between England and the Papacy. In spite of the sharp protests from king +and parliament the need for money at Avignon was too great to allow any +relaxation in the Papal claims. Almost on the eve of Crécy Edward took the +decisive step of forbidding the entry into England of any Papal bulls or +documents interfering with the rights of presentation belonging to private +patrons. But the tenacity of Rome was far from loosening its grasp on this +source of revenue for all Edward's protests. Crécy however gave a new +boldness to the action of the State, and a Statute of Provisors was passed +by the Parliament in 1351 which again asserted the rights of the English +Church and enacted that all who infringed them by the introduction of Papal +"provisors" should suffer imprisonment. But resistance to provisors only +brought fresh vexations. The patrons who withstood a Papal nominee in the +name of the law were summoned to defend themselves in the Papal Court. From +that moment the supremacy of the Papal law over the law of the land became +a great question in which the lesser question of provisors merged. The +pretension of the Court of Avignon was met in 1353 by a statute which +forbade any questioning of judgements rendered in the King's Courts or any +prosecution of a suit in foreign courts under pain of outlawry, perpetual +imprisonment, or banishment from the land. It was this act of Præmunire--as +it came in after renewals to be called--which furnished so terrible a +weapon to the Tudors in their later strife with Rome. But the Papacy paid +little heed to these warnings, and its obstinacy in still receiving suits +and appeals in defiance of this statute roused the pride of a conquering +people. England was still fresh from her glory at Brétigny when Edward +appealed to the Parliament of 1365. Complaints, he said, were constantly +being made by his subjects to the Pope as to matters which were cognizable +in the King's Courts. The practice of provisors was thus maintained in the +teeth of the laws, and "the laws, usages, ancient customs, and franchises +of his kingdom were thereby much hindered, the King's crown degraded, and +his person defamed." The king's appeal was hotly met. "Biting words," which +it was thought wise to suppress, were used in the debate which followed, +and the statutes against provisors and appeals were solemnly confirmed. + + +[Sidenote: Wyclif] + +What gave point to this challenge was the assent of the prelates to the +proceedings of the Parliament; and the pride of Urban V. at once met it by +a counter-defiance. He demanded with threats the payment of the annual sum +of a thousand marks promised by King John in acknowledgement of the +suzerainty of the See of Rome. The insult roused the temper of the realm. +The king laid the demand before Parliament, and both houses replied that +"neither King John nor any king could put himself, his kingdom, nor his +people under subjection save with their accord or assent." John's +submission had been made "without their assent and against his coronation +oath" and they pledged themselves, should the Pope attempt to enforce his +claim, to resist him with all their power. Even Urban shrank from +imperilling the Papacy by any further demands, and the claim to a Papal +lordship over England was never again heard of. But the struggle had +brought to the front a man who was destined to give a far wider scope and +significance to this resistance to Rome than any as yet dreamed of. Nothing +is more remarkable than the contrast between the obscurity of John Wyclif's +earlier life and the fulness and vividness of our knowledge of him during +the twenty years which preceded its close. Born in the earlier part of the +fourteenth century, he had already passed middle age when he was appointed +to the mastership of Balliol College in the University of Oxford and +recognized as first among the schoolmen of his day. Of all the scholastic +doctors those of England had been throughout the keenest and most daring in +philosophical speculation. A reckless audacity and love of novelty was the +common note of Bacon, Duns Scotus, and Ockham, as against the sober and +more disciplined learning of the Parisian schoolmen, Albert and Thomas +Aquinas. The decay of the University of Paris during the English wars was +transferring her intellectual supremacy to Oxford, and in Oxford Wyclif +stood without a rival. From his predecessor, Bradwardine, whose work as a +scholastic teacher he carried on in the speculative treatises he published +during this period, he inherited the tendency to a predestinarian +Augustinianism which formed the groundwork of his later theological revolt. +His debt to Ockham revealed itself in his earliest efforts at Church +reform. Undismayed by the thunder and excommunications of the Church, +Ockham had supported the Emperor Lewis of Bavaria in his recent struggle, +and he had not shrunk in his enthusiasm for the Empire from attacking the +foundations of the Papal supremacy or from asserting the rights of the +civil power. The spare, emaciated frame of Wyclif, weakened by study and +asceticism, hardly promised a reformer who would carry on the stormy work +of Ockham; but within this frail form lay a temper quick and restless, an +immense energy, an immovable conviction, an unconquerable pride. The +personal charm which ever accompanies real greatness only deepened the +influence he derived from the spotless purity of his life. As yet indeed +even Wyclif himself can hardly have suspected the immense range of his +intellectual power. It was only the struggle that lay before him which +revealed in the dry and subtle schoolman the founder of our later English +prose, a master of popular invective, of irony, of persuasion, a dexterous +politician, an audacious partizan, the organizer of a religious order, the +unsparing assailant of abuses, the boldest and most indefatigable of +controversialists, the first Reformer who dared, when deserted and alone, +to question and deny the creed of the Christendom around him, to break +through the tradition of the past, and with his last breath to assert the +freedom of religious thought against the dogmas of the Papacy. + + +[Sidenote: "De Dominio Divino."] + +At the moment of the quarrel with Pope Urban however Wyclif was far from +having advanced to such a position as this. As the most prominent of +English scholars it was natural that he should come forward in defence of +the independence and freedom of the English Church; and he published a +formal refutation of the claims advanced by the Papacy to deal at its will +with church property in the form of a report of the Parliamentary debates +which we have described. As yet his quarrel was not with the doctrines of +Rome but with its practices; and it was on the principles of Ockham that he +defended the Parliament's refusal of the "tribute" which was claimed by +Urban. But his treatise on "The Kingdom of God," "De Dominio Divino," which +can hardly have been written later than 1368, shows the breadth of the +ground he was even now prepared to take up. In this, the most famous of his +works, Wyclif bases his argument on a distinct ideal of society. All +authority, to use his own expression, is "founded in grace." Dominion in +the highest sense is in God alone; it is God who as the suzerain of the +universe deals out His rule in fief to rulers in their various stations on +tenure of their obedience to Himself. It was easy to object that in such a +case "dominion" could never exist, since mortal sin is a breach of such a +tenure and all men sin. But, as Wyclif urged it, the theory is a purely +ideal one. In actual practice he distinguishes between dominion and power, +power which the wicked may have by God's permission, and to which the +Christian must submit from motives of obedience to God. In his own +scholastic phrase, so strangely perverted afterwards, here on earth "God +must obey the devil." But whether in the ideal or practical view of the +matter all power and dominion was of God. It was granted by Him not to one +person, His Vicar on earth, as the Papacy alleged, but to all. The king was +as truly God's Vicar as the Pope. The royal power was as sacred as the +ecclesiastical, and as complete over temporal things, even over the +temporalities of the Church, as that of the Church over spiritual things. +So far as the question of Church and State therefore was concerned the +distinction between the ideal and practical view of "dominion" was of +little account. Wyclif's application of the theory to the individual +conscience was of far higher and wider importance. Obedient as each +Christian might be to king or priest, he himself as a possessor of +"dominion" held immediately of God. The throne of God Himself was the +tribunal of personal appeal. What the Reformers of the sixteenth century +attempted to do by their theory of Justification by Faith Wyclif attempted +to do by his theory of Dominion, a theory which in establishing a direct +relation between man and God swept away the whole basis of a mediating +priesthood, the very foundation on which the mediaeval church was built. + + +[Sidenote: England and Aquitaine] + +As yet the full bearing of these doctrines was little seen. But the social +and religious excitement which we have described was quickened by the +renewal of the war, and the general suffering and discontent gathered +bitterness when the success which had flushed England with a new and +warlike pride passed into a long series of disasters in which men forgot +the glories of Crécy and Poitiers. Triumph as it seemed, the treaty of +Brétigny was really fatal to Edward's cause in the south of France. By the +cession of Aquitaine to him in full sovereignty the traditional claim on +which his strength rested lost its force. The people of the south had clung +to their Duke, even though their Duke was a foreign ruler. They had +stubbornly resisted incorporation with Northern France. While preserving +however their traditional fealty to the descendants of Eleanor they still +clung to the equally traditional suzerainty of the kings of France. But the +treaty of Brétigny not only severed them from the realm of France, it +subjected them to the realm of England. Edward ceased to be their +hereditary Duke, he became simply an English king ruling Aquitaine as an +English dominion. If the Southerners loved the North-French little, they +loved the English less, and the treaty which thus changed their whole +position was followed by a quick revulsion of feeling from the Garonne to +the Pyrenees. The Gascon nobles declared that John had no right to transfer +their fealty to another and to sever them from the realm of France. The +city of Rochelle prayed the French king not to release it from its fealty +to him. "We will obey the English with our lips," said its citizens, "but +our hearts shall never be moved towards them." Edward strove to meet this +passion for local independence, this hatred of being ruled from London, by +sending the Black Prince to Bordeaux and investing him in 1362 with the +Duchy of Aquitaine. But the new Duke held his Duchy as a fief from the +English king, and the grievance of the Southerners was left untouched. +Charles V. who succeeded his father John in 1364 silently prepared to reap +this harvest of discontent. Patient, wary, unscrupulous, he was hardly +crowned before he put an end to the war which had gone on without a pause +in Britanny by accepting homage from the claimant whom France had hitherto +opposed. Through Bertrand du Guesclin, a fine soldier whom his sagacity had +discovered, he forced the king of Navarre to a peace which closed the +fighting in Normandy. A more formidable difficulty in the way of +pacification and order lay in the Free Companies, a union of marauders whom +the disbanding of both armies after the peace had set free to harry the +wasted land and whom the king's military resources were insufficient to +cope with. It was the stroke by which Charles cleared his realm of these +scourges which forced on a new struggle with the English in the south. + + +[Sidenote: Pedro the Cruel] + +In the judgement of the English court the friendship of Castille was of the +first importance for the security of Aquitaine. Spain was the strongest +naval power of the western world, and not only would the ports of Guienne +be closed but its communication with England would be at once cut off by +the appearance of a joint French and Spanish fleet in the Channel. It was +with satisfaction therefore that Edward saw the growth of a bitter +hostility between Charles and the Castilian king, Pedro the Cruel, through +the murder of his wife, Blanche of Bourbon, the French king's +sister-in-law. Henry of Trastamara, a bastard son of Pedro's father Alfonso +the Eleventh, had long been a refugee at the French court, and soon after +the treaty of Brétigny Charles in his desire to revenge this murder on +Pedro gave Henry aid in an attempt on the Castilian throne. It was +impossible for England to look on with indifference while a dependant of +the French king became master of Castille; and in 1362 a treaty offensive +and defensive was concluded between Pedro and Edward the Third. The time +was not come for open war; but the subtle policy of Charles saw in this +strife across the Pyrenees an opportunity both of detaching Castille from +the English cause and of ridding himself of the Free Companies. With +characteristic caution he dexterously held himself in the background while +he made use of the Pope, who had been threatened by the Free Companies in +his palace at Avignon and was as anxious to get rid of them as himself. +Pedro's cruelty, misgovernment, and alliance with the Moslem of Cordova +served as grounds for a crusade which was proclaimed by Pope Urban; and Du +Guesclin, who was placed at the head of the expedition, found in the Papal +treasury and in the hope of booty from an unravaged land means of gathering +the marauders round his standard. As soon as these Crusaders crossed the +Ebro Pedro was deserted by his subjects, and in 1366 Henry of Trastamara +saw himself crowned without a struggle at Burgos as king of Castille. Pedro +with his two daughters fled for shelter to Bordeaux and claimed the aid +promised in the treaty. The lords of Aquitaine shrank from fighting for +such a cause, but in spite of their protests and the reluctance of the +English council to embark in so distant a struggle Edward held that he had +no choice save to replace his ally, for to leave Henry seated on the throne +was to leave Aquitaine to be crushed between France and Castille. + + +[Sidenote: Charles the Fifth] + +The after course of the war proved that in his anticipations of the fatal +result of a combination of the two powers Edward was right, but his policy +jarred not only against the universal craving for rest, but against the +moral sense of the world. The Black Prince however proceeded to carry out +his father's design in the teeth of the general opposition. His call to +arms robbed Henry of the aid of those English Companies who had marched +till now with the rest of the crusaders, but who returned at once to the +standard of the Prince; the passes of Navarre were opened with gold, and in +the beginning of 1367 the English army crossed the Pyrenees. Advancing to +the Ebro the Prince offered battle at Navarete with an army already reduced +by famine and disease in its terrible winter march, and Henry with double +his numbers at once attacked him. But in spite of the obstinate courage of +the Castilian troops the discipline and skill of the English soldiers once +more turned the wavering day into a victory. Du Guesclin was taken, Henry +fled across the Pyrenees, and Pedro was again seated on his throne. The pay +however which he had promised was delayed; and the Prince, whose army had +been thinned by disease to a fifth of its numbers and whose strength never +recovered from the hardships of this campaign, fell back sick and beggared +to Aquitaine. He had hardly returned when his work was undone. In 1368 +Henry reentered Castille; its towns threw open their gates; a general +rising chased Pedro from the throne, and a final battle in the spring of +1369 saw his utter overthrow. His murder by Henry's hand left the bastard +undisputed master of Castille. Meanwhile the Black Prince, sick and +disheartened, was hampered at Bordeaux by the expenses of the campaign +which Pedro had left unpaid. To defray his debt he was driven in 1368 to +lay a hearth-tax on Aquitaine, and the tax served as a pretext for an +outbreak of the long-hoarded discontent. Charles was now ready for open +action. He had won over the most powerful among the Gascon nobles, and +their influence secured the rejection of the tax in a Parliament of the +province which met at Bordeaux. The Prince, pressed by debt, persisted +against the counsel of his wisest advisers in exacting it; and the lords of +Aquitaine at once appealed to the king of France. Such an appeal was a +breach of the treaty of Brétigny in which the French king had renounced his +sovereignty over the south; but Charles had craftily delayed year after +year the formal execution of the renunciations stipulated in the treaty, +and he was still able to treat it as not binding on him. The success of +Henry of Trastamara decided him to take immediate action, and in 1369 he +summoned the Black Prince as Duke of Aquitaine to meet the appeal of the +Gascon lords in his court. + + +[Sidenote: Renewal of the War] + +The Prince was maddened by the summons. "I will come," he replied, "but +with helmet on head, and with sixty thousand men at my back." War however +had hardly been declared when the ability with which Charles had laid his +plans was seen in his seizure of Ponthieu and in a rising of the whole +country south of the Garonne. Du Gueselin returned in 1370 from Spain to +throw life into the French attack. Two armies entered Guienne from the +east; and a hundred castles with La Réole and Limoges threw open their +gates to Du Guesclin. But the march of an English army from Calais upon +Paris recalled him from the south to guard the capital at a moment when the +English leader advanced to recover Limoges, and the Black Prince borne in a +litter to its walls stormed the town and sullied by a merciless massacre of +its inhabitants the fame of his earlier exploits. Sickness however recalled +him home in the spring of 1371; and the war, protracted by the caution of +Charles who forbade his armies to engage, did little but exhaust the energy +and treasure of England. As yet indeed the French attack had made small +impression on the south, where the English troops stoutly held their ground +against Du Guesclin's inroads. But the protracted war drained Edward's +resources, while the diplomacy of Charles was busy in rousing fresh dangers +from Scotland and Castille. It was in vain that Edward looked for allies to +the Flemish towns. The male line of the Counts of Flanders ended in Count +Louis le Mâle; and the marriage of his daughter Margaret with Philip, Duke +of Burgundy, a younger brother of the French king, secured Charles from +attack along his northern border. In Scotland the death of David Bruce put +an end to Edward's schemes for a reunion of the two kingdoms; and his +successor, Robert the Steward, renewed in 1371 the alliance with France. + + +[Sidenote: Loss of Aquitaine] + +Castille was a yet more serious danger; and an effort which Edward made to +neutralize its attack only forced Henry of Trastamara to fling his whole +weight into the struggle. The two daughters of Pedro had remained since +their father's flight at Bordeaux. The elder of these was now wedded to +John of Gaunt, Edward's fourth son, whom he had created Duke of Lancaster +on his previous marriage with Blanche, a daughter of Henry of Lancaster and +the heiress of that house, while the younger was wedded to Edward's fifth +son, the Earl of Cambridge. Edward's aim was that of raising again the +party of King Pedro and giving Henry of Trastamara work to do at home which +would hinder his interposition in the war of Guienne. It was with this view +that John of Gaunt on his marriage took the title of king of Castille. But +no adherent of Pedro's cause stirred in Spain, and Henry replied to the +challenge by sending a Spanish fleet to the Channel. A decisive victory +which this fleet won over an English convoy off Rochelle proved a fatal +blow to the English cause. It wrested from Edward the mastery of the seas, +and cut off all communication between England and Guienne. Charles was at +once roused to new exertions. Poitou, Saintonge, and the Angoumois yielded +to his general Du Guesclin; and Rochelle was surrendered by its citizens in +1372. The next year saw a desperate attempt to restore the fortune of the +English arms. A great army under John of Gaunt penetrated into the heart of +France. But it found no foe to engage. Charles had forbidden any fighting. +"If a storm rages over the land," said the king coolly, "it disperses of +itself; and so will it be with the English." Winter in fact overtook the +Duke of Lancaster in the mountains of Auvergne, and a mere fragment of his +host reached Bordeaux. The failure of this attack was the signal for a +general defection, and ere the summer of 1374 had closed the two towns of +Bordeaux and Bayonne were all that remained of the English possessions in +Southern France. Even these were only saved by the exhaustion of the +conquerors. The treasury of Charles was as utterly drained as the treasury +of Edward; and the kings were forced to a truce. + + +[Sidenote: The Social Strife] + +Only fourteen years had gone by since the Treaty of Brétigny raised England +to a height of glory such as it had never known before. But the years had +been years of a shame and suffering which stung the people to madness. +Never had England fallen so low. Her conquests were lost, her shores +insulted, her commerce swept from the seas. Within she was drained by the +taxation and bloodshed of the war. Its popularity had wholly died away. +When the Commons were asked in 1354 whether they would assent to a treaty +of perpetual peace if they might have it, "the said Commons responded all, +and all together, 'Yes, yes!'" The population was thinned by the ravages of +pestilence, for till 1369, which saw its last visitation, the Black Death +returned again and again. The social strife too gathered bitterness with +every effort at repression. It was in vain that Parliament after Parliament +increased the severity of its laws. The demands of the Parliament of 1376 +show how inoperative the previous Statutes of Labourers had proved. They +prayed that constables be directed to arrest all who infringed the Statute, +that no labourer should be allowed to take refuge in a town and become an +artizan if there were need of his service in the county from which he came, +and that the king would protect lords and employers against the threats of +death uttered by serfs who refused to serve. The reply of the Royal Council +shows that statesmen at any rate were beginning to feel that repression +might be pushed too far. The king refused to interfere by any further and +harsher provisions between employers and employed, and left cases of breach +of law to be dealt with in his ordinary courts of justice. On the one side +he forbade the threatening gatherings which were already common in the +country, but on the other he forbade the illegal exactions of the +employers. With such a reply however the proprietary class were hardly +likely to be content. Two years later the Parliament of Gloucester called +for a Fugitive-slave Law, which would have enabled lords to seize their +serfs in whatever county or town they found refuge, and in 1379 they prayed +that judges might be sent five times a year into every shire to enforce the +Statute of Labourers. + + +[Sidenote: Edward and the Parliament] + +But the strife between employers and employed was not the only rift which +was opening in the social structure. Suffering and defeat had stripped off +the veil which hid from the nation the shallow and selfish temper of Edward +the Third. His profligacy was now bringing him to a premature old age. He +was sinking into the tool of his ministers and his mistresses. The glitter +and profusion of his court, his splendid tournaments, his feasts, his Table +Round, his new order of chivalry, the exquisite chapel of St. Stephen whose +frescoed walls were the glory of his palace at Westminster, the vast keep +which crowned the hill of Windsor, had ceased to throw their glamour round +a king who tricked his Parliament and swindled his creditors. Edward paid +no debts. He had ruined the wealthiest bankers of Florence by a cool act of +bankruptcy. The sturdier Flemish burghers only wrested payment from him by +holding his royal person as their security. His own subjects fared no +better than foreigners. The prerogative of "purveyance" by which the king +in his progresses through the country had the right of first purchase of +all that he needed at fair market price became a galling oppression in the +hands of a bankrupt king who was always moving from place to place. "When +men hear of your coming," Archbishop Islip wrote to Edward, "everybody at +once for sheer fear sets about hiding or eating or getting rid of their +geese and chickens or other possessions that they may not utterly lose them +through your arrival. The purveyors and servants of your court seize on men +and horses in the midst of their field work. They seize on the very +bullocks that are at plough or at sowing, and force them to work for two or +three days at a time without a penny of payment. It is no wonder that men +make dole and murmur at your approach, for, as the truth is in God, I +myself, whenever I hear a rumour of it, be I at home or in chapter or in +church or at study, nay if I am saying mass, even I in my own person +tremble in every limb." But these irregular exactions were little beside +the steady pressure of taxation. Even in the years of peace fifteenths and +tenths, subsidies on wool and subsidies on leather, were demanded and +obtained from Parliament; and with the outbreak of war the royal demands +became heavier and more frequent. As failure followed failure the expenses +of each campaign increased an ineffectual attempt to relieve Rochelle cost +nearly a million; the march of John of Gaunt through France utterly drained +the royal treasury. Nor were these legal supplies all that the king drew +from the nation. He had repudiated his pledge to abstain from arbitrary +taxation of imports and exports. He sold monopolies to the merchants in +exchange for increased customs. He wrested supplies from the clergy by +arrangements with the bishops or the Pope. There were signs that Edward was +longing to rid himself of the control of Parliament altogether. The power +of the Houses seemed indeed as high as ever; great statutes were passed. +Those of Provisors and Præmunire settled the relations of England to the +Roman Court. That of Treason in 1352 defined that crime and its penalties. +That of the Staples in 1353 regulated the conditions of foreign trade and +the privileges of the merchant gilds which conducted it. But side by side +with these exertions of influence we note a series of steady encroachments +by the Crown on the power of the Houses. If their petitions were granted, +they were often altered in the royal ordinance which professed to embody +them. A plan of demanding supplies for three years at once rendered the +annual assembly of Parliament less necessary. Its very existence was +threatened by the convocation in 1352 and 1353 of occasional councils with +but a single knight from every shire and a single burgess from a small +number of the greater towns, which acted as Parliament and granted +subsidies. + + +[Sidenote: The Baronage and the Church] + +What aided Edward above all in eluding or defying the constitutional +restrictions on arbitrary taxation, as well as in these more insidious +attempts to displace the Parliament, was the lessening of the check which +the Baronage and the Church had till now supplied. The same causes which +had long been reducing the number of the greater lords who formed the upper +house went steadily on. Under Edward the Second little more than seventy +were commonly summoned to Parliament; little more than forty were summoned +under Edward the Third, and of these the bulk were now bound to the Crown, +partly by their employment on its service, partly by their interest in the +continuance of the war. The heads of the Baronage too were members of the +royal family. Edward had carried out on a far wider scale than before the +policy which had been more or less adhered to from the days of Henry the +Third, that of gathering up in the hands of the royal house all the greater +heritages of the land. The Black Prince was married to Joan of Kent, the +heiress of Edward the First's younger son, Earl Edmund of Woodstock. His +marriage with the heiress of the Earl of Ulster brought to the king's +second son, Lionel, Duke of Clarence, a great part of the possessions of +the de Burghs. Later on the possessions of the house of Bohun passed by +like matches to his youngest son, Thomas of Woodstock, and to his grandson, +Henry of Lancaster. But the greatest English heritage fell to Edward's +third living son, John of Gaunt as he was called from his birth at Ghent +during his father's Flemish campaign. Originally created Earl of Richmond, +the death of his father-in-law, Henry of Lancaster, and of Henry's eldest +daughter, raised John in his wife's right to the Dukedom of Lancaster and +the Earldoms of Derby, Leicester, and Lincoln. But while the baronage were +thus bound to the Crown, they drifted more and more into an hostility with +the Church which in time disabled the clergy from acting as a check on it. +What rent the ruling classes in twain was the growing pressure of the war. +The nobles and knighthood of the country, already half ruined by the rise +in the labour market and the attitude of the peasantry, were pressed harder +than ever by the repeated subsidies which were called for by the +continuance of the struggle. In the hour of their distress they cast their +eyes greedily--as in the Norman and Angevin days--on the riches of the +Church. Never had her wealth been greater. Out of a population of some +three millions the ecclesiastics numbered between twenty and thirty +thousand. Wild tales of their riches floated about the country. They were +said to own in landed property alone more than a third of the soil, while +their "spiritualities" in dues and offerings amounted to twice the king's +revenue. Exaggerated as such statements were, the wealth of the Church was +really great; but even more galling to the nobles was its influence in the +royal councils. The feudal baronage, flushed with a new pride by its +victories at Crécy and Poitiers, looked with envy and wrath at the throng +of bishops around the council-board, and attributed to their love of peace +the errors and sluggishness which had caused, as they held, the disasters +of the war. To rob the Church of wealth and of power became the aim of a +great baronial party. + + +[Sidenote: Weakness of the Church] + +The efforts of the baronage indeed would have been fruitless had the +spiritual power of the Church remained as of old. But the clergy were rent +by their own dissensions. The higher prelates were busy with the cares of +political office, and severed from the lower priesthood by the scandalous +inequality between the revenues of the wealthier ecclesiastics and the +"poor parson" of the country. A bitter hatred divided the secular clergy +from the regular; and this strife went fiercely on in the Universities. +Fitz-Ralf, the Chancellor of Oxford, attributed to the friars the decline +which was already being felt in the number of academical students, and the +University checked by statute their practice of admitting mere children +into their order. The clergy too at large shared in the discredit and +unpopularity of the Papacy. Though they suffered more than any other class +from the exactions of Avignon, they were bound more and more to the Papal +cause. The very statutes which would have protected them were practically +set aside by the treacherous diplomacy of the Crown. At home and abroad the +Roman See was too useful for the king to come to any actual breach with it. +However much Edward might echo the bold words of his Parliament, he shrank +from an open contest which would have added the Papacy to his many foes, +and which would at the same time have robbed him of his most effective +means of wresting aids from the English clergy by private arrangement with +the Roman court. Rome indeed was brought to waive its alleged right of +appointing foreigners to English livings. But a compromise was arranged +between the Pope and the Crown in which both united in the spoliation and +enslavement of the Church. The voice of chapters, of monks, of +ecclesiastical patrons, went henceforth for nothing in the election of +bishops or abbots or the nomination to livings in the gift of churchmen. +The Crown recommended those whom it chose to the Pope, and the Pope +nominated them to see or cure of souls. The treasuries of both King and +Pope profited by the arrangement; but we can hardly wonder that after a +betrayal such as this the clergy placed little trust in statutes or royal +protection, and bowed humbly before the claims of Rome. + + +[Sidenote: Its Worldliness] + +But what weakened the clergy most was their severance from the general +sympathies of the nation, their selfishness, and the worldliness of their +temper. Immense as their wealth was, they bore as little as they could of +the common burthens of the realm. They were still resolute to assert their +exemption from the common justice of the land, though the mild punishments +of the bishops' courts carried as little dismay as ever into the mass of +disorderly clerks. But privileged as they thus held themselves against all +interference from the lay world without them, they carried on a ceaseless +interference with the affairs of this lay world through their control over +wills, contracts and divorces. No figure was better known or more hated +than the summoner who enforced the jurisdiction and levied the dues of +their courts. By their directly religious offices they penetrated into the +very heart of the social life about them. But powerful as they were, their +moral authority was fast passing away. The wealthier churchmen with their +curled hair and hanging sleeves aped the costume of the knightly society +from which they were drawn and to which they still really belonged. We see +the general impression of their worldliness in Chaucer's pictures of the +hunting monk and the courtly prioress with her love-motto on her brooch. +The older religious orders in fact had sunk into mere landowners, while the +enthusiasm of the friars had in great part died away and left a crowd of +impudent mendicants behind it. Wyclif could soon with general applause +denounce them as sturdy beggars, and declare that "the man who gives alms +to a begging friar is _ipso facto_ excommunicate." + + +[Sidenote: Advance of the Commons] + +It was this weakness of the Baronage and the Church, and the consequent +withdrawal of both as represented in the temporal and spiritual Estates of +the Upper House from the active part which they had taken till now in +checking the Crown that brought the Lower House to the front. The Knight of +the Shire was now finally joined with the Burgess of the Town to form the +Third Estate of the realm: and this union of the trader and the country +gentleman gave a vigour and weight to the action of the Commons which their +House could never have acquired had it remained as elsewhere a mere +gathering of burgesses. But it was only slowly and under the pressure of +one necessity after another that the Commons took a growing part in public +affairs. Their primary business was with taxation, and here they stood firm +against the evasions by which the king still managed to baffle their +exclusive right of granting supplies by voluntary agreements with the +merchants of the Staple. Their steady pressure at last obtained in 1362 an +enactment that no subsidy should henceforth be set upon wool without assent +of Parliament, while Purveyance was restricted by a provision that payments +should be made for all things taken for the king's use in ready money. A +hardly less important advance was made by the change of Ordinances into +Statutes. Till this time, even when a petition of the Houses was granted, +the royal Council had reserved to itself the right of modifying its form in +the Ordinance which professed to embody it. It was under colour of this +right that so many of the provisions made in Parliament had hitherto been +evaded or set aside. But the Commons now met this abuse by a demand that on +the royal assent being given their petitions should be turned without +change into Statutes of the Realm and derive force of law from their entry +on the Rolls of Parliament. The same practical sense was seen in their +dealings with Edward's attempt to introduce occasional smaller councils +with parliamentary powers. Such an assembly in 1353 granted a subsidy on +wool. The Parliament which met in the following year might have challenged +its proceedings as null and void, but the Commons more wisely contented +themselves with a demand that the ordinances passed in the preceding +assembly should receive the sanction of the Three Estates. A precedent for +evil was thus turned into a precedent for good, and though irregular +gatherings of a like sort were for a while occasionally held they were soon +seen to be fruitless and discontinued. But the Commons long shrank from +meddling with purely administrative matters. When Edward in his anxiety to +shift from himself the responsibility of the war referred to them in 1354 +for advice on one of the numerous propositions of peace, they referred him +to the lords of his Council. "Most dreaded lord," they replied, "as to this +war and the equipment needful for it we are so ignorant and simple that we +know not how nor have the power to devise. Wherefore we pray your Grace to +excuse us in this matter, and that it please you with the advice of the +great and wise persons of your Council to ordain what seems best for you +for the honour and profit of yourself and of your kingdom. And whatsoever +shall be thus ordained by assent and agreement on the part of you and your +Lords we readily assent to and will hold it firmly established." + + +[Sidenote: Baronage attacks the Church] + +But humble as was their tone the growing power of the Commons showed itself +in significant changes. In 1363 the Chancellor opened Parliament with a +speech in English, no doubt as a tongue intelligible to the members of the +Lower House. From a petition in 1376 that knights of the shire may be +chosen by common election of the better folk of the shire and not merely +nominated by the sheriff without due election, as well as from an earlier +demand that the sheriffs themselves should be disqualified from serving in +Parliament during their term of office, we see that the Crown had already +begun not only to feel the pressure of the Commons but to meet it by +foisting royal nominees on the constituencies. Such an attempt at packing +the House would hardly have been resorted to had it not already proved too +strong for direct control. A further proof of its influence was seen in a +prayer of the Parliament that lawyers practising in the King's Courts might +no longer be eligible as knights of the shire. The petition marks the rise +of a consciousness that the House was now no mere gathering of local +representatives, but a national assembly, and that a seat in it could no +longer be confined to dwellers within the bounds of this county or that. +But it showed also a pressure for seats, a passing away of the old dread of +being returned as a representative and a new ambition to gain a place among +the members of the Commons. Whether they would or no indeed the Commons +were driven forward to a more direct interference with public affairs. From +the memorable statute of 1322 their right to take equal part in all matters +brought before Parliament had been incontestable, and their waiver of much +of this right faded away before the stress of time. Their assent was needed +to the great ecclesiastical statutes which regulated the relation of the +See of Rome to the realm. They naturally took a chief part in the enactment +and re-enactment of the Statute of Labourers. The Statute of the Staple, +with a host of smaller commercial and economical measures, was of their +origination. But it was not till an open breach took place between the +baronage and the prelates that their full weight was felt. In the +Parliament of 1371, on the resumption of the war, a noble taunted the +Church as an owl protected by the feathers which other birds had +contributed, and which they had a right to resume when a hawk's approach +threatened them. The worldly goods of the Church, the metaphor hinted, had +been bestowed on it for the common weal, and could be taken from it on the +coming of a common danger. The threat was followed by a prayer that the +chief offices of state, which had till now been held by the leading +bishops, might be placed in lay hands. The prayer was at once granted: +William of Wykeham, Bishop of Winchester, resigned the Chancellorship, +another prelate the Treasury, to lay dependants of the great nobles; and +the panic of the clergy was seen in large grants which were voted by both +Convocations. + + +[Sidenote: John of Gaunt] + +At the moment of their triumph the assailants of the Church found a leader +in John of Gaunt. The Duke of Lancaster now wielded the actual power of the +Crown. Edward himself was sinking into dotage. Of his sons the Black +Prince, who had never rallied from the hardships of his Spanish campaign, +was fast drawing to the grave; he had lost a second son by death in +childhood; the third, Lionel of Clarence, had died in 1368. It was his +fourth son therefore, John of Gaunt, to whom the royal power mainly fell. +By his marriage with the heiress of the house of Lancaster the Duke had +acquired lands and wealth, but he had no taste for the policy of the +Lancastrian house or for acting as leader of the barons in any +constitutional resistance to the Crown. His pride, already quickened by the +second match with Constance to which he owed his shadowy kingship of +Castille, drew him to the throne; and the fortune which placed the royal +power practically in his hands bound him only the more firmly to its cause. +Men held that his ambition looked to the Crown itself, for the approaching +death of Edward and the Prince of Wales left but a boy, Richard, the son of +the Black Prince, a child of but a few years old, and a girl, the daughter +of the Duke of Clarence, between John and the throne. But the Duke's +success fell short of his pride. In the campaign of 1373 he traversed +France without finding a foe and brought back nothing save a ruined army to +English shores. The peremptory tone in which money was demanded for the +cost of this fruitless march while the petitions of the Parliament were set +aside till it was granted roused the temper of the Commons. They +requested--it is the first instance of such a practice--a conference with +the lords, and while granting fresh subsidies prayed that the grant should +be spent only on the war. The resentment of the government at this advance +towards a control over the actual management of public affairs was seen in +the calling of no Parliament through the next two years. But the years were +disastrous both at home and abroad. The war went steadily against the +English arms. The long negotiations with the Pope which went on at Bruges +through 1375, and in which Wyclif took part as one of the royal +commissioners, ended in a compromise by which Rome yielded nothing. The +strife over the Statute of Labourers grew fiercer and fiercer, and a return +of the plague heightened the public distress. Edward was now wholly swayed +by Alice Perrers, and the Duke shared his power with the royal mistress. +But if we gather its tenor from the complaints of the succeeding Parliament +his administration was as weak as it was corrupt. The new lay ministers +lent themselves to gigantic frauds. The chamberlain, Lord Latimer, bought +up the royal debts and embezzled the public revenue. With Richard Lyons, a +merchant through whom the king negotiated with the gild of the Staple, he +reaped enormous profits by raising the price of imports and by lending to +the Crown at usurious rates of interest. When the empty treasury forced +them to call a Parliament the ministers tampered with the elections through +the sheriffs. + + +[Sidenote: The Good Parliament] + +But the temper of the Parliament which met in 1376, and which gained from +after times the name of the Good Parliament, shows that these precautions +had utterly failed. Even their promise to pillage the Church had failed to +win for the Duke and his party the good will of the lesser gentry or the +wealthier burgesses who together formed the Commons. Projects of wide +constitutional and social change, of the humiliation and impoverishment of +an estate of the realm, were profoundly distasteful to men already +struggling with a social revolution on their own estates and in their own +workshops. But it was not merely its opposition to the projects of +Lancaster and his party among the baronage which won for this assembly the +name of the Good Parliament. Its action marked a new period in our +Parliamentary history, as it marked a new stage in the character of the +national opposition to the misrule of the Crown. Hitherto the task of +resistance had devolved on the baronage, and had been carried out through +risings of its feudal tenantry. But the misgovernment was now that of the +baronage or of a main part of the baronage itself in actual conjunction +with the Crown. Only in the power of the Commons lay any adequate means of +peaceful redress. The old reluctance of the Lower House to meddle with +matters of State was roughly swept away therefore by the pressure of the +time. The Black Prince, anxious to secure his child's succession by the +removal of John of Gaunt, the prelates with William of Wykeham at their +head, resolute again to take their place in the royal councils and to check +the projects of ecclesiastical spoliation put forward by their opponents, +alike found in it a body to oppose to the Duke's administration. Backed by +powers such as these, the action of the Commons showed none of their old +timidity or self-distrust. The presentation of a hundred and forty +petitions of grievances preluded a bold attack on the royal Council. +"Trusting in God, and standing with his followers before the nobles, +whereof the chief was John Duke of Lancaster, whose doings were ever +contrary," their speaker, Sir Peter de la Mare, denounced the +mis-management of the war, the oppressive taxation, and demanded an account +of the expenditure. "What do these base and ignoble knights attempt?" cried +John of Gaunt. "Do they think they be kings or princes of the land?" But +the movement was too strong to be stayed. Even the Duke was silenced by the +charges brought against the ministers. After a strict enquiry Latimer and +Lyons were alike thrown into prison, Alice Perrers was banished, and +several of the royal servants were driven from the Court. At this moment +the death of the Black Prince shook the power of the Parliament. But it +only heightened its resolve to secure the succession. His son, Richard of +Bordeaux, as he was called from the place of his birth, was now a child of +but ten years old; and it was known that doubts were whispered on the +legitimacy of his birth and claim. An early marriage of his mother Joan of +Kent, a granddaughter of Edward the First, with the Earl of Salisbury had +been annulled; but the Lancastrian party used this first match to throw +doubts on the validity of her subsequent union with the Black Prince and on +the right of Richard to the throne. The dread of Lancaster's ambition is +the first indication of the approach of what was from this time to grow +into the great difficulty of the realm, the question of the succession to +the Crown. From the death of Edward the Third to the death of Charles the +First no English sovereign felt himself secure from rival claimants of his +throne. As yet however the dread was a baseless one; the people were +heartily with the Prince and his child. The Duke's proposal that the +succession should be settled in case of Richard's death was rejected; and +the boy himself was brought into Parliament and acknowledged as heir of the +Crown. + + +[Sidenote: Wyclif and John of Gaunt] + +To secure their work the Commons ended by obtaining the addition of nine +lords with William of Wykeham and two other prelates among them to the +royal Council. But the Parliament was no sooner dismissed than the Duke at +once resumed his power. His anger at the blow which had been dealt at his +projects was no doubt quickened by resentment at the sudden advance of the +Lower House. From the Commons who shrank even from giving counsel on +matters of state to the Commons who dealt with such matters as their +special business, who investigated royal accounts, who impeached royal +ministers, who dictated changes in the royal advisers, was an immense step. +But it was a step which the Duke believed could be retraced. His haughty +will flung aside all restraints of law. He dismissed the new lords and +prelates from the Council. He called back Alice Perrers and the disgraced +ministers. He declared the Good Parliament no parliament, and did not +suffer its petitions to be enrolled as statutes. He imprisoned Peter de la +Mare, and confiscated the possessions of William of Wykeham. His attack on +this prelate was an attack on the clergy at large, and the attack became +significant when the Duke gave his open patronage to the denunciations of +Church property which formed the favourite theme of John Wyclif. To Wyclif +such a prelate as Wykeham symbolized the evil which held down the Church. +His administrative ability, his political energy, his wealth and the +colleges at Winchester and at Oxford which it enabled him to raise before +his death, were all equally hateful. It was this wealth, this intermeddling +with worldly business, which the ascetic reformer looked upon as the curse +that robbed prelates and churchmen of that spiritual authority which could +alone meet the vice and suffering of the time. Whatever baser motives might +spur Lancaster and his party, their projects of spoliation must have seemed +to Wyclif projects of enfranchisement for the Church. Poor and powerless in +worldly matters, he held that she would have the wealth and might of heaven +at her command. Wyclif's theory of Church and State had led him long since +to contend that the property of the clergy might be seized and employed +like other property for national purposes. Such a theory might have been +left, as other daring theories of the schoolmen had been left, to the +disputation of the schools. But the clergy were bitterly galled when the +first among English teachers threw himself hotly on the side of the party +which threatened them with spoliation, and argued in favour of their +voluntary abandonment of all Church property and of a return to their +original poverty. They were roused to action when Wyclif came forward as +the theological bulwark of the Lancastrian party at a moment when the +clergy were freshly outraged by the overthrow of the bishops and the +plunder of Wykeham. They forced the king to cancel the sentence of +banishment from the precincts of the Court which had been directed against +the Bishop of Winchester by refusing any grant of supply in Convocation +till William of Wykeham took his seat in it. But in the prosecution of +Wyclif they resolved to return blow for blow. In February 1377 he was +summoned before Bishop Courtenay of London to answer for his heretical +propositions concerning the wealth of the Church. + +The Duke of Lancaster accepted the challenge as really given to himself, +and stood by Wyclif's side in the Consistory Court at St. Paul's. But no +trial took place. Fierce words passed between the nobles and the prelate: +the Duke himself was said to have threatened to drag Courtenay out of the +church by the hair of his head; at last the London populace, to whom John +of Gaunt was hateful, burst in to their Bishop's rescue, and Wyclif's life +was saved with difficulty by the aid of the soldiery. But his boldness only +grew with the danger. A Papal bull which was procured by the bishops, +directing the University to condemn and arrest him, extorted from him a +bold defiance. In a defence circulated widely through the kingdom and laid +before Parliament, Wyclif broadly asserted that no man could be +excommunicated by the Pope "unless he were first excommunicated by +himself." He denied the right of the Church to exact or defend temporal +privileges by spiritual censures, declared that a Church might justly be +deprived by the king or lay lords of its property for defect of duty, and +defended the subjection of ecclesiastics to civil tribunals. It marks the +temper of the time and the growing severance between the Church and the +nation that, bold as the defiance was, it won the support of the people as +of the Crown. When Wyclif appeared at the close of the year in Lambeth +Chapel to answer the Archbishop's summons a message from the Court forbade +the primate to proceed and the Londoners broke in and dissolved the +session. + + +[Sidenote: Death of Edward the Third] + +Meanwhile the Duke's unscrupulous tampering with elections had packed the +Parliament of 1377 with his adherents. The work of the Good Parliament was +undone, and the Commons petitioned for the restoration of all who had been +impeached by their predecessors. The needs of the treasury were met by a +novel form of taxation. To the earlier land-tax, to the tax on personality +which dated from the Saladin Tithe, to the customs duties which had grown +into importance in the last two reigns, was now added a tax which reached +every person in the realm, a poll-tax of a groat a head. In this tax were +sown the seeds of future trouble, but when the Parliament broke up in March +the Duke's power seemed completely secured. Hardly three months later it +was wholly undone. In June Edward the Third died in a dishonoured old age, +robbed on his death-bed even of his rings by the mistress to whom he clung, +and the accession of his grandson, Richard the Second, changed the whole +face of affairs. The Duke withdrew from Court, and sought a reconciliation +with the party opposed to him. The men of the Good Parliament surrounded +the new king, and a Parliament which assembled in October took vigorously +up its work. Peter de la Mare was released from prison and replaced in the +chair of the House of Commons. The action of the Lower House indeed was as +trenchant and comprehensive as that of the Good Parliament itself. In +petition after petition the Commons demanded the confirmation of older +rights and the removal of modern abuses. They complained of administrative +wrongs such as the practice of purveyance, of abuses of justice, of the +oppressions of officers of the exchequer and of the forest, of the ill +state of prisons, of the customs of "maintenance" and "livery" by which +lords extended their protection to shoals of disorderly persons and +overawed the courts by means of them. Amid ecclesiastical abuses they noted +the state of the Church courts, and the neglect of the laws of Provisors. +They demanded that the annual assembly of Parliament, which had now become +customary, should be defined by law, and that bills once sanctioned by the +Crown should be forthwith turned into statutes without further amendment or +change on the part of the royal Council. With even greater boldness they +laid hands on the administration itself. They not only demanded that the +evil counsellors of the last reign should be removed, and that the +treasurer of the subsidy on wool should account for its expenditure to the +lords, but that the royal Council should be named in Parliament, and chosen +from members of either estate of the realm. Though a similar request for +the nomination of the officers of the royal household was refused, their +main demand was granted. It was agreed that the great officers of state, +the chancellor, treasurer, and barons of exchequer should be named by the +lords in Parliament, and removed from their offices during the king's +"tender years" only on the advice of the lords. The pressure of the war, +which rendered the existing taxes insufficient, gave the House a fresh hold +on the Crown. While granting a new subsidy in the form of a land and +property tax, the Commons restricted its proceeds to the war, and assigned +two of their members, William Walworth and John Philpot, as a standing +committee to regulate its expenditure. The successor of this Parliament in +the following year demanded and obtained an account of the way in which the +subsidy had been spent. + + +[Sidenote: Discontent of the people] + +The minority of the king, who was but eleven years old at his accession, +the weakness of the royal council amidst the strife of the baronial +factions, above all the disasters of the war without and the growing +anarchy within the realm itself, alone made possible this startling +assumption of the executive power by the Houses. The shame of defeat abroad +was being added to the misery and discomfort at home. The French war ran +its disastrous course. One English fleet was beaten by the Spaniards, a +second sunk by a storm; and a campaign in the heart of France ended, like +its predecessors, in disappointment and ruin. Meanwhile the strife between +employers and employed was kindling into civil war. The Parliament, drawn +as it was wholly from the proprietary classes, struggled as fiercely for +the mastery of the labourers as it struggled for the mastery of the Crown. +The Good Parliament had been as strenuous in demanding the enforcement of +the Statute of Labourers as any of its predecessors. In spite of statutes, +however, the market remained in the labourers' hands. The comfort of the +worker rose with his wages. Men who had "no land to live on but their hands +disdained to live on penny ale or bacon, and called for fresh flesh or +fish, fried or bake, and that hot and hotter for chilling of their maw." +But there were dark shades in this general prosperity of the labour class. +There were seasons of the year during which employment for the floating +mass of labour was hard to find. In the long interval between harvest-tide +and harvest-tide work and food were alike scarce in every homestead of the +time. Some lines of William Langland give us the picture of a farm of the +day. "I have no penny pullets for to buy, nor neither geese nor pigs, but +two green cheeses, a few curds and cream, and an oaten cake, and two loaves +of beans and bran baken for my children. I have no salt bacon nor no cooked +meat collops for to make, but I have parsley and leeks and many cabbage +plants, and eke a cow and a calf, and a cart-mare to draw afield my dung +while the drought lasteth, and by this livelihood we must all live till +Lammas-tide [August], and by that I hope to have harvest in my croft." But +it was not till Lammas-tide that high wages and the new corn bade "Hunger +go to sleep," and during the long spring and summer the free labourer and +the "waster that will not work but wander about, that will eat no bread but +the finest wheat, nor drink but of the best and brownest ale," was a source +of social and political danger. "He grieveth him against God and grudgeth +against Reason, and then curseth he the King and all his council after such +law to allow labourers to grieve." Such a smouldering mass of discontent as +this needed but a spark to burst into flame; and the spark was found in the +imposition of fresh taxation. + + +[Sidenote: The Poll-Tax] + +If John of Gaunt was fallen from his old power he was still the leading +noble in the realm, and it is possible that dread of the encroachments of +the last Parliament on the executive power drew after a time even the new +advisers of the Crown closer to him. Whatever was the cause, he again came +to the front. But the supplies voted in the past year were wasted in his +hands. A fresh expedition against France under the Duke himself ended in +failure before the walls of St. Malo, while at home his brutal household +was outraging public order by the murder of a knight who had incurred +John's anger in the precincts of Westminster. So great was the resentment +of the Londoners at this act that it became needful to summon Parliament +elsewhere than to the capital; and in 1378 the Houses met at Gloucester. +The Duke succeeded in bringing the Lords to refuse those conferences with +the Commons which had given unity to the action of the late Parliament, but +he was foiled in an attack on the clerical privilege of sanctuary and in +the threats which his party still directed against Church property, while +the Commons forced the royal Council to lay before them the accounts of the +last subsidy and to appoint a commission to examine into the revenue of the +Crown. Unhappily the financial policy of the preceding year was persisted +in. The check before St. Malo had been somewhat redeemed by treaties with +Charles of Evreux and the Duke of Britanny which secured to England the +right of holding Cherbourg and Brest; but the cost of these treaties only +swelled the expenses of the war. The fresh supplies voted at Gloucester +proved insufficient for their purpose, and a Parliament in the spring of +1379 renewed the Poll-tax in a graduated form. But the proceeds of the tax +proved miserably inadequate, and when fresh debts beset the Crown in 1380 a +return was again made to the old system of subsidies. But these failed in +their turn; and at the close of the year the Parliament again fell back on +a severer Poll-tax. One of the attractions of the new mode of taxation +seems to have been that the clergy, who adopted it for themselves, paid in +this way a larger share of the burthens of the state; but the chief ground +for its adoption lay, no doubt, in its bringing within the net of the +tax-gatherer a class which had hitherto escaped him, men such as the free +labourer, the village smith, the village tiler. But few courses could have +been more dangerous. The Poll-tax not only brought the pressure of the war +home to every household; it goaded into action precisely the class which +was already seething with discontent. The strife between labour and capital +was going on as fiercely as ever in country and in town. The landlords were +claiming new services, or forcing men who looked on themselves as free to +prove they were no villeins by law. The free labourer was struggling +against the attempt to exact work from him at low wages. The wandering +workman was being seized and branded as a vagrant. The abbey towns were +struggling for freedom against the abbeys. The craftsmen within boroughs +were carrying on the same strife against employer and craft-gild. And all +this mass of discontent was being heightened and organized by agencies with +which the Government could not cope. The poorer villeins and the free +labourers had long since banded together in secret conspiracies which the +wealthier villeins supported with money. The return of soldiers from the +war threw over the land a host of broken men, skilled in arms, and ready to +take part in any rising. The begging friars, wandering and gossiping from +village to village and street to street, shared the passions of the class +from which they sprang. Priests like Ball openly preached the doctrines of +communism. And to these had been recently added a fresh agency, which could +hardly fail to stir a new excitement. With the practical ability which +marked his character, Wyclif set on foot about this time a body of poor +preachers to supply, as he held, the place of those wealthier clergy who +had lost their hold on the land. The coarse sermons, bare feet, and russet +dress of these "Simple Priests" moved the laughter of rector and canon, but +they proved a rapid and effective means of diffusing Wyclif's protests +against the wealth and sluggishness of the clergy, and we can hardly doubt +that in the general turmoil their denunciation of ecclesiastical wealth +passed often into more general denunciations of the proprietary classes. + + +[Sidenote: John Ball] + +As the spring went by quaint rimes passed through the country, and served +as a summons to revolt. "John Ball," ran one, "greeteth you all, and doth +for to understand he hath rung your bell. Now right and might, will and +skill, God speed every dele." "Help truth," ran another, "and truth shall +help you! Now reigneth pride in price, and covetise is counted wise, and +lechery withouten shame, and gluttony withouten blame. Envy reigneth with +treason, and sloth is take in great season. God do bote, for now is tyme!" +We recognize Ball's hand in the yet more stirring missives of "Jack the +Miller" and "Jack the Carter." "Jack Miller asketh help to turn his mill +aright. He hath grounden small, small: the King's Son of Heaven he shall +pay for all. Look thy mill go aright with the four sailes, and the post +stand with steadfastness. With right and with might, with skill and with +will; let might help right, and skill go before will, and right before +might, so goeth our mill aright." "Jack Carter," ran the companion missive, +"prays you all that ye make a good end of that ye have begun, and do well, +and aye better and better: for at the even men heareth the day." "Falseness +and guile," sang Jack Trewman, "have reigned too long, and truth hath been +set under a lock, and falseness and guile reigneth in every stock. No man +may come truth to, but if he sing 'si dedero.' True love is away that was +so good, and clerks for wealth work them woe. God do bote, for now is +time." In the rude jingle of these lines began for England the literature +of political controversy: they are the first predecessors of the pamphlets +of Milton and of Burke. Rough as they are, they express clearly enough the +mingled passions which met in the revolt of the peasants: their longing for +a right rule, for plain and simple justice; their scorn of the immorality +of the nobles and the infamy of the court; their resentment at the +perversion of the law to the cause of oppression. + + +[Sidenote: The Peasant Rising] + +From the eastern and midland counties the restlessness spread to all +England south of the Thames. But the grounds of discontent varied with +every district. The actual outbreak began on the 5th of June at Dartford, +where a tiler killed one of the collectors of the poll-tax in vengeance for +a brutal outrage on his daughter. The county at once rose in arms. +Canterbury, where "the whole town was of their mind," threw open its gates +to the insurgents who plundered the Archbishop's palace and dragged John +Ball from his prison. A hundred thousand Kentishmen gathered round Walter +Tyler of Essex and John Hales of Malling to march upon London. Their +grievance was mainly a political one. Villeinage was unknown in Kent. As +the peasants poured towards Blackheath indeed every lawyer who fell into +their hands was put to death; "not till all these were killed would the +land enjoy its old freedom again," the Kentishmen shouted as they fired the +houses of the stewards and flung the rolls of the manor-courts into the +flames. But this action can hardly have been due to anything more than +sympathy with the rest of the realm, the sympathy which induced the same +men when pilgrims from the north brought news that John of Gaunt was +setting free his bondmen to send to the Duke an offer to make him Lord and +King of England. Nor was their grievance a religious one. Lollardry can +have made little way among men whose grudge against the Archbishop of +Canterbury sprang from his discouragement of pilgrimages. Their discontent +was simply political; they demanded the suppression of the poll-tax and +better government; their aim was to slay the nobles and wealthier clergy, +to take the king into their own hands, and pass laws which should seem good +to the Commons of the realm. The whole population joined the Kentishmen as +they marched along, while the nobles were paralyzed with fear. The young +king--he was but a boy of sixteen--addressed them from a boat on the river; +but the refusal of his Council under the guidance of Archbishop Sudbury to +allow him to land kindled the peasants to fury, and with cries of "Treason" +the great mass rushed on London. On the 13th of June its gates were flung +open by the poorer artizans within the city, and the stately palace of John +of Gaunt at the Savoy, the new inn of the lawyers at the Temple, the houses +of the foreign merchants, were soon in a blaze. But the insurgents, as they +proudly boasted, were "seekers of truth and justice, not thieves or +robbers," and a plunderer found carrying off a silver vessel from the sack +of the Savoy was flung with his spoil into the flames. Another body of +insurgents encamped at the same time to the east of the city. In Essex and +the eastern counties the popular discontent was more social than political. +The demands of the peasants were that bondage should be abolished, that +tolls and imposts on trade should be done away with, that "no acre of land +which is held in bondage or villeinage be held at higher rate than +fourpence a year," in other words for a money commutation of all villein +services. Their rising had been even earlier than that of the Kentishmen. +Before Whitsuntide an attempt to levy the poll-tax gathered crowds of +peasants together, armed with clubs, rusty swords, and bows. The royal +commissioners who were sent to repress the tumult were driven from the +field, and the Essex men marched upon London on one side of the river as +the Kentishmen marched on the other. The evening of the thirteenth, the day +on which Tyler entered the city, saw them encamped without its walls at +Mile-end. At the same moment Highbury and the northern heights were +occupied by the men of Hertfordshire and the villeins of St. Albans, where +a strife between abbot and town had been going on since the days of Edward +the Second. + + +[Sidenote: Richard the Second] + +The royal Council with the young king had taken refuge in the Tower, and +their aim seems to have been to divide the forces of the insurgents. On the +morning of the fourteenth therefore Richard rode from the Tower to Mile-end +to meet the Essex men. "I am your King and Lord, good people," the boy +began with a fearlessness which marked his bearing throughout the crisis, +"what will you?" "We will that you free us for ever," shouted the peasants, +"us and our lands; and that we be never named nor held for serfs!" "I grant +it," replied Richard; and he bade them go home, pledging himself at once to +issue charters of freedom and amnesty. A shout of joy welcomed the promise. +Throughout the day more than thirty clerks were busied writing letters of +pardon and emancipation, and with these the mass of the Essex men and the +men of Hertfordshire withdrew quietly to their homes. But while the king +was successful at Mile-end a terrible doom had fallen on the councillors he +left behind him. Richard had hardly quitted the Tower when the Kentishmen +who had spent the night within the city appeared at its gates. The general +terror was shown ludicrously enough when they burst in and taking the +panic-stricken knights of the royal household in rough horse-play by the +beard promised to be their equals and good comrades in the days to come. +But the horse-play changed into dreadful earnest when they found that +Richard had escaped their grasp, and the discovery of Archbishop Sudbury +and other ministers in the chapel changed their fury into a cry for blood. +The Primate was dragged from his sanctuary and beheaded. The same vengeance +was wreaked on the Treasurer and the Chief Commissioner for the levy of the +hated poll-tax, the merchant Richard Lyons who had been impeached by the +Good Parliament. Richard meanwhile had ridden round the northern wall of +the city to the Wardrobe near Blackfriars, and from this new refuge he +opened his negotiations with the Kentish insurgents. Many of these +dispersed at the news of the king's pledge to the men of Essex, but a body +of thirty thousand still surrounded Wat Tyler when Richard on the morning +of the fifteenth encountered that leader by a mere chance at Smithfield. +Hot words passed between his train and the peasant chieftain who advanced +to confer with the king, and a threat from Tyler brought on a brief +struggle in which the Mayor of London, William Walworth, struck him with +his dagger to the ground. "Kill! kill!" shouted the crowd: "they have slain +our captain!" But Richard faced the Kentishmen with the same cool courage +with which he faced the men of Essex. "What need ye, my masters?" cried the +boy-king as he rode boldly up to the front of the bowmen. "I am your +Captain and your King; follow me!" The hopes of the peasants centred in the +young sovereign; one aim of their rising had been to free him from the evil +counsellors who, as they believed, abused his youth; and at his word they +followed him with a touching loyalty and trust till he entered the Tower. +His mother welcomed him within its walls with tears of joy. "Rejoice and +praise God," Richard answered, "for I have recovered to-day my heritage +which was lost and the realm of England!" But he was compelled to give the +same pledge of freedom to the Kentishmen as at Mile-end, and it was only +after receiving his letters of pardon and emancipation that the yeomen +dispersed to their homes. + + +[Sidenote: The general revolt] + +The revolt indeed was far from being at an end. As the news of the rising +ran through the country the discontent almost everywhere broke into flame. +There were outbreaks in every shire south of the Thames as far westward as +Devonshire. In the north tumults broke out at Beverley and Scarborough, and +Yorkshire and Lancashire made ready to rise. The eastern counties were in +one wild turmoil of revolt. At Cambridge the townsmen burned the charters +of the University and attacked the colleges. A body of peasants occupied +St. Albans. In Norfolk a Norwich artizan, called John the Litster or Dyer, +took the title of King of the Commons, and marching through the country at +the head of a mass of peasants compelled the nobles whom he captured to act +as his meat-tasters and to serve him on their knees during his repast. The +story of St. Edmundsbury shows us what was going on in Suffolk. Ever since +the accession of Edward the Third the townsmen and the villeins of their +lands around had been at war with the abbot and his monks. The old and more +oppressive servitude had long passed away, but the later abbots had set +themselves against the policy of concession and conciliation which had +brought about this advance towards freedom. The gates of the town were +still in the abbot's hands. He had succeeded in enforcing his claim to the +wardship of all orphans born within his domain. From claims such as these +the town could never feel itself safe so long as mysterious charters from +Pope or King, interpreted cunningly by the wit of the new lawyer class, lay +stored in the abbey archives. But the archives contained other and hardly +less formidable documents than these. Untroubled by the waste of war, the +religious houses profited more than any other landowners by the general +growth of wealth. They had become great proprietors, money-lenders to their +tenants, extortionate as the Jew whom they had banished from their land. +There were few townsmen of St. Edmund's who had not some bonds laid up in +the abbey registry. In 1327 one band of debtors had a covenant lying there +for the payment of five hundred marks and fifty casks of wine. Another +company of the wealthier burgesses were joint debtors on a bond for ten +thousand pounds. The new spirit of commercial activity joined with the +troubles of the time to throw the whole community into the abbot's hands. + + +[Sidenote: Saint Edmundsbury] + +We can hardly wonder that riots, lawsuits, and royal commissions marked the +relation of the town and abbey under the first two Edwards. Under the third +came an open conflict. In 1327 the townsmen burst into the great house, +drove the monks into the choir, and dragged them thence to the town prison. +The abbey itself was sacked; chalices, missals, chasubles, tunicles, altar +frontals, the books of the library, the very vats and dishes of the +kitchen, all disappeared. The monks estimated their losses at ten thousand +pounds. But the townsmen aimed at higher booty than this. The monks were +brought back from prison to their own chapter-house, and the spoil of their +registry, papal bulls and royal charters, deeds and bonds and mortgages, +were laid before them. Amidst the wild threats of the mob they were forced +to execute a grant of perfect freedom and of a gild to the town as well as +of free release to their debtors. Then they were left masters of the ruined +house. But all control over town or land was gone. Through spring and +summer no rent or fine was paid. The bailiffs and other officers of the +abbey did not dare to show their faces in the streets. News came at last +that the abbot was in London, appealing for redress to the court, and the +whole county was at once on fire. A crowd of rustics, maddened at the +thought of revived claims of serfage, of interminable suits of law, poured +into the streets of the town. From thirty-two of the neighbouring villages +the priests marched at the head of their flocks as on a new crusade. The +wild mass of men, women, and children, twenty thousand in all, as men +guessed, rushed again on the abbey, and for four November days the work of +destruction went on unhindered. When gate, stables, granaries, kitchen, +infirmary, hostelry had gone up in flames, the multitude swept away to the +granges and barns of the abbey farms. Their plunder shows what vast +agricultural proprietors the monks had become. A thousand horses, a hundred +and twenty plough-oxen, two hundred cows, three hundred bullocks, three +hundred hogs, ten thousand sheep were driven off, and granges and barns +burned to the ground. It was judged afterwards that sixty thousand pounds +would hardly cover the loss. + +Weak as was the government of Mortimer and Isabella, the appeal of the +abbot against this outrage was promptly heeded. A royal force quelled the +riot, thirty carts full of prisoners were despatched to Norwich; +twenty-four of the chief townsmen with thirty-two of the village priests +were convicted as aiders and abettors of the attack on the abbey, and +twenty were summarily hanged. Nearly two hundred persons remained under +sentence of outlawry, and for five weary years their case dragged on in the +King's Courts. At last matters ended in a ludicrous outrage. Irritated by +repeated breaches of promise on the abbot's part, the outlawed burgesses +seized him as he lay in his manor of Chevington, robbed and bound him, and +carried him off to London. There he was hurried from street to street lest +his hiding-place should be detected till opportunity offered for shipping +him off to Brabant. The Primate and the Pope levelled their +excommunications against the abbot's captors in vain, and though he was at +last discovered and brought home it was probably with some pledge of the +arrangement which followed in 1332. The enormous damages assessed by the +royal justices were remitted, the outlawry of the townsmen was reversed, +the prisoners were released. On the other hand the deeds which had been +stolen were again replaced in the archives of the abbey, and the charters +which had been extorted from the monks were formally cancelled. + + +[Sidenote: St. Edmundsbury in 1381] + +The spirit of townsmen and villeins remained crushed by their failure, and +throughout the reign of Edward the Third the oppression against which they +had risen went on without a check. It was no longer the rough blow of sheer +force; it was the more delicate but more pitiless tyranny of the law. At +Richard's accession Prior John of Cambridge in the vacancy of the abbot was +in charge of the house. The prior was a man skilled in all the arts of his +day. In sweetness of voice, in knowledge of sacred song, his eulogists +pronounced him superior to Orpheus, to Nero, and to one yet more +illustrious in the Bury cloister though obscure to us, the Breton +Belgabred. John was "industrious and subtle," and subtlety and industry +found their scope in suit after suit with the burgesses and farmers around +him. "Faithfully he strove," says the monastic chronicler, "with the +villeins of Bury for the rights of his house." The townsmen he owned +specially as his "adversaries," but it was the rustics who were to show +what a hate he had won. On the fifteenth of June, the day of Wat Tyler's +fall, the howl of a great multitude round his manor-house at Mildenhall +broke roughly on the chauntings of Prior John. He strove to fly, but he was +betrayed by his own servants, judged in rude mockery of the law by villein +and bondsman, condemned and killed. The corpse lay naked in the open field +while the mob poured unresisted into Bury. Bearing the prior's head on a +lance before them through the streets, the frenzied throng at last reached +the gallows where the head of one of the royal judges, Sir John Cavendish, +was already impaled; and pressing the cold lips together in mockery of +their friendship set them side by side. Another head soon joined them. The +abbey gates were burst open, and the cloister filled with a maddened crowd, +howling for a new victim, John Lackenheath, the warder of the barony. Few +knew him as he stood among the group of trembling monks, but he courted +death with a contemptuous courage. "I am the man you seek," he said, +stepping forward; and in a minute, with a mighty roar of "Devil's son! +Monk! Traitor!" he was swept to the gallows, and his head hacked from his +shoulders. Then the crowd rolled back again to the abbey gate, and summoned +the monks before them. They told them that now for a long time they had +oppressed their fellows, the burgesses of Bury; wherefore they willed that +in the sight of the Commons they should forthwith surrender their bonds and +charters. The monks brought the parchments to the market-place; many which +were demanded they swore they could not find. A compromise was at last +patched up; and it was agreed that the charters should be surrendered till +the future abbot should confirm the liberties of the town. Then, unable to +do more, the crowd ebbed away. + + +[Sidenote: Close of the rising] + +A scene less violent, but even more picturesque, went on the same day at +St. Albans. William Grindecobbe, the leader of its townsmen, returned with +one of the charters of emancipation which Richard had granted after his +interview at Mile-end to the men of Essex and Hertfordshire, and breaking +into the abbey precincts at the head of the burghers, forced the abbot to +deliver up the charters which bound the town in bondage to his house. But a +more striking proof of servitude than any charters could give remained in +the millstones which after a long suit at law had been adjudged to the +abbey and placed within its cloister as a triumphant witness that no +townsman might grind corn within the domain of the abbey save at the +abbot's mill. Bursting into the cloister, the burghers now tore the +mill-stones from the floor, and broke them into small pieces, "like blessed +bread in church," which each might carry off to show something of the day +when their freedom was won again. But it was hardly won when it was lost +anew. The quiet withdrawal and dispersion of the peasant armies with their +charters of emancipation gave courage to the nobles. Their panic passed +away. The warlike Bishop of Norwich fell lance in hand on Litster's camp, +and scattered the peasants of Norfolk at the first shock. Richard with an +army of forty thousand men marched in triumph through Kent and Essex, and +spread terror by the ruthlessness of his executions. At Waltham he was met +by the display of his own recent charters and a protest from the Essex men +that "they were so far as freedom went the peers of their lords." But they +were to learn the worth of a king's word. "Villeins you were," answered +Richard, "and villeins you are. In bondage you shall abide, and that not +your old bondage, but a worse!" The stubborn resistance which he met showed +that the temper of the people was not easily broken. The villagers of +Billericay threw themselves into the woods and fought two hard fights +before they were reduced to submission. It was only by threats of death +that verdicts of guilty could be wrung from Essex jurors when the leaders +of the revolt were brought before them. Grindecobbe was offered his life if +he would persuade his followers at St. Albans to restore the charters they +had wrung from the monks. He turned bravely to his fellow-townsmen and bade +them take no thought for his trouble. "If I die," he said, "I shall die for +the cause of the freedom we have won, counting myself happy to end my life +by such a martyrdom. Do then to-day as you would have done had I been +killed yesterday." But repression went pitilessly on, and through the +summer and the autumn seven thousand men are said to have perished on the +gallows or the field. + + + + + +CHAPTER IV +RICHARD THE SECOND +1381-1400 + + + +[Sidenote: Results of the Peasant Revolt] + +Terrible as were the measures of repression which followed the Peasant +Revolt, and violent as was the passion of reaction which raged among the +proprietary classes at its close, the end of the rising was in fact +secured. The words of Grindecobbe ere his death were a prophecy which time +fulfilled. Cancel charters of manumission as the council might, serfage was +henceforth a doomed and perishing thing. The dread of another outbreak hung +round the employer. The attempts to bring back obsolete services quietly +died away. The old process of enfranchisement went quietly on. During the +century and a half which followed the Peasant Revolt villeinage died out so +rapidly that it became a rare and antiquated thing. The class of small +freeholders sprang fast out of the wreck of it into numbers and importance. +In twenty years more they were in fact recognized as the basis of our +electoral system in every English county. The Labour Statutes proved as +ineffective as of old in enchaining labour or reducing its price. A hundred +years after the Black Death the wages of an English labourer was sufficient +to purchase twice the amount of the necessaries of life which could have +been obtained for the wages paid under Edward the Third. The incidental +descriptions of the life of the working classes which we find in Piers +Ploughman show that this increase of social comfort had been going on even +during the troubled period which preceded the outbreak of the peasants, and +it went on faster after the revolt was over. But inevitable as such a +progress was, every step of it was taken in the teeth of the wealthier +classes. Their temper indeed at the close of the rising was that of men +frenzied by panic and the taste of blood. They scouted all notion of +concession. The stubborn will of the conquered was met by as stubborn a +will in their conquerors. The royal Council showed its sense of the danger +of a mere policy of resistance by submitting the question of +enfranchisement to the Parliament which assembled in November 1381 with +words which suggested a compromise. "If you desire to enfranchise and set +at liberty the said serfs," ran the royal message, "by your common assent, +as the King has been informed that some of you desire, he will consent to +your prayer." But no thoughts of compromise influenced the landowners in +their reply. The king's grant and letters, the Parliament answered with +perfect truth, were legally null and void: their serfs were their goods, +and the king could not take their goods from them but by their own consent. +"And this consent," they ended, "we have never given and never will give, +were we all to die in one day." Their temper indeed expressed itself in +legislation which was a fit sequel to the Statutes of Labourers. They +forbade the child of any tiller of the soil to be apprenticed in a town. +They prayed the king to ordain "that no bondman nor bondwoman shall place +their children at school, as has been done, so as to advance their children +in the world by their going into the church." The new colleges which were +being founded at the Universities at this moment closed their gates upon +villeins. + + +[Sidenote: Religious reaction] + +The panic which produced this frenzied reaction against all projects of +social reform produced inevitably as frenzied a panic of reaction against +all plans for religious reform. Wyclif had been supported by the +Lancastrian party till the very eve of the Peasant Revolt. But with the +rising his whole work seemed suddenly undone. The quarrel between the +baronage and the Church on which his political action had as yet been +grounded was hushed in the presence of a common danger. His "poor +preachers" were looked upon as missionaries of socialism. The friars +charged Wyclif with being a "sower of strife, who by his serpentlike +instigation had set the serf against his lord," and though he tossed back +the charge with disdain he had to bear a suspicion which was justified by +the conduct of some of his followers. John Ball, who had figured in the +front rank of the revolt, was falsely-named as one of his adherents, and +was alleged to have denounced in his last hour the conspiracy of the +"Wyclifites." Wyclif's most prominent scholar, Nicholas Herford, was said +to have openly approved the brutal murder of Archbishop Sudbury. Whatever +belief such charges might gain, it is certain that from this moment all +plans for the reorganization of the Church were confounded in the general +odium which attached to the projects of the peasant leaders, and that any +hope of ecclesiastical reform at the hands of the baronage and the +Parliament was at an end. But even if the Peasant Revolt had not deprived +Wyclif of the support of the aristocratic party with whom he had hitherto +cooperated, their alliance must have been dissolved by the new theological +position which he had already taken up. Some months before the outbreak of +the insurrection he had by one memorable step passed from the position of a +reformer of the discipline and political relations of the Church to that of +a protester against its cardinal beliefs. If there was one doctrine upon +which the supremacy of the Mediæval Church rested, it was the doctrine of +Transubstantiation. It was by his exclusive right to the performance of the +miracle which was wrought in the mass that the lowliest priest was raised +high above princes. With the formal denial of the doctrine of +Transubstantiation which Wyclif issued in the spring of 1381 began that +great movement of religious revolt which ended more than a century after in +the establishment of religious freedom by severing the mass of the Teutonic +peoples from the general body of the Catholic Church. The act was the +bolder that he stood utterly alone. The University of Oxford, in which his +influence had been hitherto all-powerful, at once condemned him. John of +Gaunt enjoined him to be silent. Wyclif was presiding as Doctor of Divinity +over some disputations in the schools of the Augustinian Canons when his +academical condemnation was publicly read, but though startled for the +moment he at once challenged Chancellor or doctor to disprove the +conclusions at which he had arrived. The prohibition of the Duke of +Lancaster he met by an open avowal of his teaching, a confession which +closes proudly with the quiet words, "I believe that in the end the truth +will conquer." + + +[Sidenote: Rise of Lollardry] + +For the moment his courage dispelled the panic around him. The University +responded to his appeal, and by displacing his opponents from office +tacitly adopted his cause. But Wyclif no longer looked for support to the +learned or wealthier classes on whom he had hitherto relied. He appealed, +and the appeal is memorable as the first of such a kind in our history, to +England at large. With an amazing industry he issued tract after tract in +the tongue of the people itself. The dry, syllogistic Latin, the abstruse +and involved argument which the great doctor had addressed to his academic +hearers, were suddenly flung aside, and by a transition which marks the +wonderful genius of the man the schoolman was transformed into the +pamphleteer. If Chaucer is the father of our later English poetry, Wyclif +is the father of our later English prose. The rough, clear, homely English +of his tracts, the speech of the ploughman and the trader of the day though +coloured with the picturesque phraseology of the Bible, is in its literary +use as distinctly a creation of his own as the style in which he embodied +it, the terse vehement sentences, the stinging sarcasms, the hard +antitheses which roused the dullest mind like a whip. Once fairly freed +from the trammels of unquestioning belief, Wyclif's mind worked fast in its +career of scepticism. Pardons, indulgences, absolutions, pilgrimages to the +shrines of the saints, worship of their images, worship of the saints +themselves, were successively denied. A formal appeal to the Bible as the +one ground of faith, coupled with an assertion of the right of every +instructed man to examine the Bible for himself, threatened the very +groundwork of the older dogmatism with ruin. Nor were these daring denials +confined to the small circle of scholars who still clung to him. The +"Simple Priests" were active in the diffusion of their master's doctrines, +and how rapid their progress must have been we may see from the +panic-struck exaggerations of their opponents. A few years later they +complained that the followers of Wyclif abounded everywhere and in all +classes, among the baronage, in the cities, among the peasantry of the +countryside, even in the monastic cell itself. "Every second man one meets +is a Lollard." + + +[Sidenote: Lollardry at Oxford] + +"Lollard," a word which probably means "idle babbler," was the nickname of +scorn with which the orthodox Churchmen chose to insult their assailants. +But this rapid increase changed their scorn into vigorous action. In 1382 +Courtenay, who had now become Archbishop, summoned a council at Blackfriars +and formally submitted twenty-four propositions drawn from Wyclif's works. +An earthquake in the midst of the proceedings terrified every prelate but +the resolute Primate; the expulsion of ill humours from the earth, he said, +was of good omen for the expulsion of ill humours from the Church; and the +condemnation was pronounced. Then the Archbishop turned fiercely upon +Oxford as the fount and centre of the new heresies. In an English sermon at +St. Frideswide's Nicholas Herford had asserted the truth of Wyclif's +doctrines, and Courtenay ordered the Chancellor to silence him and his +adherents on pain of being himself treated as a heretic. The Chancellor +fell back on the liberties of the University, and appointed as preacher +another Wyclifite, Repyngdon, who did not hesitate to style the Lollards +"holy priests," and to affirm that they were protected by John of Gaunt. +Party spirit meanwhile ran high among the students. The bulk of them sided +with the Lollard leaders, and a Carmelite, Peter Stokes, who had procured +the Archbishop's letters, cowered panic stricken in his chamber while the +Chancellor, protected by an escort of a hundred townsmen, listened +approvingly to Repyngdon's defiance. "I dare go no further," wrote the poor +Friar to the Archbishop, "for fear of death"; but he mustered courage at +last to descend into the schools where Repyngdon was now maintaining that +the clerical order was "better when it was but nine years old than now that +it has grown to a thousand years and more." The appearance however of +scholars in arms again drove Stokes to fly in despair to Lambeth, while a +new heretic in open Congregation maintained Wyclif's denial of +Transubstantiation. "There is no idolatry," cried William James, "save in +the Sacrament of the Altar." "You speak like a wise man," replied the +Chancellor, Robert Rygge. Courtenay however was not the man to bear +defiance tamely, and his summons to Lambeth wrested a submission from Rygge +which was only accepted on his pledge to suppress the Lollardism of the +University. "I dare not publish them, on fear of death," exclaimed the +Chancellor when Courtenay handed him his letters of condemnation. "Then is +your University an open _fautor_ of heretics," retorted the Primate, "if it +suffers not the Catholic truth to be proclaimed within its bounds." The +royal Council supported the Archbishop's injunction, but the publication of +the decrees at once set Oxford on fire. The scholars threatened death +against the friars, "crying that they wished to destroy the University." +The masters suspended Henry Crump from teaching as a troubler of the public +peace for calling the Lollards "heretics." The Crown however at last +stepped in to Courtenay's aid, and a royal writ ordered the instant +banishment of all favourers of Wyclif with the seizure and destruction of +all Lollard books on pain of forfeiture of the University's privileges. The +threat produced its effect. Herford and Repyngdon appealed in vain to John +of Gaunt for protection; the Duke himself denounced them as heretics +against the Sacrament of the Altar, and after much evasion they were forced +to make a formal submission. Within Oxford itself the suppression of +Lollardism was complete, but with the death of religious freedom all trace +of intellectual life suddenly disappears. The century which followed the +triumph of Courtenay is the most barren in its annals, nor was the sleep of +the University broken till the advent of the New Learning restored to it +some of the life and liberty which the Primate had so roughly trodden out. + + +[Sidenote: Wyclif's Bible] + +Nothing marks more strongly the grandeur of Wyclif's position as the last +of the great schoolmen than the reluctance of so bold a man as Courtenay +even after his triumph over Oxford to take extreme measures against the +head of Lollardry. Wyclif, though summoned, had made no appearance before +the "Council of the Earthquake." "Pontius Pilate and Herod are made friends +to-day," was his bitter comment on the new union which proved to have +sprung up between the prelates and the monastic orders who had so long been +at variance with each other; "since they have made a heretic of Christ, it +is an easy inference for them to count simple Christians heretics." He +seems indeed to have been sick at the moment, but the announcement of the +final sentence roused him to life again. He petitioned the king and +Parliament that he might be allowed freely to prove the doctrines he had +put forth, and turning with characteristic energy to the attack of his +assailants, he asked that all religious vows might be suppressed, that +tithes might be diverted to the maintenance of the poor and the clergy +maintained by the free alms of their flocks, that the Statutes of Provisors +and Præmunire might be enforced against the Papacy, that Churchmen might be +declared incapable of secular offices, and imprisonment for excommunication +cease. Finally in the teeth of the council's condemnation he demanded that +the doctrine of the Eucharist which he advocated might be freely taught. If +he appeared in the following year before the convocation at Oxford it was +to perplex his opponents by a display of scholastic logic which permitted +him to retire without any retractation of his sacramental heresy. For the +time his opponents seemed satisfied with his expulsion from the University, +but in his retirement at Lutterworth he was forging during these troubled +years the great weapon which, wielded by other hands than his own, was to +produce so terrible an effect on the triumphant hierarchy. An earlier +translation of the Scriptures, in part of which he was aided by his scholar +Herford, was being revised and brought to the second form which is better +known as "Wyclif's Bible" when death drew near. The appeal of the prelates +to Rome was answered at last by a Brief ordering him to appear at the Papal +Court. His failing strength exhausted itself in a sarcastic reply which +explained that his refusal to comply with the summons simply sprang from +broken health. "I am always glad," ran the ironical answer, "to explain my +faith to any one, and above all to the Bishop of Rome; for I take it for +granted that if it be orthodox he will confirm it, if it be erroneous he +will correct it. I assume too that as chief Vicar of Christ upon earth the +Bishop of Rome is of all mortal men most bound to the law of Christ's +Gospel, for among the disciples of Christ a majority is not reckoned by +simply counting heads in the fashion of this world, but according to the +imitation of Christ on either side. Now Christ during His life upon earth +was of all men the poorest, casting from Him all worldly authority. I +deduce from these premisses as a simple counsel of my own that the Pope +should surrender all temporal authority to the civil power and advise his +clergy to do the same." The boldness of his words sprang perhaps from a +knowledge that his end was near. The terrible strain on energies enfeebled +by age and study had at last brought its inevitable result, and a stroke of +paralysis while Wyclif was hearing mass in his parish church of Lutterworth +was followed on the next day by his death. + + +[Sidenote: The Lollard movement] + +The persecution of Courtenay deprived the religious reform of its more +learned adherents and of the support of the Universities. Wyclif's death +robbed it of its head at a moment when little had been done save a work of +destruction. From that moment Lollardism ceased to be in any sense an +organized movement and crumbled into a general spirit of revolt. All the +religious and social discontent of the times floated instinctively to this +new centre. The socialist dreams of the peasantry, the new and keener +spirit of personal morality, the hatred of the friars, the jealousy of the +great lords towards the prelacy, the fanaticism of the reforming zealot +were blended together in a common hostility to the Church and a common +resolve to substitute personal religion for its dogmatic and ecclesiastical +system. But it was this want of organization, this looseness and fluidity +of the new movement, that made it penetrate through every class of society. +Women as well as men became the preachers of the new sect. Lollardry had +its own schools, its own books; its pamphlets were passed everywhere from +hand to hand; scurrilous ballads which revived the old attacks of "Golias" +in the Angevin times upon the wealth and luxury of the clergy were sung at +every corner. Nobles like the Earl of Salisbury and at a later time Sir +John Oldcastle placed themselves openly at the head of the cause and threw +open their gates as a refuge for its missionaries. London in its hatred of +the clergy became fiercely Lollard, and defended a Lollard preacher who +ventured to advocate the new doctrines from the pulpit of St. Paul's. One +of its mayors, John of Northampton, showed the influence of the new +morality by the Puritan spirit in which he dealt with the morals of the +city. Compelled to act, as he said, by the remissness of the clergy who +connived for money at every kind of debauchery, he arrested the loose +women, cut off their hair, and carted them through the streets as objects +of public scorn. But the moral spirit of the new movement, though +infinitely its grander side, was less dangerous to the Church than its open +repudiation of the older doctrines and systems of Christendom. Out of the +floating mass of opinion which bore the name of Lollardry one faith +gradually evolved itself, a faith in the sole authority of the Bible as a +source of religious truth. The translation of Wyclif did its work. +Scripture, complains a canon of Leicester, "became a vulgar thing, and more +open to lay folk and women that knew how to read than it is wont to be to +clerks themselves." Consequences which Wyclif had perhaps shrunk from +drawing were boldly drawn by his disciples. The Church was declared to have +become apostate, its priesthood was denounced as no priesthood, its +sacraments as idolatry. + + +[Sidenote: Lollardry and the Church] + +It was in vain that the clergy attempted to stifle the new movement by +their old weapon of persecution. The jealousy entertained by the baronage +and gentry of every pretension of the Church to secular power foiled its +efforts to make persecution effective. At the moment of the Peasant Revolt +Courtenay procured the enactment of a statute which commissioned the +sheriffs to seize all persons convicted before the bishops of preaching +heresy. But the statute was repealed in the next session, and the Commons +added to the bitterness of the blow by their protest that they considered +it "in nowise their interest to be more under the jurisdiction of the +prelates or more bound by them than their ancestors had been in times +past." Heresy indeed was still a felony by the common law, and if as yet we +meet with no instances of the punishment of heretics by the fire it was +because the threat of such a death was commonly followed by the recantation +of the Lollard. But the restriction of each bishop's jurisdiction within +the limits of his own diocese made it impossible to arrest the wandering +preachers of the new doctrine, and the civil punishment--even if it had +been sanctioned by public opinion--seems to have long fallen into +desuetude. Experience proved to the prelates that few sheriffs would arrest +on the mere warrant of an ecclesiastical officer, and that no royal court +would issue the writ "for the burning of a heretic" on a bishop's +requisition. But powerless as the efforts of the Church were for purposes +of repression, they were effective in rousing the temper of the Lollards +into a bitter fanaticism. The heretics delighted in outraging the religious +sense of their day. One Lollard gentleman took home the sacramental wafer +and lunched on it with wine and oysters. Another flung some images of the +saints into his cellar. The Lollard preachers stirred up riots by the +virulence of their preaching against the friars. But they directed even +fiercer invectives against the wealth and secularity of the great +Churchmen. In a formal petition which was laid before Parliament in 1395 +they mingled denunciations of the riches of the clergy with an open +profession of disbelief in transubstantiation, priesthood, pilgrimages, and +image-worship, and a demand, which illustrates the strange medley of +opinions which jostled together in the new movement, that war might be +declared unchristian and that trades such as those of the goldsmith or the +armourer, which were contrary to apostolical poverty, might be banished +from the realm. They contended (and it is remarkable that a Parliament of +the next reign adopted the statement) that from the superfluous revenues of +the Church, if once they were applied to purposes of general utility, the +king might maintain fifteen earls, fifteen hundred knights, and six +thousand squires, besides endowing a hundred hospitals for the relief of +the poor. + + +[Sidenote: Disasters of the War] + +The distress of the landowners, the general disorganization of the country, +in every part of which bands of marauders were openly defying the law, the +panic of the Church and of society at large as the projects of the Lollards +shaped themselves into more daring and revolutionary forms, added a fresh +keenness to the national discontent at the languid and inefficient +prosecution of the war. The junction of the French and Spanish fleets had +made them masters of the seas, and what fragments were left of Guienne lay +at their mercy. The royal Council strove to detach the House of Luxemburg +from, the French alliance by winning for Richard the hand of Anne, a +daughter of the late Emperor Charles the Fourth who had fled at Crécy, and +sister of King Wenzel of Bohemia who was now king of the Romans. But the +marriage remained without political result, save that the Lollard books +which were sent into their native country by the Bohemian servants of the +new queen stirred the preaching of John Huss and the Hussite wars. Nor was +English policy more successful in Flanders. Under Philip van Arteveldt, the +son of the leader of 1345, the Flemish towns again sought the friendship of +England against France, but at the close of 1382 the towns were defeated +and their leader slain in the great French victory of Rosbecque. An +expedition to Flanders in the following year under the warlike Bishop of +Norwich turned out a mere plunder-raid and ended in utter failure. A short +truce only gave France the leisure to prepare a counter-blow by the +despatch of a small but well-equipped force under John de Vienne to +Scotland in 1385. Thirty thousand Scots joined in the advance of this force +over the border: and though northern England rose with a desperate effort +and an English army penetrated as far as Edinburgh in the hope of bringing +the foe to battle, it was forced to fall back without an encounter. +Meanwhile France dealt a more terrible blow in the reduction of Ghent. The +one remaining market for English commerce was thus closed up, while the +forces which should have been employed in saving Ghent and in the +protection of the English shores against the threat of invasion were +squandered by John of Gaunt in a war which he was carrying on alone the +Spanish frontier in pursuit of the visionary crown which he claimed in his +wife's right. The enterprise showed that the Duke had now abandoned the +hope of directing affairs at home and was seeking a new sphere of activity +abroad. To drive him from the realm had been from the close of the Peasant +Revolt the steady purpose of the councillors who now surrounded the young +king, of his favourite Robert de Vere and his Chancellor Michael de la +Pole, who was raised in 1385 to the Earldom of Suffolk. The Duke's friends +were expelled from office; John of Northampton, the head of his adherents +among the Commons, was thrown into prison; the Duke himself was charged +with treason and threatened with arrest. In 1386 John of Gaunt abandoned +the struggle and sailed for Spain. + + +[Sidenote: Temper of the Court] + +Richard himself took part in these measures against the Duke. He was now +twenty, handsome and golden-haired, with a temper capable of great actions +and sudden bursts of energy but indolent and unequal. The conception of +kingship in which he had been reared made him regard the constitutional +advance which had gone on during the war as an invasion of the rights of +his Crown. He looked on the nomination of the royal Council and the great +officers of state by the two Houses or the supervision of the royal +expenditure by the Commons as Infringements on the prerogative which only +the pressure of the war and the weakness of a minority had forced the Crown +to bow to. The judgement of his councillors was one with that of the king. +Vere was no mere royal favourite; he was a great noble and of ancient +lineage. Michael de la Pole was a man of large fortune and an old servant +of the Crown; he had taken part in the war for thirty years, and had been +admiral and captain of Calais. But neither were men to counsel the young +king wisely in his effort to obtain independence at once of Parliament and +of the great nobles. His first aim had been to break the pressure of the +royal house itself, and in his encounter with John of Gaunt he had proved +successful. But the departure of the Duke of Lancaster only called to the +front his brother and his son. Thomas of Woodstock, the Duke of Gloucester, +had inherited much of the lands and the influence of the old house of +Bohun. Round Henry, Earl of Derby, the son of John of Gaunt by Blanche of +Lancaster, the old Lancastrian party of constitutional opposition was once +more forming itself. The favour shown to the followers of Wyclif at the +Court threw on the side of this new opposition the bulk of the bishops and +Churchmen. Richard himself showed no sympathy with the Lollards, but the +action of her Bohemian servants shows the tendencies of his queen. Three +members of the royal Council were patrons of the Lollards, and the Earl of +Salisbury, a favourite with the king, was their avowed head. The Commons +displayed no hostility to the Lollards nor any zeal for the Church; but the +lukewarm prosecution of the war, the profuse expenditure of the Court, and +above all the manifest will of the king to free himself from Parliamentary +control, estranged the Lower House. Richard's haughty words told their own +tale. When the Parliament of 1385 called for an enquiry every year into the +royal household, the king replied he would enquire when he pleased. When it +prayed to know the names of the officers of state, he answered that he +would change them at his will. + + +[Sidenote: The Lords Appellant] + +The burthen of such answers and of the policy they revealed fell on the +royal councillors, and the departure of John of Gaunt forced the new +opposition into vigorous action. The Parliament of 1386 called for the +removal of Suffolk. Richard replied that he would not for such a prayer +dismiss a turnspit of his kitchen. The Duke of Gloucester and Bishop +Arundel of Ely were sent by the Houses as their envoys, and warned the king +that should a ruler refuse to govern with the advice of his lords and by +mad counsels work out his private purposes it was lawful to depose him. The +threat secured Suffolk's removal; he was impeached for corruption and +maladministration, and condemned to forfeiture and imprisonment. It was +only by submitting to the nomination of a Continual Council, with the Duke +of Gloucester at its head, that Richard could obtain a grant of subsidies. +But the Houses were no sooner broken up than Suffolk was released, and in +1387 the young king rode through the country calling on the sheriffs to +raise men against the barons, and bidding them suffer no knight of the +shire to be returned for the next Parliament "save one whom the King and +his Council chose." The general ill-will foiled both his efforts: and he +was forced to take refuge in an opinion of five of the judges that the +Continual Council was unlawful, the sentence on Suffolk erroneous, and that +the Lords and Commons had no power to remove a king's servant. Gloucester +answered the challenge by taking up arms, and a general refusal to fight +for the king forced Richard once more to yield. A terrible vengeance was +taken on his supporters in the recent schemes. In the Parliament of 1388 +Gloucester, with the four Earls of Derby, Arundel, Warwick, and Nottingham, +appealed on a charge of high treason Suffolk and De Vere, the Archbishop of +York, the Chief Justice Tresilian, and Sir Nicholas Bramber. The first two +fled, Suffolk to France, De Vere after a skirmish at Radcot Bridge to +Ireland; but the Archbishop was deprived of his see, Bramber beheaded, and +Tresilian hanged. The five judges were banished, and Sir Simon Burley with +three other members of the royal household sent to the block. + + +[Sidenote: Richard's Rule] + +At the prayer of the "Wonderful Parliament," as some called this assembly, +or as others with more justice "The Merciless Parliament," it was provided +that all officers of state should henceforth be named in Parliament or by +the Continual Council. Gloucester remained at the head of the latter body, +but his power lasted hardly a year. In May 1389 Richard found himself +strong enough to break down the government by a word. Entering the Council +he suddenly asked his uncle how old he was. "Your highness," answered +Gloucester, "is in your twenty-fourth year!" "Then I am old enough to +manage my own affairs," said Richard coolly; "I have been longer under +guardianship than any ward in my realm. I thank you for your past services, +my lords, but I need them no more." The resolution was welcomed by the +whole country; and Richard justified the country's hopes by wielding his +new power with singular wisdom and success. He refused to recall De Vere or +the five judges. The intercession of John of Gaunt on his return from Spain +brought about a full reconciliation with the Lords Appellant. A truce was +concluded with France, and its renewal year after year enabled the king to +lighten the burthen of taxation. Richard announced his purpose to govern by +advice of Parliament; he soon restored the Lords Appellant to his Council, +and committed the chief offices of state to great Churchmen like Wykeham +and Arundel. A series of statutes showed the activity of the Houses. A +Statute of Provisors which re-enacted those of Edward the Third was passed +in 1390; the Statute of Præmunire, which punished the obtaining of bulls or +other instruments from Rome with forfeiture, in 1393. The lords were +bridled anew by a Statute of Maintenance, which forbade their violently +supporting other men's causes in courts of justice, and giving "livery" to +a host of retainers. The Statute of Uses in 1391, which rendered illegal +the devices which had been invented to frustrate that of Mortmain, showed +the same resolve to deal firmly with the Church. A reform of the staple and +other mercantile enactments proved the king's care for trade. Throughout +the legislation of these eight years we see the same tone of coolness and +moderation. Eager as he was to win the good-will of the Parliament and the +Church, Richard refused to bow to the panic of the landowners or to second +the persecution of the priesthood. The demands of the Parliament that +education should be denied to the sons of villeins was refused. Lollardry +as a social danger was held firmly at bay, and in 1387 the king ordered +Lollard books to be seized and brought before the Council. But the royal +officers showed little zeal in aiding the bishops to seize or punish the +heretical teachers. + + +[Sidenote: French and English] + +It was in the period of peace which was won for the country by the wisdom +and decision of its young king that England listened to the voice of her +first great singer. The work of Chaucer marks the final settlement of the +English tongue. The close of the great movement towards national unity +which had been going on ever since the Conquest was shown in the middle of +the fourteenth century by the disuse, even amongst the nobler classes, of +the French tongue. In spite of the efforts of the grammar schools and of +the strength of fashion English won its way throughout the reign of Edward +the Third to its final triumph in that of his grandson. It was ordered to +be used in courts of law in 1362 "because the French tongue is much +unknown," and in the following year it was employed by the Chancellor in +opening Parliament. Bishops began to preach in English, and the English +tracts of Wyclif made it once more a literary tongue. We see the general +advance in two passages from writers of Edward's and Richard's reigns. +"Children in school," says Higden, a writer of the first period, "against +the usage and manner of all other nations be compelled for to leave their +own language and for to construe their lessons and their things in French, +and so they have since the Normans first came into England. Also +gentlemen's children be taught for to speak French from the time that they +be rocked in their cradle, and know how to speak and play with a child's +toy; and uplandish (or country) men will liken themselves to gentlemen, and +strive with, great busyness to speak French for to be more told of." "This +manner," adds John of Trevisa, Higden's translator in Richard's time, "was +much used before the first murrain (the Black Death of 1349), and is since +somewhat changed. For John Cornwal, a master of grammar, changed the lore +in grammar school and construing of French into English; and Richard +Pencrych learned this manner of teaching of him, as other men did of +Pencrych. So that now, the year of our Lord 1385 and of the second King +Richard after the Conquest nine, in all the grammar schools of England +children leaveth French, and construeth and learneth in English. Also +gentlemen have now much left for to teach their children French." + + +[Sidenote: Chaucer] + +This drift towards a general use of the national tongue told powerfully on +literature. The influence of the French romances everywhere tended to make +French the one literary language at the opening of the fourteenth century, +and in England this influence had been backed by the French tone of the +court of Henry the Third and the three Edwards. But at the close of the +reign of Edward the Third the long French romances needed to be translated +even for knightly hearers. "Let clerks indite in Latin," says the author of +the "Testament of Love," "and let Frenchmen in their French also indite +their quaint terms, for it is kindly to their mouths; and let us show our +fantasies in such wordes as we learned of our mother's tongue." But the new +national life afforded nobler materials than "fantasies" now for English +literature. With the completion of the work of national unity had come the +completion of the work of national freedom. The vigour of English life +showed itself in the wide extension of commerce, in the progress of the +towns, and the upgrowth of a free yeomanry. It gave even nobler signs of +its activity in the spirit of national independence and moral earnestness +which awoke at the call of Wyclif. New forces of thought and feeling which +were destined to tell on every age of our later history broke their way +through the crust of feudalism in the socialist revolt of the Lollards, and +a sudden burst of military glory threw its glamour over the age of Crécy +and Poitiers. It is this new gladness of a great people which utters itself +in the verse of Geoffrey Chaucer. Chaucer was born about 1340, the son of a +London vintner who lived in Thames Street; and it was in London that the +bulk of his life was spent. His family, though not noble, seems to have +been of some importance, for from the opening of his career we find Chaucer +in close connexion with the Court. At sixteen he was made page to the wife +of Lionel of Clarence; at nineteen he first bore arms in the campaign of +1359. But he was luckless enough to be made prisoner; and from the time of +his release after the treaty of Brétigny he took no further share in the +military enterprises of his time. He seems again to have returned to +service about the Court, and it was now that his first poems made their +appearance, the "Compleynte to Pity" in 1368, and in 1369 the "Death of +Blanch the Duchesse," the wife of John of Gaunt who from this time at least +may be looked upon as his patron. It may have been to John's influence that +he owed his employment in seven diplomatic missions which were probably +connected with the financial straits of the Crown. Three of these, in 1372, +1374, and 1378, carried him to Italy. He visited Genoa and the brilliant +court of the Visconti at Milan; at Florence, where the memory of Dante, the +"great master" whom he commemorates so reverently in his verse, was still +living, he may have met Boccaccio; at Padua, like his own clerk of +Oxenford, he possibly caught the story of Griseldis from the lips of +Petrarca. + + +[Sidenote: His Early Poems] + +It was these visits to Italy which gave us the Chaucer whom we know. From +that hour his work stands out in vivid contrast with the poetic literature +from the heart of which it sprang. The long French romances were the +product of an age of wealth and ease, of indolent curiosity, of a fanciful +and self-indulgent sentiment. Of the great passions which gave life to the +Middle Ages, that of religious enthusiasm had degenerated into the conceits +of Mariolatry, that of war into the extravagances of Chivalry. Love indeed +remained; it was the one theme of troubadour and trouveur; but it was a +love of refinement, of romantic follies, of scholastic discussions, of +sensuous enjoyment--a plaything rather than a passion. Nature had to +reflect the pleasant indolence of man; the song of the minstrel moved +through a perpetual May-time; the grass was ever green; the music of the +lark and the nightingale rang out from field and thicket. There was a gay +avoidance of all that is serious, moral, or reflective in man's life: life +was too amusing to be serious, too piquant, too sentimental, too full of +interest and gaiety and chat. It was an age of talk: "mirth is none," says +Chaucer's host, "to ride on by the way dumb as a stone "; and the Trouveur +aimed simply at being the most agreeable talker of his day. His romances, +his rimes of Sir Tristram, his Romance of the Rose, are full of colour and +fantasy, endless in detail, but with a sort of gorgeous idleness about +their very length, the minuteness of their description of outer things, the +vagueness of their touch when it passes to the subtler inner world. + +It was with this literature that Chaucer had till now been familiar, and it +was this which he followed in his earlier work. But from the time of his +visits to Milan and Genoa his sympathies drew him not to the dying verse of +France but to the new and mighty upgrowth of poetry in Italy. Dante's eagle +looks at him from the sun. "Fraunces Petrark, the laureat poete," is to him +one "whose rethorique sweete enlumyned al Itail of poetrie." The "Troilus" +which he produced about 1382 is an enlarged English version of Boccaccio's +"Filostrato"; the Knight's Tale, whose first draft is of the same period, +bears slight traces of his Teseide. It was indeed the "Decameron" which +suggested the very form of the "Canterbury Tales," the earliest of which, +such as those of the Doctor, the Man of Law, the Clerk, the Prioress, the +Franklin, and the Squire, may probably be referred like the Parliament of +Foules and the House of Fame to this time of Chaucer's life. But even while +changing, as it were, the front of English poetry Chaucer preserves his own +distinct personality. If he quizzes in the rime of Sir Thopaz the wearisome +idleness of the French romance he retains all that was worth retaining of +the French temper, its rapidity and agility of movement, its lightness and +brilliancy of touch, its airy mockery, its gaiety and good humour, its +critical coolness and self-control. The French wit quickens in him more +than in any English writer the sturdy sense and shrewdness of our national +disposition, corrects its extravagance, and relieves its somewhat ponderous +morality. If on the other hand he echoes the joyous carelessness of the +Italian tale, he tempers it with the English seriousness. As he follows +Boccaccio all his changes are on the side of purity; and when the Troilus +of the Florentine ends with the old sneer at the changeableness of woman +Chaucer bids us "look Godward," and dwells on the unchangeableness of +Heaven. + + +[Sidenote: The Canterbury Tales] + +The genius of Chaucer however was neither French nor Italian, whatever +element it might borrow from either literature, but English to the core; +and from the year 1384 all trace of foreign influence dies away. Chaucer +had now reached the climax of his poetic power. He was a busy, practical +worker, Comptroller of the Customs in 1374, of the Petty Customs in 1382, a +member of the Commons in the Parliament of 1386. The fall of the Duke of +Lancaster from power may have deprived him of employment for a time, but +from 1389 to 1391 he was Clerk of the Royal Works, busy with repairs and +building at Westminster, Windsor, and the Tower. His air indeed was that of +a student rather than of a man of the world. A single portrait has +preserved for us his forked beard, his dark-coloured dress, the knife and +pen-case at his girdle, and we may supplement this portrait by a few vivid +touches of his own. The sly, elvish face, the quick walk, the plump figure +and portly waist were those of a genial and humorous man; but men jested at +his silence, his abstraction, his love of study. "Thou lookest as thou +wouldest find an hare," laughs the host, "and ever on the ground I see thee +stare." He heard little of his neighbours' talk when office work in Thames +Street was over. "Thou goest home to thy own house anon, and also dumb as +any stone thou sittest at another book till fully dazed is thy look, and +livest thus as an heremite, although," he adds slyly, "thy abstinence is +lite," or little. But of this seeming abstraction from the world about him +there is not a trace in Chaucer's verse. We see there how keen his +observation was, how vivid and intense his sympathy with nature and the men +among whom he moved. "Farewell, my book," he cried as spring came after +winter and the lark's song roused him at dawn to spend hours gazing alone +on the daisy whose beauty he sang. But field and stream and flower and +bird, much as he loved them, were less to him than man. No poetry was over +more human than Chaucer's, none ever came more frankly and genially home to +men than his "Canterbury Tales." + +It was the continuation and revision of this work which mainly occupied him +during the years from 1384 to 1391. Its best stories, those of the Miller, +the Reeve, the Cook, the Wife of Bath, the Merchant, the Friar, the Nun, +the Priest, and the Pardoner, are ascribed to this period, as well as the +Prologue. The framework which Chaucer chose--that of a pilgrimage from +London to Canterbury--not only enabled him to string these tales together, +but lent itself admirably to the peculiar characteristics of his poetic +temper, his dramatic versatility and the universality of his sympathy. His +tales cover the whole field of mediæval poetry; the legend of the priest, +the knightly romance, the wonder-tale of the traveller, the broad humour of +the fabliau, allegory and apologue, all are there. He finds a yet wider +scope for his genius in the persons who tell these stories, the thirty +pilgrims who start in the May morning from the Tabard in Southwark--thirty +distinct figures, representatives of every class of English society from +the noble to the ploughman. We see the "verray perfight gentil knight" in +cassock and coat of mail, with his curly-headed squire beside him, fresh as +the May morning, and behind them the brown-faced yeoman in his coat and +hood of green with a mighty bow in his hand. A group of ecclesiastics light +up for us the mediaeval church--the brawny hunt-loving monk, whose bridle +jingles as loud and clear as the chapel-bell--the wanton friar, first among +the beggars and harpers of the country-side--the poor parson, threadbare, +learned, and devout, ("Christ's lore and his apostles twelve he taught, and +first he followed it himself")--the summoner with his fiery face--the +pardoner with his wallet "bretfull of pardons, come from Rome all hot"--the +lively prioress with her courtly French lisp, her soft little red mouth, +and "Amor vincit omnia" graven on her brooch. Learning is there in the +portly person of the doctor of physic, rich with the profits of the +pestilence--the busy serjeant-of-law, "that ever seemed busier than he +was"--the hollow-cheeked clerk of Oxford with his love of books and short +sharp sentences that disguise a latent tenderness which breaks out at last +in the story of Griseldis. Around them crowd types of English industry: the +merchant; the franklin in whose house "it snowed of meat and drink"; the +sailor fresh from frays in the Channel; the buxom wife of Bath; the +broad-shouldered miller; the haberdasher, carpenter, weaver, dyer, +tapestry-maker, each in the livery of his craft; and last the honest +ploughman who would dyke and delve for the poor without hire. It is the +first time in English poetry that we are brought face to face not with +characters or allegories or reminiscences of the past, but with living and +breathing men, men distinct in temper and sentiment as in face or costume +or mode of speech; and with this distinctness of each maintained throughout +the story by a thousand shades of expression and action. It is the first +time, too, that we meet with the dramatic power which not only creates each +character but combines it with its fellows, which not only adjusts each +tale or jest to the temper of the person who utters it but fuses all into a +poetic unity. It is life in its largeness, its variety, its complexity, +which surrounds us in the "Canterbury Tales." In some of the stories +indeed, which were composed no doubt at an earlier time, there is the +tedium of the old romance or the pedantry of the schoolman; but taken as a +whole the poem is the work not of a man of letters but of a man of action. +Chaucer has received his training from war, courts, business, travel--a +training not of books but of life. And it is life that he loves--the +delicacy of its sentiment, the breadth of its farce, its laughter and its +tears, the tenderness of its Griseldis or the Smollett-like adventures of +the miller and the clerks. It is this largeness of heart, this wide +tolerance, which enables him to reflect man for us as none but Shakspere +has ever reflected him, and to do this with a pathos, a shrewd sense and +kindly humour, a freshness and joyousness of feeling, that even Shakspere +has not surpassed. + + +[Sidenote: The French Marriage] + +The last ten years of Chaucer's life saw a few more tales added to the +Pilgrimage and a few poems to his work; but his power was lessening, and in +1400 he rested from his labours in his last home, a house in the garden of +St. Mary's Chapel at Westminster. His body rests within the Abbey church. +It was strange that such a voice should have awakened no echo in the +singers that follow, but the first burst of English song died as suddenly +in Chaucer as the hope and glory of his age. He died indeed at the moment +of a revolution which was the prelude to years of national discord and +national suffering. Whatever may have been the grounds of his action, the +rule of Richard the Second after his assumption of power had shown his +capacity for self-restraint. Parted by his own will from the counsellors of +his youth, calling to his service the Lords Appellant, reconciled alike +with the baronage and the Parliament, the young king promised to be among +the noblest and wisest rulers that England had seen. But the violent and +haughty temper which underlay this self-command showed itself from time to +time. The Earl of Arundel and his brother the bishop stood in the front +rank of the party which had coerced Richard in his early days; their +influence was great in the new government. But a strife between the Earl +and John of Gaunt revived the king's resentment at the past action of this +house; and at the funeral of Anne of Bohemia in 1394 a fancied slight +roused Richard to a burst of passion. He struck the Earl so violently that +the blow drew blood. But the quarrel was patched up, and the reconciliation +was followed by the elevation of Bishop Arundel to the vacant Primacy in +1396. In the preceding year Richard had crossed to Ireland and in a short +autumn campaign reduced its native chiefs again to submission. Fears of +Lollard disturbances soon recalled him, but these died at the king's +presence, and Richard was able to devote himself to the negotiation of a +marriage which was to be the turning-point of his reign. His policy +throughout the recent years had been a policy of peace. It was war which +rendered the Crown helpless before the Parliament, and peace was needful if +the work of constant progress was not to be undone. But the short truces, +renewed from time to time, which he had as yet secured were insufficient +for this purpose, for so long as war might break out in the coming year the +king hands were tied. The impossibility of renouncing the claim to the +French crown indeed made a formal peace impossible, but its ends might be +secured by a lengthened truce, and it was with a view to this that Richard +in 1396 wedded Isabella, the daughter of Charles the Sixth of France. The +bride was a mere child, but she brought with her a renewal of the truce for +five-and-twenty years. + + +[Sidenote: Change of Richard's temper] + +The match was hardly concluded when the veil under which Richard had +shrouded his real temper began to be dropped. His craving for absolute +power, such as he witnessed in the Court of France, was probably +intensified from this moment by a mental disturbance which gathered +strength as the months went on. As if to preclude any revival of the war +Richard had surrendered Cherbourg to the king of Navarre and now gave back +Brest to the Duke of Britanny. He was said to have pledged himself at his +wedding to restore Calais to the king of France. But once freed from all +danger of such a struggle the whole character of his rule seemed to change. +His court became as crowded and profuse as his grandfather's. Money was +recklessly borrowed and as recklessly squandered. The king's pride became +insane, and it was fed with dreams of winning the Imperial crown through +the deposition of Wenzel of Bohemia. The councillors with whom he had acted +since his resumption of authority saw themselves powerless. John of Gaunt +indeed still retained influence over the king. It was the support of the +Duke of Lancaster after his return from his Spanish campaign which had +enabled Richard to hold in check the Duke of Gloucester and the party that +he led; and the anxiety of the young king to retain this support was seen +in his grant of Aquitaine to his uncle, and in the legitimation of the +Beauforts, John's children by a mistress, Catherine Swinford, whom he +married after the death of his second wife. The friendship of the Duke +brought with it the adhesion of one even more important, his son Henry, the +Earl of Derby. As heir through his mother, Blanche of Lancaster, to the +estates and influence of the Lancastrian house, Henry was the natural head +of a constitutional opposition, and his weight was increased by a marriage +with the heiress of the house of Bohun. He had taken a prominent part in +the overthrow of Suffolk and De Vere, and on the king's resumption of power +he had prudently withdrawn from the realm on a vow of Crusade, had touched +at Barbary, visited the Holy Sepulchre, and in 1390 sailed for Dantzig and +taken part in a campaign against the heathen Prussians with the Teutonic +Knights. Since his return he had silently followed in his father's track. +But the counsels of John of Gaunt were hardly wiser than of old; Arundel +had already denounced his influence as a hurtful one; and in the events +which were now to hurry quickly on he seems to have gone hand in hand with +the king. + + +[Sidenote: Richard's Tyranny] + +A new uneasiness was seen in the Parliament of 1397, and the Commons prayed +for a redress of the profusion of the Court. Richard at once seized on the +opportunity for a struggle. He declared himself grieved that his subjects +should "take on themselves any ordinance or governance of the person of the +King or his hostel or of any persons of estate whom he might be pleased to +have in his company." The Commons were at once overawed; they owned that +the cognizance of such matters belonged wholly to the king, and gave up to +the Duke of Lancaster the name of the member, Sir Thomas Haxey, who had +brought forward this article of their prayer. The lords pronounced him a +traitor, and his life was only saved by the fact that he was a clergyman +and by the interposition of Archbishop Arundel. The Earl of Arundel and the +Duke of Gloucester at once withdrew from Court. They stood almost alone, +for of the royal house the Dukes of Lancaster and York with their sons the +Earls of Derby and Rutland were now with the king, and the old coadjutor of +Gloucester, the Earl of Nottingham, was in high favour with him. The Earl +of Warwick alone joined them, and he was included in a charge of conspiracy +which was followed by the arrest of the three. A fresh Parliament in +September was packed with royal partizans, and Richard moved boldly to his +end. The pardons of the Lords Appellant were revoked. Archbishop Arundel +was impeached and banished from the realm, he was transferred by the Pope +to the See of St. Andrews, and the Primacy given to Roger Walden. The Earl +of Arundel, accused before the Peers under John of Gaunt as High Steward, +was condemned and executed in a single day. Warwick, who owned the truth of +the charge, was condemned to perpetual imprisonment. The Duke of Gloucester +was saved from a trial by a sudden death in his prison at Calais. A new +Parliament at Shrewsbury in the opening of 1398 completed the king's work. +In three days it declared null the proceedings of the Parliament of 1388, +granted to the king a subsidy on wool and leather for his life, and +delegated its authority to a standing committee of eighteen members from +both Houses with power to continue their sittings even after the +dissolution of the Parliament and to "examine and determine all matters and +subjects which had been moved in the presence of the king with all the +dependencies thereof." + + +[Sidenote: Henry of Lancaster] + +In a single year the whole colour of Richard's government had changed. He +had revenged himself on the men who had once held him down, and his revenge +was hardly taken before he disclosed a plan of absolute government. He had +used the Parliament to strike down the Primate as well as the greatest +nobles of the realm and to give him a revenue for life which enabled him to +get rid of Parliament itself, for the Permanent Committee which it named +were men devoted, as Richard held, to his cause. John of Gaunt was at its +head, and the rest of its lords were those who had backed the king in his +blow at Gloucester and the Arundels. Two however were excluded. In the +general distribution of rewards which followed Gloucester's overthrow the +Earl of Derby had been made Duke of Hereford, the Earl of Nottingham Duke +of Norfolk. But at the close of 1397 the two Dukes charged each other with +treasonable talk as they rode between Brentford and London, and the +Permanent Committee ordered the matter to be settled by a single combat. In +September 1398 the Dukes entered the lists; but Richard forbade the duel, +sentenced the Duke of Norfolk to banishment for life, and Henry of +Lancaster to exile for ten years. As Henry left London the streets were +crowded with people weeping for his fate; some followed him even to the +coast. But his withdrawal removed the last check on Richard's despotism. He +forced from every tenant of the Crown an oath to recognize the acts of his +Committee as valid, and to oppose any attempts to alter or revoke them. +Forced loans, the sale of charters of pardon to Gloucester's adherents, the +outlawry of seven counties at once on the plea that they had supported his +enemies and must purchase pardon, a reckless interference with the course +of justice, roused into new life the old discontent. Even this might have +been defied had not Richard set an able and unscrupulous leader at its +head. Leave had been given to Henry of Lancaster to receive his father's +inheritance on the death of John of Gaunt, in February 1399. But an +ordinance of the Continual Committee annulled this permission and Richard +seized the Lancastrian estates. Archbishop Arundel at once saw the chance +of dealing blow for blow. He hastened to Paris and pressed the Duke to +return to England, telling him how all men there looked for it, "especially +the Londoners, who loved him a hundred times more than they did the king." +For a while Henry remained buried in thought, "leaning on a window +overlooking a garden"; but Arundel's pressure at last prevailed, he made +his way secretly to Britanny, and with fifteen knights set sail from +Vannes. + + +[Sidenote: Ireland and the Pale] + +What had really decided him was the opportunity offered by Richard's +absence from the realm. From the opening of his reign the king's attention +had been constantly drawn to his dependent lordship of Ireland. More than +two hundred years had passed away since the troubles which followed the +murder of Archbishop Thomas forced Henry the Second to leave his work of +conquest unfinished, and the opportunity for a complete reduction of the +island which had been lost then had never returned. When Henry quitted +Ireland indeed Leinster was wholly in English hands, Connaught bowed to a +nominal acknowledgement of the English overlordship, and for a while the +work of conquest seemed to go steadily on. John de Courcy penetrated into +Ulster and established himself at Downpatrick; and Henry planned the +establishment of his youngest son, John, as Lord of Ireland. But the levity +of the young prince, who mocked the rude dresses of the native chieftains +and plucked them in insult by the beard, soon forced his father to recall +him; and in the continental struggle which soon opened on the Angevin +kings, as in the constitutional struggle within England itself which +followed it, all serious purpose of completing the conquest of Ireland was +forgotten. Nothing indeed but the feuds and weakness of the Irish tribes +enabled the adventurers to hold the districts of Drogheda, Dublin, Wexford, +Waterford, and Cork, which formed what was thenceforth known as "the +English Pale." In all the history of Ireland no event has proved more +disastrous than this half-finished conquest. Had the Irish driven their +invaders into the sea, or the English succeeded in the complete reduction +of the island, the misery of its after ages might have been avoided. A +struggle such as that in which Scotland drove out its conquerors might have +produced a spirit of patriotism and national union which would have formed +a people out of the mass of warring clans. A conquest such as that in which +the Normans made England their own would have spread at any rate the law, +the order, the civilization of the conquering country over the length and +breadth of the conquered. Unhappily Ireland, while powerless to effect its +entire deliverance, was strong enough to hold its assailants partially at +bay. The country was broken into two halves whose conflict has never +ceased. So far from either giving elements of civilization or good +government to the other, conqueror and conquered reaped only degradation +from the ceaseless conflict. The native tribes lost whatever tendency to +union or social progress had survived the invasion of the Danes. Their +barbarism was intensified by their hatred of the more civilized intruders. +But these intruders themselves, penned within the narrow limits of the +Pale, brutalized by a merciless conflict, cut off from contact with the +refining influences of a larger world, sank rapidly to the level of the +barbarism about them: and the lawlessness, the ferocity, the narrowness of +feudalism broke out unchecked in this horde of adventurers who held the +land by their sword. + + +[Sidenote: English and Irish] + +From the first the story of the English Pale was a story of degradation and +anarchy. It needed the stern vengeance of John, whose army stormed its +strongholds and drove its leading barons into exile, to preserve even their +fealty to the English Crown. John divided the Pale into counties and +ordered the observance of the English law; but the departure of his army +was the signal for a return of the disorder he had trampled under foot. +Between Englishmen and Irishmen went on a ceaseless and pitiless war. Every +Irishman without the Pale was counted by the English settlers an enemy and +a robber whose murder found no cognizance or punishment at the hands of the +law. Half the subsistence of the English barons was drawn from forays +across the border, and these forays were avenged by incursions of native +marauders which carried havoc at times to the very walls of Dublin. Within +the Pale itself the misery was hardly less. The English settlers were +harried and oppressed by their own baronage as much as by the Irish +marauders, while the feuds of the English lords wasted their strength and +prevented any effective combination either for common conquest or common +defence. So utter seemed their weakness that Robert Bruce saw in it an +opportunity for a counter-blow at his English assailants, and his victory +at Bannockburn was followed up by the despatch of a Scotch force to Ireland +with his brother Edward at its head. A general rising of the Irish welcomed +this deliverer; but the danger drove the barons of the Pale to a momentary +union, and in 1316 their valour was proved on the bloody field of Athenree +by the slaughter of eleven thousand of their foes and the almost complete +annihilation of the sept of the O'Connors. But with victory returned the +old anarchy and degradation. The barons of the Pale sank more and more into +Irish chieftains. The Fitz-Maurices, who became Earls of Desmond and whose +vast territory in Minister was erected into a County Palatine, adopted the +dress and manners of the natives around them. The rapid growth of this evil +was seen in the ruthless provisions by which Edward the Third strove to +check it in his Statute of Kilkenny. The Statute forbade the adoption of +the Irish language or name or dress by any man of English blood: it +enforced within the Pale the exclusive use of English law, and made the use +of the native or Brehon law, which was gaining ground, an act of treason; +it made treasonable any marriage of the Englishry with persons of Irish +race, or any adoption of English children by Irish foster-fathers. + + +[Sidenote: Richard in Ireland] + +But stern as they were these provisions proved fruitless to check the +fusion of the two races, while the growing independence of the Lords of the +Pale threw off all but the semblance of obedience to the English +government. It was this which stirred Richard to a serious effort for the +conquest and organization of the island. In 1386 he granted the "entire +dominion" of Ireland with the title of its Duke to Robert de Vere on +condition of his carrying out its utter reduction. But the troubles of the +reign soon recalled De Vere, and it was not till the truce with France had +freed his hands that the king again took up his projects of conquest. In +1394 he landed with an army at Waterford, and received the general +submission of the native chieftains. But the Lords of the Pale held +sullenly aloof; and Richard had no sooner quitted the island than the Irish +in turn refused to carry out their promise of quitting Leinster, and +engaged in a fresh contest with the Earl of March, whom the king had +proclaimed as his heir and left behind him as his lieutenant in Ireland. In +the summer of 1398 March was beaten and slain in battle: and Richard +resolved to avenge his cousin's death and complete the work he had begun by +a fresh invasion. He felt no apprehension of danger. At home his triumph +seemed complete. The death of Norfolk, the exile of Henry of Lancaster, +left the baronage without heads for any rising. He ensured, as he believed, +the loyalty of the great houses by the hostages of their blood whom he +carried with him, at whose head was Henry of Lancaster's son, the future +Henry the Fifth. The refusal of the Percies, the Earl of Northumberland and +his son Henry Percy or Hotspur, to obey his summons might have warned him +that danger was brewing in the north. Richard however took little heed. He +banished the Percies, who withdrew into Scotland; and sailed for Ireland at +the end of May, leaving his uncle the Duke of York regent in his stead. + + +[Sidenote: Landing of Henry] + +The opening of his campaign was indecisive, and it was not till fresh +reinforcements arrived at Dublin that the king could prepare for a march +into the heart of the island. But while he planned the conquest of Ireland +the news came that England was lost. Little more than a month had passed +after his departure when Henry of Lancaster entered the Humber and landed +at Ravenspur. He came, he said, to claim his heritage; and three of his +Yorkshire castles at once threw open their gates. The two great houses of +the north joined him at once. Ralph Neville, the Earl of Westmoreland, had +married his half-sister; the Percies came from their exile over the +Scottish border. As he pushed quickly to the south all resistance broke +down. The army which the Regent gathered refused to do hurt to the Duke; +London called him to her gates; and the royal Council could only march +hastily on Bristol in the hope of securing that port for the King's return. +But the town at once yielded to Henry's summons, the Regent submitted to +him, and with an army which grew at every step the Duke marched upon +Cheshire, where Richard's adherents were gathering in arms to meet the +king. Contrary winds had for a while kept Richard ignorant of his cousin's +progress, and even when the news reached him he was in a web of treachery. +The Duke of Albemarle, the son of the Regent Duke of York, was beside him, +and at his persuasion the King abandoned his first purpose of returning at +once, and sent the Earl of Salisbury to Conway while he himself waited to +gather his army and fleet. The six days he proposed to gather them in +became sixteen, and the delay proved fatal to his cause. As no news came of +Richard the Welshmen who flocked to Salisbury's camp dispersed on Henry's +advance to Chester. Henry was in fact master of the realm at the opening of +August when Richard at last sailed from Waterford and landed at Milford +Haven. + + +[Sidenote: Richard's capture] + +Every road was blocked, and the news that all was lost told on the thirty +thousand men he brought with him. In a single day but six thousand +remained, and even these dispersed when it was found that the King had +ridden off disguised as a friar to join the force which he believed to be +awaiting him in North Wales with Salisbury at its head. He reached +Caernarvon only to find this force already disbanded, and throwing himself +into the castle despatched his kinsmen, the Dukes of Exeter and Surrey, to +Chester to negotiate with Henry of Lancaster. But they were detained there +while the Earl of Northumberland pushed forward with a picked body of men, +and securing the castles of the coast at last sought an interview with +Richard at Conway. The King's confidence was still unbroken. He threatened +to raise a force of Welshmen and to put Lancaster to death. Deserted as he +was indeed, a King was in himself a power, and only the treacherous pledges +of the Earl induced him to set aside his plans for a reconciliation to be +brought about in Parliament and to move from Conway on the promise of a +conference with Henry at Flint. But he had no sooner reached the town than +he found himself surrounded by Lancaster's forces. "I am betrayed," he +cried, as the view of his enemies burst on him from the hill; "there are +pennons and banners in the valley." But it was too late for retreat. +Richard was seized and brought before his cousin. "I am come before my +time," said Lancaster, "but I will show you the reason. Your people, my +lord, complain that for the space of twenty years you have ruled them +harshly: however, if it please God, I will help you to rule them better." +"Fair cousin," replied the King, "since it pleases you, it pleases me +well." Then, breaking in private into passionate regrets that he had ever +spared his cousin's life, he suffered himself to be carried a prisoner +along the road to London. + +END OF VOL. II. + + + +***END OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK HISTORY OF THE ENGLISH PEOPLE, +VOLUME II (OF 8)*** + + +******* This file should be named 17038-8.txt or 17038-8.zip ******* + + +This and all associated files of various formats will be found in: +https://www.gutenberg.org/dirs/1/7/0/3/17038 + + + +Updated editions will replace the previous one--the old editions +will be renamed. + +Creating the works from public domain print editions means that no +one owns a United States copyright in these works, so the Foundation +(and you!) can copy and distribute it in the United States without +permission and without paying copyright royalties. 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You may copy it, give it away or +re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included +with this eBook or online at <a href = "https://www.gutenberg.org">www.gutenberg.org</a></pre> +<p class="noindent">Title: History of the English People, Volume II (of 8)</p> +<p class="noindent"> The Charter, 1216-1307; The Parliament, 1307-1400</p> +<p class="noindent">Author: John Richard Green</p> +<p class="noindent">Release Date: November 10, 2005 [eBook #17038]<br> +Most recently updated: May 20, 2008</p> +<p class="noindent">Language: English</p> +<p class="noindent">Character set encoding: ISO-8859-1</p> +<p class="noindent">***START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK HISTORY OF THE ENGLISH PEOPLE, VOLUME II (OF 8)***</p> +<br><br> +<h4>E-text prepared by Paul Murray<br> + and the Project Gutenberg Online Distributed Proofreading Team<br> + (https://www.pgdp.net/)</h4> +<br><br> +<table border=0 bgcolor="ddddee" cellpadding=10> + <tr> + <td valign="top"> + Note: + </td> + <td> + The index for the entire 8 volume + set of <i>History of the English People</i> was located + at the end of Volume VIII. For ease in + accessibility, it has been removed and produced as a + separate volume + (<a href="https://www.gutenberg.org/etext/25533">https://www.gutenberg.org/etext/25533</a>). </td> + </tr> +</table> +<br><br> +<hr class="pg" noshade> +<br> +<br> +<a name="TOP"></a> +<br> +<br> +<br> +<div class="titlepage"> +<span class="main">HISTORY<br>OF<br>THE ENGLISH PEOPLE</span> +<span class="sub">VOLUME II</span> + <div class="byline">BY <span class="docauthor">JOHN RICHARD GREEN, M.A.<br>HONORARY FELLOW OF JESUS COLLEGE, OXFORD</span> +</div> +<ul> +<li> +<a name="id4522754"></a>THE CHARTER, 1216-1307</li> +<li> +<a name="id4522760"></a>THE PARLIAMENT, 1307-1400</li> +</ul> + +<ul> +<li> +<a name="id4522779"></a><i>First Edition, Demy 8vo, November</i> 1877;<br> +</li> +<li> +<a name="id4522796"></a><i>Reprinted December</i> 1877, 1881, 1885, 1890.<br> +</li> +<li> +<a name="id4522812"></a><i>Eversley Edition,</i> 1895.<br> +</li> +</ul> + +London +MacMillan and Co. +and New York +1895 +</div> + + + +<div class="toc"><div class="chapters"> +<hr> +<div class="header">CONTENTS</div> +<table summary="Table of contents"> +<tr class="volume"><td><a href="#Vol2">VOLUME II</a></td></tr> +<tr class="book"> +<td><a href="#Bk3">BOOK III</a></td> +<td><a href="#Bk3">THE CHARTER</a></td> +<td><a href="#Bk3">1216-1307</a></td> +</tr> +<tr class="chapter"> +<td><a href="#Bk3-Ch2">CHAPTER II</a></td> +<td><a href="#Bk3-Ch2">HENRY THE THIRD</a></td> +<td><a href="#Bk3-Ch2">1216-1232</a></td> +</tr> +<tr class="chapter"> +<td><a href="#Bk3-Ch3">CHAPTER III</a></td> +<td><a href="#Bk3-Ch3">THE BARON'S WAR</a></td> +<td><a href="#Bk3-Ch3">1232-1272</a></td> +</tr> +<tr class="chapter"> +<td><a href="#Bk3-Ch4">CHAPTER IV</a></td> +<td><a href="#Bk3-Ch4">EDWARD THE FIRST</a></td> +<td><a href="#Bk3-Ch4">1272-1307</a></td> +</tr> +<tr class="book"> +<td><a href="#Bk4">BOOK IV</a></td> +<td><a href="#Bk4">THE PARLIAMENT</a></td> +<td><a href="#Bk4">1307-1461</a></td> +</tr> +<tr class="chapter"> +<td><a href="#Bk4-Auth"> </a></td> +<td><a href="#Bk4-Auth">AUTHORITIES FOR BOOK IV</a></td> +</tr> +<tr class="chapter"> +<td><a href="#Bk4-Ch1">CHAPTER I</a></td> +<td><a href="#Bk4-Ch1">EDWARD II</a></td> +<td><a href="#Bk4-Ch1">1307-1327</a></td> +</tr> +<tr class="chapter"> +<td><a href="#Bk4-Ch2">CHAPTER II</a></td> +<td><a href="#Bk4-Ch2">EDWARD THE THIRD</a></td> +<td><a href="#Bk4-Ch2">1327-1347</a></td> +</tr> +<tr class="chapter"> +<td><a href="#Bk4-Ch3">CHAPTER III</a></td> +<td><a href="#Bk4-Ch3">THE PEASANT REVOLT</a></td> +<td><a href="#Bk4-Ch3">1347-1381</a></td> +</tr> +<tr class="chapter"> +<td><a href="#Bk4-Ch4">CHAPTER IV</a></td> +<td><a href="#Bk4-Ch4">RICHARD THE SECOND</a></td> +<td><a href="#Bk4-Ch4">1381-1400</a></td> +</tr> +</table> +</div></div> + +<div class="toc"><div class="maps"> +<hr> +<div class="header">LIST OF MAPS</div> +<table summary="List of maps"> +<tr class="figure"><td><a href="images/v2-map-1.jpg">Scotland in 1290</a></td></tr> +<tr class="figure"><td></td></tr> +<tr class="figure"><td><a href="images/v2-map-2.jpg">France at the Treaty of Bretigny</a></td></tr> +<tr class="figure"><td></td></tr> +</table> +</div></div> + + + + +<span class="pagenum"><a name="-Page-2-001"></a>2-001]</span> + +<div class="volume"> +<div class="head"> +<hr> +<a name="Vol2"></a><ul> + +<li> +<a name="id4518028"></a>VOLUME II</li> + +</ul> +</div> + + + +<div class="book"> +<div class="head"> +<hr> +<a name="Bk3"></a><ul> + +<li> +<a name="id4518075"></a>BOOK III</li> +<li> +<a name="id4518081"></a>THE CHARTER</li> +<li> +<a name="id4518087"></a>1216-1307</li> + +</ul> +</div> + + + +<div class="chapter"> +<div class="head"> +<hr> +<a name="Bk3-Ch2"></a><ul> + +<li> +<a name="id4518137"></a>CHAPTER II</li> +<li> +<a name="id4518143"></a>HENRY THE THIRD</li> +<li> +<a name="id4518148"></a>1216-1232</li> + +</ul> +</div> + + + +<p> +<span class="sidenote">William Marshal</span> +</p> + +<p> +The death of John changed the whole face of +English affairs. His son, Henry of Winchester, +was but nine years old, and the pity which was +stirred by the child's helplessness was aided by a +sense of injustice in burthening him with the +iniquity of his father. At his death John had +driven from his side even the most loyal of his +barons; but William Marshal had clung to him to +the last, and with him was Gualo, the Legate of +Innocent's successor, Honorius the Third. The +position of Gualo as representative of the Papal +overlord of the realm was of the highest importance, +and his action showed the real attitude of +Rome towards English freedom. The boy-king +was hardly crowned at Gloucester when Legate +and Earl issued in his name the very Charter +against which his father had died fighting. Only + +<span class="pagenum"><a name="Vol2-Page-2-002"></a>2-002]</span> + +the clauses which regulated taxation and the +summoning of parliament were as yet declared to +be suspended. The choice of William Marshal as +"governor of King and kingdom" gave weight to +this step; and its effect was seen when the +contest was renewed in 1217. Lewis was at first +successful in the eastern counties, but the political +reaction was aided by jealousies which broke out +between the English and French nobles in his +force, and the first drew gradually away from him. +So general was the defection that at the opening +of summer William Marshal felt himself strong +enough for a blow at his foes. Lewis himself was +investing Dover, and a joint army of French and +English barons under the Count of Perche and +Robert Fitz-Walter was besieging Lincoln, when +gathering troops rapidly from the royal castles +the regent marched to the relief of the latter town. +Cooped up in its narrow streets and attacked at +once by the Earl and the garrison, the barons fled +in utter rout; the Count of Perche fell on the +field, Robert Fitz-Walter was taken prisoner. +Lewis at once retreated on London and called +for aid from France. But a more terrible defeat +crushed his remaining hopes. A small English +fleet which set sail from Dover under Hubert de +Burgh fell boldly on the reinforcements which +were crossing under escort of Eustace the Monk, +a well-known freebooter of the Channel. Some +incidents of the fight light up for us the naval + +<span class="pagenum"><a name="Vol2-Page-2-003"></a>2-003]</span> + +warfare of the time. From the decks of the +English vessels bowmen poured their arrows into +the crowded transports, others hurled quicklime +into their enemies' faces, while the more active +vessels crashed with their armed prows into the +sides of the French ships. The skill of the +mariners of the Cinque Ports turned the day +against the larger forces of their opponents, and +the fleet of Eustace was utterly destroyed. The +royal army at once closed upon London, but +resistance was really at an end. By a treaty concluded +at Lambeth in September Lewis promised +to withdraw from England on payment of a sum +which he claimed as debt; his adherents were +restored to their possessions, the liberties of London +and other towns confirmed, and the prisoners on +either side set at liberty. A fresh issue of the +Charter, though in its modified form, proclaimed +yet more clearly the temper and policy of the Earl +Marshal. +</p> + +<p> +<span class="sidenote">Hubert de Burgh</span> +</p> + +<p> +His death at the opening of 1219, after a year +spent in giving order to the realm, brought no +change in the system he had adopted. The control +of affairs passed into the hands of a new legate, +Pandulf, of Stephen Langton who had just returned +forgiven from Rome, and of the Justiciar, Hubert +de Burgh. It was a time of transition, and the +temper of the Justiciar was eminently transitional. +Bred in the school of Henry the Second, Hubert +had little sympathy with national freedom, and + +<span class="pagenum"><a name="Vol2-Page-2-004"></a>2-004]</span> + +though resolute to maintain the Charter he can +have had small love for it; his conception of good +government, like that of his master, lay in a wise +personal administration, in the preservation of +order and law. But he combined with this a +thoroughly English desire for national independence, +a hatred of foreigners, and a reluctance to +waste English blood and treasure in Continental +struggles. Able as he proved himself, his task +was one of no common difficulty. He was +hampered by the constant interference of Rome. +A Papal legate resided at the English court, and +claimed a share in the administration of the realm +as the representative of its overlord and as guardian +of the young sovereign. A foreign party too had +still a footing in the kingdom, for William Marshal +had been unable to rid himself of men like Peter +des Roches or Faukes de Breauté, who had fought +on the royal side in the struggle against Lewis. +Hubert had to deal too with the anarchy which +that struggle left behind it. From the time of +the Conquest the centre of England had been +covered with the domains of great houses, whose +longings were for feudal independence and whose +spirit of revolt had been held in check partly by +the stern rule of the kings and partly by the rise +of a baronage sprung from the Court and settled +for the most part in the North. The oppression +of John united both the earlier and these newer +houses in the struggle for the Charter. But the + +<span class="pagenum"><a name="Vol2-Page-2-005"></a>2-005]</span> + +character of each remained unchanged, and the +close of the struggle saw the feudal party break +out in their old lawlessness and defiance of the +Crown. +</p> + +<p> +<span class="sidenote">Order +restored</span> +</p> + +<p> +For a time the anarchy of Stephen's days +seemed to revive. But the Justiciar was resolute +to crush it, and he was backed by the strenuous +efforts of Stephen Langton. A new and solemn +coronation of the young king in 1220 was followed +by a demand for the restoration of the royal +castles which had been seized by the barons and +foreigners. The Earl of Chester, the head of the +feudal baronage, though he rose in armed rebellion, +quailed before the march of Hubert and +the Primate's threats of excommunication. A +more formidable foe remained in the Frenchman, +Faukes de Breauté, the sheriff of six counties, +with six royal castles in his hands, and allied +both with the rebel barons and Llewelyn of +Wales. But in 1224 his castle of Bedford was +besieged for two months; and on its surrender +the stern justice of Hubert hung the twenty-four +knights and their retainers who formed the +garrison before its walls. The blow was effectual; +the royal castles were surrendered by the barons, +and the land was once more at peace. Freed from +foreign soldiery, the country was freed also from +the presence of the foreign legate. Langton +wrested a promise from Rome that so long as he +lived no future legate should be sent to England, + +<span class="pagenum"><a name="Vol2-Page-2-006"></a>2-006]</span> + +and with Pandulf's resignation in 1221 the direct +interference of the Papacy in the government of +the realm came to an end. But even these services +of the Primate were small compared with his services +to English freedom. Throughout his life +the Charter was the first object of his care. The +omission of the articles which restricted the royal +power over taxation in the Charter which was +published at Henry's accession in 1216 was +doubtless due to the Archbishop's absence and +disgrace at Rome. The suppression of disorder +seems to have revived the older spirit of resistance +among the royal ministers; for when Langton +demanded a fresh confirmation of the Charter in +Parliament at London William Brewer, one of the +King's councillors, protested that it had been extorted +by force and was without legal validity. +"If you loved the King, William," the Primate +burst out in anger, "you would not throw a +stumbling-block in the way of the peace of the +realm." The young king was cowed by the +Archbishop's wrath, and promised observance of +the Charter. But it may have been their consciousness +of such a temper among the royal +councillors that made Langton and the baronage +demand two years later a fresh promulgation of +the Charter as the price of a subsidy, and Henry's +assent established the principle, so fruitful of constitutional +results, that redress of wrongs precedes +a grant to the Crown. +</p> + + + +<span class="pagenum"><a name="Vol2-Page-2-007"></a>2-007]</span> + + +<p> +<span class="sidenote">State of the +Church</span> +</p> + +<p> +These repeated sanctions of the Charter and +the government of the realm year after year in +accordance with its provisions were gradually +bringing the new freedom home to the mass of +Englishmen. But the sense of liberty was at this +time quickened and intensified by a religious +movement which stirred English society to its +depths. Never had the priesthood wielded such +boundless power over Christendom as in the days +of Innocent the Third and his immediate successors. +But its religious hold on the people was +loosening day by day. The old reverence for the +Papacy was fading away before the universal +resentment at its political ambition, its lavish use +of interdict and excommunication for purely +secular ends, its degradation of the most sacred +sentences into means of financial extortion. In +Italy the struggle that was opening between +Rome and Frederick the Second disclosed a spirit +of scepticism which among the Epicurean poets +of Florence denied the immortality of the soul +and attacked the very foundations of the faith +itself. In Southern Gaul, Languedoc and Provence +had embraced the heresy of the Albigenses +and thrown off all allegiance to the Papacy. Even +in England, though there were no signs as yet of +religious revolt, and though the political action +of Rome had been in the main on the side of +freedom, there was a spirit of resistance to its +interference with national concerns which broke + +<span class="pagenum"><a name="Vol2-Page-2-008"></a>2-008]</span> + +out in the struggle against John. "The Pope has +no part in secular matters," had been the reply of +London to the interdict of Innocent. And within +the English Church itself there was much to call +for reform. Its attitude in the strife for the +Charter as well as the after work of the Primate +had made it more popular than ever; but its +spiritual energy was less than its political. The +disuse of preaching, the decline of the monastic +orders into rich landowners, the non-residence +and ignorance of the parish priests, lowered the +religious influence of the clergy. The abuses of +the time foiled even the energy of such men as +Bishop Grosseteste of Lincoln. His constitutions +forbid the clergy to haunt taverns, to gamble, to +share in drinking bouts, to mix in the riot and +debauchery of the life of the baronage. But +such prohibitions witness to the prevalence of the +evils they denounce. Bishops and deans were +still withdrawn from their ecclesiastical duties to +act as ministers, judges, or ambassadors. Benefices +were heaped in hundreds at a time on royal +favourites like John Mansel. Abbeys absorbed +the tithes of parishes and then served them by +half-starved vicars, while exemptions purchased +from Rome shielded the scandalous lives of canons +and monks from all episcopal discipline. And +behind all this was a group of secular statesmen +and scholars, the successors of such critics as +Walter Map, waging indeed no open warfare with + +<span class="pagenum"><a name="Vol2-Page-2-009"></a>2-009]</span> + +the Church, but noting with bitter sarcasm its +abuses and its faults. +</p> + +<p> +<span class="sidenote">The Friars</span> +</p> + +<p> +To bring the world back again within the pale +of the Church was the aim of two religious orders +which sprang suddenly to life at the opening of +the thirteenth century. The zeal of the Spaniard +Dominic was roused at the sight of the lordly +prelates who sought by fire and sword to win the +Albigensian heretics to the faith. "Zeal," he +cried, "must be met by zeal, lowliness by lowliness, +false sanctity by real sanctity, preaching lies +by preaching truth." His fiery ardour and rigid +orthodoxy were seconded by the mystical piety, +the imaginative enthusiasm of Francis of Assisi. +The life of Francis falls like a stream of tender +light across the darkness of the time. In the +frescoes of Giotto or the verse of Dante we see +him take Poverty for his bride. He strips himself +of all, he flings his very clothes at his father's +feet, that he may be one with Nature and God. +His passionate verse claims the moon for his +sister and the sun for his brother, he calls on his +brother the Wind, and his sister the Water. His +last faint cry was a "Welcome, Sister Death!" +Strangely as the two men differed from each +other, their aim was the same--to convert the +heathen, to extirpate heresy, to reconcile knowledge +with orthodoxy, above all to carry the +Gospel to the poor. The work was to be done +by an utter reversal of the older monasticism, by + +<span class="pagenum"><a name="Vol2-Page-2-010"></a>2-010]</span> + +seeking personal salvation in effort for the salvation +of their fellow-men, by exchanging the solitary +of the cloister for the preacher, the monk +for the "brother" or friar. To force the new +"brethren" into entire dependence on those +among whom they laboured their vow of Poverty +was turned into a stern reality; the "Begging +Friars" were to subsist solely on alms, they might +possess neither money nor lands, the very houses +in which they lived were to be held in trust for +them by others. The tide of popular enthusiasm +which welcomed their appearance swept before it +the reluctance of Rome, the jealousy of the older +orders, the opposition of the parochial priesthood. +Thousands of brethren gathered in a few years +round Francis and Dominic; and the begging +preachers, clad in coarse frock of serge with a +girdle of rope round their waist, wandered barefooted +as missionaries over Asia, battled with +heresy in Italy and Gaul, lectured in the Universities, +and preached and toiled among the poor. +</p> + +<p> +<span class="sidenote">The Friars +and the +Towns</span> +</p> + +<p> +To the towns especially the coming of the Friars +was a religious revolution. They had been left +for the most part to the worst and most ignorant +of the clergy, the mass-priest, whose sole subsistence +lay in his fees. Burgher and artizan were +left to spell out what religious instruction they +might from the gorgeous ceremonies of the +Church's ritual or the scriptural pictures and +sculptures which were graven on the walls of its + +<span class="pagenum"><a name="Vol2-Page-2-011"></a>2-011]</span> + +minsters. We can hardly wonder at the burst of +enthusiasm which welcomed the itinerant preacher +whose fervid appeal, coarse wit, and familiar story +brought religion into the fair and the market +place. In England, where the Black Friars of +Dominic arrived in 1221, the Grey Friars of +Francis in 1224, both were received with the +same delight. As the older orders had chosen +the country, the Friars chose the town. They +had hardly landed at Dover before they made +straight for London and Oxford. In their ignorance +of the road the first two Grey Brothers lost +their way in the woods between Oxford and +Baldon, and fearful of night and of the floods +turned aside to a grange of the monks of Abingdon. +Their ragged clothes and foreign gestures, +as they prayed for hospitality, led the porter to +take them for jongleurs, the jesters and jugglers +of the day, and the news of this break in the +monotony of their lives brought prior, sacrist, and +cellarer to the door to welcome them and witness +their tricks. The disappointment was too much +for the temper of the monks, and the brothers +were kicked roughly from the gate to find their +night's lodging under a tree. But the welcome +of the townsmen made up everywhere for the ill-will +and opposition of both clergy and monks. +The work of the Friars was physical as well as +moral. The rapid progress of population within +the boroughs had outstripped the sanitary regulations + +<span class="pagenum"><a name="Vol2-Page-2-012"></a>2-012]</span> + +of the Middle Ages, and fever or plague +or the more terrible scourge of leprosy festered +in the wretched hovels of the suburbs. It was +to haunts such as these that Francis had pointed +his disciples, and the Grey Brethren at once fixed +themselves in the meanest and poorest quarters +of each town. Their first work lay in the +noisome lazar-houses; it was amongst the lepers +that they commonly chose the site of their homes. +At London they settled in the shambles of Newgate; +at Oxford they made their way to the +swampy ground between its walls and the streams +of Thames. Huts of mud and timber, as mean +as the huts around them, rose within the rough +fence and ditch that bounded the Friary. The +order of Francis made a hard fight against the +taste for sumptuous buildings and for greater +personal comfort which characterized the time. +"I did not enter into religion to build walls," +protested an English provincial when the brethren +pressed for a larger house; and Albert of Pisa +ordered a stone cloister which the burgesses of +Southampton had built for them to be razed to +the ground. "You need no little mountains to +lift your heads to heaven," was his scornful reply +to a claim for pillows. None but the sick went +shod. An Oxford Friar found a pair of shoes +one morning, and wore them at matins. At night +he dreamed that robbers leapt on him in a +dangerous pass between Gloucester and Oxford + +<span class="pagenum"><a name="Vol2-Page-2-013"></a>2-013]</span> + +with, shouts of "Kill, kill!" "I am a friar," +shrieked the terror-stricken brother. "You lie," +was the instant answer, "for you go shod." The +Friar lifted up his foot in disproof, but the shoe +was there. In an agony of repentance he woke +and flung the pair out of window. +</p> + +<p> +<span class="sidenote">Revival of Theology</span> +</p> + +<p> +It was with less success that the order struggled +against the passion of the time for knowledge. +Their vow of poverty, rigidly interpreted as it was +by their founders, would have denied them the +possession of books or materials for study. "I am +your breviary, I am your breviary," Francis cried +passionately to a novice who asked for a psalter. +When the news of a great doctor's reception was +brought to him at Paris, his countenance fell. "I +am afraid, my son," he replied, "that such doctors +will be the destruction of my vineyard. They are +the true doctors who with the meekness of wisdom +show forth good works for the edification of their +neighbours." One kind of knowledge indeed their +work almost forced on them. The popularity of +their preaching soon led them to the deeper study +of theology; within a short time after their establishment +in England we find as many as thirty readers or lecturers +appointed at Hereford, Leicester, Bristol, and other places, +and a regular succession of teachers provided at each +University. The Oxford Dominicans lectured on theology +in the nave of their new church while philosophy was +taught in the cloister. The first provincial of the + +<span class="pagenum"><a name="Vol2-Page-2-014"></a>2-014]</span> + +Grey Friars built a school in their Oxford house +and persuaded Grosseteste to lecture there. His +influence after his promotion to the see of Lincoln +was steadily exerted to secure theological study +among the Friars, as well as their establishment in +the University; and in this work he was ably +seconded by his scholar, Adam Marsh, or de +Marisco, under whom the Franciscan school at +Oxford attained a reputation throughout Christendom. +Lyons, Paris, and Koln borrowed from +it their professors: it was through its influence +indeed that Oxford rose to a position hardly inferior +to that of Paris itself as a centre of scholasticism. +But the result of this powerful impulse was +soon seen to be fatal to the wider intellectual +activity which had till now characterized the +Universities. Theology in its scholastic form +resumed its supremacy in the schools. Its only +efficient rivals were practical studies such as medicine +and law. The last, as he was by far the +greatest, instance of the freer and wider culture +which had been the glory of the last century, was +Roger Bacon, and no name better illustrates the +rapidity and completeness with which it passed +away. +</p> + +<p> +<span class="sidenote">Roger Bacon</span> +</p> + +<p> +Roger Bacon was the child of royalist parents +who were driven into exile and reduced to poverty +by the civil wars. From Oxford, where he studied +under Edmund of Abingdon to whom he owed +his introduction to the works of Aristotle, he + +<span class="pagenum"><a name="Vol2-Page-2-015"></a>2-015]</span> + +passed to the University of Paris, and spent his +whole heritage there in costly studies and experiments. +"From my youth up," he writes, "I have +laboured at the sciences and tongues. I have +sought the friendship of all men among the Latins +who had any reputation for knowledge. I have +caused youths to be instructed in languages, geometry, +arithmetic, the construction of tables and +instruments, and many needful things besides." +The difficulties in the way of such studies as he +had resolved to pursue were immense. He was +without instruments or means of experiment. +"Without mathematical instruments no science +can be mastered," he complains afterwards, "and +these instruments are not to be found among the +Latins, nor could they be made for two or three +hundred pounds. Besides, better tables are indispensably +necessary, tables on which the motions +of the heavens are certified from the beginning to +the end of the world without daily labour, but +these tables are worth a king's ransom and could +not be made without a vast expense. I have often +attempted the composition of such tables, but could +not finish them through failure of means and the +folly of those whom I had to employ." Books +were difficult and sometimes even impossible to +procure. "The scientific works of Aristotle, of +Avicenna, of Seneca, of Cicero, and other ancients +cannot be had without great cost; their principal +works have not been translated into Latin, and + +<span class="pagenum"><a name="Vol2-Page-2-016"></a>2-016]</span> + +copies of others are not to be found in ordinary +libraries or elsewhere. The admirable books of +Cicero de Republica are not to be found anywhere, +so far as I can hear, though I have made anxious +enquiry for them in different parts of the world, +and by various messengers. I could never find +the works of Seneca, though I made diligent search +for them during twenty years and more. And so +it is with many more most useful books connected +with the science of morals." It is only words like +these of his own that bring home to us the keen +thirst for knowledge, the patience, the energy of +Roger Bacon. He returned as a teacher to Oxford, +and a touching record of his devotion to those +whom he taught remains in the story of John of +London, a boy of fifteen, whose ability raised him +above the general level of his pupils. "When he +came to me as a poor boy," says Bacon in recommending +him to the Pope, "I caused him to be +nurtured and instructed for the love of God, especially +since for aptitude and innocence I have never +found so towardly a youth. Five or six years ago +I caused him to be taught in languages, mathematics, +and optics, and I have gratuitously instructed +him with my own lips since the time that I +received your mandate. There is no one at Paris +who knows so much of the root of philosophy, +though he has not produced the branches, flowers, +and fruit because of his youth, and because he has +had no experience in teaching. But he has the + +<span class="pagenum"><a name="Vol2-Page-2-017"></a>2-017]</span> + +means of surpassing all the Latins if he live to +grow old and goes on as he has begun." +</p> + +<p> +The pride with which he refers to his system +of instruction was justified by the wide extension +which he gave to scientific teaching in Oxford. It +is probably of himself that he speaks when he tells +us that "the science of optics has not hitherto +been lectured on at Paris or elsewhere among the +Latins, save twice at Oxford." It was a science +on which he had laboured for ten years. But his +teaching seems to have fallen on a barren soil. +From the moment when the Friars settled in the +Universities scholasticism absorbed the whole mental +energy of the student world. The temper of the +age was against scientific or philosophical studies. +The older enthusiasm for knowledge was dying +down; the study of law was the one source of +promotion, whether in Church or state; philosophy +was discredited, literature in its purer forms became +almost extinct. After forty years of incessant +study, Bacon found himself in his own words +"unheard, forgotten, buried." He seems at one +time to have been wealthy, but his wealth was +gone. "During the twenty years that I have +specially laboured in the attainment of wisdom, +abandoning the path of common men, I have spent +on these pursuits more than two thousand pounds, +not to mention the cost of books, experiments, +instruments, tables, the acquisition of languages, +and the like. Add to all this the sacrifices I have + +<span class="pagenum"><a name="Vol2-Page-2-018"></a>2-018]</span> + +made to procure the friendship of the wise and to +obtain well-instructed assistants." Ruined and +baffled in his hopes, Bacon listened to the counsels +of his friend Grosseteste and renounced the world. +He became a friar of the order of St. Francis, an +order where books and study were looked upon as +hindrances to the work which it had specially +undertaken, that of preaching among the masses +of the poor. He had written little. So far was he +from attempting to write that his new superiors +prohibited him from publishing anything under +pain of forfeiture of the book and penance of bread +and water. But we can see the craving of his +mind, the passionate instinct of creation which +marks the man of genius, in the joy with which +he seized a strange opportunity that suddenly +opened before him. "Some few chapters on +different subjects, written at the entreaty of +friends," seem to have got abroad, and were +brought by one of the Pope's chaplains under the +notice of Clement the Fourth. The Pope at once +invited Bacon to write. But difficulties stood in +his way. Materials, transcription, and other expenses +for such a work as he projected would cost +at least, £60, and the Pope sent not a penny. +Bacon begged help from his family, but they were +ruined like himself. No one would lend to a +mendicant friar, and when his friends raised the +money he needed it was by pawning their goods in +the hope of repayment from Clement. Nor was + +<span class="pagenum"><a name="Vol2-Page-2-019"></a>2-019]</span> + +this all; the work itself, abstruse and scientific as +was its subject, had to be treated in a clear and +popular form to gain the Papal ear. But difficulties +which would have crushed another man only +roused Roger Bacon to an almost superhuman +energy. By the close of 1267 the work was done. +The "greater work," itself in modern form a +closely-printed folio, with its successive summaries +and appendices in the "lesser" and the "third" +works (which make a good octavo more), were +produced and forwarded to the Pope within fifteen +months. +</p> + +<p> +<span class="sidenote">The Opus Majus</span> +</p> + +<p> +No trace of this fiery haste remains in the book +itself. The "Opus Majus" is alike wonderful in +plan and detail. Bacon's main purpose, in the +words of Dr. Whewell, is "to urge the necessity +of a reform in the mode of philosophizing, to set +forth the reasons why knowledge had not made +a greater progress, to draw back attention to +sources of knowledge which had been unwisely +neglected, to discover other sources which were +yet wholly unknown, and to animate men to the +undertaking by a prospect of the vast advantages +which it offered." The developement of his scheme +is on the largest scale; he gathers together the +whole knowledge of his time on every branch of +science which it possessed, and as he passes them +in review he suggests improvements in nearly all. +His labours, both here and in his after works, in +the field of grammar and philology, his perseverance + +<span class="pagenum"><a name="Vol2-Page-2-020"></a>2-020]</span> + +in insisting on the necessity of correct texts, +of an accurate knowledge of languages, of an +exact interpretation, are hardly less remarkable +than his scientific investigations. From grammar +he passes to mathematics, from mathematics to +experimental philosophy. Under the name of +mathematics indeed was included all the physical +science of the time. "The neglect of it for nearly +thirty or forty years," pleads Bacon passionately, +"hath nearly destroyed the entire studies of +Latin Christendom. For he who knows not +mathematics cannot know any other sciences; and +what is more, he cannot discover his own ignorance +or find its proper remedies." Geography, chronology, +arithmetic, music, are brought into something +of scientific form, and like rapid sketches are given +of the question of climate, hydrography, geography, +and astrology. The subject of optics, his own +especial study, is treated with greater fulness; he +enters into the question of the anatomy of the eye +besides discussing problems which lie more strictly +within the province of optical science. In a word, +the "Greater Work," to borrow the phrase of Dr. +Whewell, is "at once the Encyclopedia and the +Novum Organum of the thirteenth century." The +whole of the after-works of Roger Bacon--and +treatise after treatise has of late been disentombed +from our libraries--are but developements in detail +of the magnificent conception he laid before +Clement. Such a work was its own great reward. +</p> + + + +<span class="pagenum"><a name="Vol2-Page-2-021"></a>2-021]</span> + + +<p> +From the world around Roger Bacon could look +for and found small recognition. No word of +acknowledgement seems to have reached its author +from the Pope. If we may credit a more recent +story, his writings only gained him a prison from +his order. "Unheard, forgotten, buried," the old +man died as he had lived, and it has been reserved +for later ages to roll away the obscurity that had +gathered round his memory, and to place first in +the great roll of modern science the name of +Roger Bacon. +</p> + +<p> +<span class="sidenote">Scholasticism</span> +</p> + +<p> +The failure of Bacon shows the overpowering +strength of the drift towards the practical studies, +and above all towards theology in its scholastic +guise. Aristotle, who had been so long held at +bay as the most dangerous foe of mediæval faith, +was now turned by the adoption of his logical +method in the discussion and definition of theological +dogma into its unexpected ally. It was +this very method that led to "that unprofitable +subtlety and curiosity" which Lord Bacon notes +as the vice of the scholastic philosophy. But +"certain it is"--to continue the same great +thinker's comment on the Friars--"that if these +schoolmen to their great thirst of truth and unwearied +travel of wit had joined variety of reading +and contemplation, they had proved excellent +lights to the great advancement of all learning and +knowledge." What, amidst all their errors, they +undoubtedly did was to insist on the necessity of + +<span class="pagenum"><a name="Vol2-Page-2-022"></a>2-022]</span> + +rigid demonstration and a more exact use of +words, to introduce a clear and methodical treatment +of all subjects into discussion, and above all +to substitute an appeal to reason for unquestioning +obedience to authority. It was by this critical +tendency, by the new clearness and precision +which scholasticism gave to enquiry, that in spite +of the trivial questions with which it often concerned +itself it trained the human mind through +the next two centuries to a temper which fitted it +to profit by the great disclosure of knowledge that +brought about the Renascence. And it is to the +same spirit of fearless enquiry as well as to the +strong popular sympathies which their very +constitution necessitated that we must attribute +the influence which the Friars undoubtedly exerted +in the coming struggle between the people and +the Crown. Their position is clearly and strongly +marked throughout the whole contest. The University +of Oxford, which soon fell under the direction of +their teaching, stood first in its resistance to Papal +exactions and its claim of English liberty. The +classes in the towns, on whom the influence of the +Friars told most directly, were steady supporters +of freedom throughout the Barons' Wars. +</p> + +<p> +<span class="sidenote">Its Political Influence</span> +</p> + +<p> +Politically indeed the teaching of the schoolmen +was of immense value, for it set on a religious +basis and gave an intellectual form to the constitutional +theory of the relations between king and +people which was slowly emerging from the + +<span class="pagenum"><a name="Vol2-Page-2-023"></a>2-023]</span> + +struggle with the Crown. In assuming the +responsibility of a Christian king to God for the +good government of his realm, in surrounding the +pledges whether of ruler or ruled with religious +sanctions, the mediæval Church entered its protest +against any personal despotism. The schoolmen +pushed further still to the doctrine of a contract +between king and people; and their trenchant +logic made short work of the royal claims to +irresponsible power and unquestioning obedience. +"He who would be in truth a king," ran a poem +which embodies their teaching at this time in +pungent verse--"he is a 'free king' indeed if he +rightly rule himself and his realm. All things +are lawful to him for the government of his realm, +but nothing is lawful to him for its destruction. +It is one thing to rule according to a king's duty, +another to destroy a kingdom by resisting the +law." "Let the community of the realm advise, +and let it be known what the generality, to whom +their laws are best known, think on the matter. +They who are ruled by the laws know those laws +best; they who make daily trial of them are best +acquainted with them; and since it is their own +affairs which are at stake they will take the more +care and will act with an eye to their own peace." +"It concerns the community to see what sort of +men ought justly to be chosen for the weal of the +realm." The constitutional restrictions on the +royal authority, the right of the whole nation to + +<span class="pagenum"><a name="Vol2-Page-2-024"></a>2-024]</span> + +deliberate and decide on its own affairs and to +have a voice in the selection of the administrators +of government, had never been so clearly stated +before. But the importance of the Friar's work +lay in this, that the work of the scholar was +supplemented by that of the popular preacher. +The theory of government wrought out in cell and +lecture-room was carried over the length and +breadth of the land by the mendicant brother, +begging his way from town to town, chatting with +farmer or housewife at the cottage door, and +setting up his portable pulpit in village green or +market-place. His open-air sermons, ranging from +impassioned devotion to coarse story and homely +mother wit, became the journals as well as the +homilies of the day; political and social questions +found place in them side by side with spiritual +matters; and the rudest countryman learned his +tale of a king's oppression or a patriot's hopes as +he listened to the rambling, passionate, humorous +discourse of the begging friar. +</p> + +<p> +<span class="sidenote">Henry the Third</span> +</p> + +<p> +Never had there been more need of such a +political education of the whole people than at the +moment we have reached. For the triumph of +the Charter, the constitutional government of +Governor and Justiciar, had rested mainly on the +helplessness of the king. As boy or youth, Henry +the Third had bowed to the control of William +Marshal or Langton or Hubert de Burgh. But he +was now grown to manhood, and his character + +<span class="pagenum"><a name="Vol2-Page-2-025"></a>2-025]</span> + +was from this hour to tell on the events of his +reign. From the cruelty, the lust, the impiety of +his father the young king was absolutely free. +There was a geniality, a vivacity, a refinement in +his temper which won a personal affection for him +even in his worst days from some who bitterly +censured his rule. The Abbey-church of Westminster, +with which he replaced the ruder minster +of the Confessor, remains a monument of his +artistic taste. He was a patron and friend of men +of letters, and himself skilled in the "gay science" +of the troubadour. But of the political capacity +which was the characteristic of his house he had +little or none. Profuse, changeable, false from sheer +meanness of spirit, impulsive alike in good and ill, +unbridled in temper and tongue, reckless in insult +and wit, Henry's delight was in the display of an +empty and prodigal magnificence, his one notion +of government was a dream of arbitrary power. +But frivolous as the king's mood was, he clung +with a weak man's obstinacy to a distinct line of +policy; and this was the policy not of Hubert or +Langton but of John. He cherished the hope of +recovering his heritage across the sea. He believed +in the absolute power of the Crown; and looked +on the pledges of the Great Charter as promises +which force had wrested from the king and which +force could wrest back again. France was telling +more and more on English opinion; and the +claim which the French kings were advancing to a + +<span class="pagenum"><a name="Vol2-Page-2-026"></a>2-026]</span> + +divine and absolute power gave a sanction in +Henry's mind to the claim of absolute authority +which was still maintained by his favourite advisers +in the royal council. Above all he clung to the +alliance with the Papacy. Henry was personally +devout; and his devotion only bound him the +more firmly to his father's system of friendship +with Rome. Gratitude and self-interest alike +bound him to the Papal See. Rome had saved +him from ruin as a child; its legate had set the +crown on his head; its threats and excommunications +had foiled Lewis and built up again a royal +party. Above all it was Rome which could alone +free him from his oath to the Charter, and which +could alone defend him if like his father he had to +front the baronage in arms. +</p> + +<p> +<span class="sidenote">England and Rome</span> +</p> + +<p> +His temper was now to influence the whole +system of government. In 1227 Henry declared +himself of age; and though Hubert still remained +Justiciar every year saw him more powerless in +his struggle with the tendencies of the king. +The death of Stephen Langton in 1228 was a yet +heavier blow to English freedom. In persuading +Rome to withdraw her Legate the Primate had +averted a conflict between the national desire for +self-government and the Papal claims of overlordship. +But his death gave the signal for a +more serious struggle, for it was in the oppression +of the Church of England by the Popes through +the reign of Henry that the little rift first opened + +<span class="pagenum"><a name="Vol2-Page-2-027"></a>2-027]</span> + +which was destined to widen into the gulf that +parted the one from the other at the Reformation. +In the mediæval theory of the Papacy, as +Innocent and his successors held it, Christendom, +as a spiritual realm of which the Popes were the +head, took the feudal form of the secular realms +which lay within its pale. The Pope was its +sovereign, the Bishops were his barons, and the +clergy were his under vassals. As the king +demanded aids and subsidies in case of need from +his liegemen, so in the theory of Rome might the +head of the Church demand aid in need from the +priesthood. And at this moment the need of +the Popes was sore. Rome had plunged into her +desperate conflict with the Emperor, Frederick +the Second, and was looking everywhere for the +means of recruiting her drained exchequer. On +England she believed herself to have more than +a spiritual claim for support. She regarded the +kingdom as a vassal kingdom, and as bound to aid +its overlord. It was only by the promise of a +heavy subsidy that Henry in 1229 could buy the +Papal confirmation of Langton's successor. But +the baronage was of other mind than Henry as to +this claim of overlordship, and the demand of an +aid to Rome from the laity was at once rejected +by them. Her spiritual claim over the allegiance +of the clergy however remained to fall back +upon, and the clergy were in the Pope's hand. +Gregory the Ninth had already claimed for the + +<span class="pagenum"><a name="Vol2-Page-2-028"></a>2-028]</span> + +Papal See a right of nomination to some prebends +in each cathedral church; he now demanded a +tithe of all the moveables of the priesthood, +and a threat of excommunication silenced their +murmurs. Exaction followed exaction as the +needs of the Papal treasury grew greater. The +very rights of lay patrons were set aside, and +under the name of "reserves" presentations to +English benefices were sold in the Papal market, +while Italian clergy were quartered on the best +livings of the Church. +</p> + +<p> +<span class="sidenote">Fall of Hubert de Burgh</span> +</p> + +<p> +The general indignation at last found vent in +a wide conspiracy. In 1231 letters from "the +whole body of those who prefer to die rather than +be ruined by the Romans" were scattered over +the kingdom by armed men; tithes gathered for +the Pope or the foreign priests were seized and +given to the poor; the Papal collectors were +beaten and their bulls trodden under foot. The +remonstrances of Rome only made clearer the +national character of the movement; but as +enquiry went on the hand of the Justiciar himself +was seen to have been at work. Sheriffs had +stood idly by while violence was done; royal +letters had been shown by the rioters as approving +their acts; and the Pope openly laid the +charge of the outbreak on the secret connivance +of Hubert de Burgh. No charge could have been +more fatal to Hubert in the mind of the king. +But he was already in full collision with the + +<span class="pagenum"><a name="Vol2-Page-2-029"></a>2-029]</span> + +Justiciar on other grounds. Henry was eager +to vindicate his right to the great heritage his +father had lost: the Gascons, who still clung to +him, not because they loved England but because +they hated France, spurred him to war; and in +1229 a secret invitation came from the Norman +barons. But while Hubert held power no serious +effort was made to carry on a foreign strife. The +Norman call was rejected through his influence, +and when a great armament gathered at Portsmouth +for a campaign in Poitou it dispersed for +want of transport and supplies. The young king +drew his sword and rushed madly on the +Justiciar, charging him with treason and corruption +by the gold of France. But the quarrel was +appeased and the expedition deferred for the year. +In 1230 Henry actually took the field in Britanny +and Poitou, but the failure of the campaign was +again laid at the door of Hubert whose opposition +was said to have prevented a decisive engagement. +It was at this moment that the Papal accusation +filled up the measure of Henry's wrath against +his minister. In the summer of 1232 he was +deprived of his office of Justiciar, and dragged +from a chapel at Brentwood where threats of +death had driven him to take sanctuary. A +smith who was ordered to shackle him stoutly +refused. "I will die any death," he said, "before +I put iron on the man who freed England from +the stranger and saved Dover from France." The + +<span class="pagenum"><a name="Vol2-Page-2-030"></a>2-030]</span> + +remonstrances of the Bishop of London forced +the king to replace Hubert in sanctuary, but +hunger compelled him to surrender; he was +thrown a prisoner into the Tower, and though +soon released he remained powerless in the realm. +His fall left England without a check to the +rule of Henry himself. +</p> + +</div> + +<span class="pagenum"><a name="Vol2-Page-2-031"></a>2-031]</span> + + +<div class="chapter"> +<div class="head"> +<hr> +<a name="Bk3-Ch3"></a><ul> + +<li> +<a name="id4533622"></a>CHAPTER III</li> +<li> +<a name="id4533628"></a>THE BARON'S WAR</li> +<li> +<a name="id4533634"></a>1232-1272</li> + +</ul> +</div> + + + +<p> +<span class="sidenote">The Aliens</span> +</p> + +<p> +Once master of his realm, Henry the Third was +quick to declare his plan of government. The +two great checks on a merely personal rule lay as +yet in the authority of the great ministers of +State and in the national character of the administrative +body which had been built up by +Henry the Second. Both of these checks Henry +at once set himself to remove. He would be his +own minister. The Justiciar ceased to be the +Lieutenant-General of the king and dwindled +into a presiding judge of the law-courts. The +Chancellor had grown into a great officer of State, +and in 1226 this office had been conferred on the +Bishop of Chichester by the advice and consent +of the Great Council. But Henry succeeded in +wresting the seal from him and naming to this +as to other offices at his pleasure. His policy +was to entrust all high posts of government to + +<span class="pagenum"><a name="Vol2-Page-2-032"></a>2-032]</span> + +mere clerks of the royal chapel; trained administrators, +but wholly dependent on the royal will. +He found equally dependent agents of administration +by surrounding himself with foreigners. +The return of Peter des Roches to the royal +councils was the first sign of the new system; +and hosts of hungry Poitevins and Bretons were +summoned over to occupy the royal castles and +fill the judicial and administrative posts about +the Court. The king's marriage in 1236 to +Eleanor of Provence was followed by the arrival +in England of the new queen's uncles. The +"Savoy," as his house in the Strand was named, +still recalls Peter of Savoy who arrived five years +later to take for a while the chief place at Henry's +council-board; another brother, Boniface, was +consecrated on Archbishop Edmund's death to +the highest post in the realm save the Crown +itself, the Archbishoprick of Canterbury. The +young Primate, like his brother, brought with +him foreign fashions strange enough to English +folk. His armed retainers pillaged the markets. +His own archiepiscopal fist felled to the ground +the prior of St. Bartholomew-by-Smithfield who +opposed his visitation. London was roused by +the outrage; on the king's refusal to do justice +a noisy crowd of citizens surrounded the Primate's +house at Lambeth with cries of vengeance, and +the "handsome archbishop," as his followers +styled him, was glad to escape over sea. This + +<span class="pagenum"><a name="Vol2-Page-2-033"></a>2-033]</span> + +brood of Provençals was followed in 1243 by the +arrival of the Poitevin relatives of John's queen, +Isabella of Angoulême. Aymer was made Bishop +of Winchester; William of Valence received at +a later time the earldom of Pembroke. Even the +king's jester was a Poitevin. Hundreds of their +dependants followed these great nobles to find a +fortune in the English realm. The Poitevin lords +brought in their train a bevy of ladies in search +of husbands, and three English earls who were in +royal wardship were wedded by the king to +foreigners. The whole machinery of administration +passed into the hands of men who were +ignorant and contemptuous of the principles of +English government or English law. Their rule +was a mere anarchy; the very retainers of the +royal household turned robbers and pillaged +foreign merchants in the precincts of the Court; +corruption invaded the judicature; at the close +of this period of misrule Henry de Bath, a +justiciary, was proved to have openly taken +bribes and to have adjudged to himself disputed +estates. +</p> + +<p> +<span class="sidenote">Henry +and the +Baronage</span> +</p> + +<p> +That misgovernment of this kind should have +gone on unchecked in defiance of the provisions of +the Charter was owing to the disunion and +sluggishness of the English baronage. On the +first arrival of the foreigners Richard, the Earl +Marshal, a son of the great Regent, stood forth +as their leader to demand the expulsion of the + +<span class="pagenum"><a name="Vol2-Page-2-034"></a>2-034]</span> + +strangers from the royal Council. Though deserted +by the bulk of the nobles he defeated the foreign +troops sent against him and forced the king to +treat for peace. But at this critical moment the +Earl was drawn by an intrigue of Peter des Roches +to Ireland; he fell in a petty skirmish, and the +barons were left without a head. The interposition +of a new primate, Edmund of Abingdon, +forced the king to dismiss Peter from court; but +there was no real change of system, and the remonstrances +of the Archbishop and of Robert +Grosseteste, the Bishop of Lincoln, remained fruitless. +In the long interval of misrule the financial +straits of the king forced him to heap exaction on +exaction. The Forest Laws were used as a means +of extortion, sees and abbeys were kept vacant, +loans were wrested from lords and prelates, the +Court itself lived at free quarters wherever it +moved. Supplies of this kind however were utterly +insufficient to defray the cost of the king's prodigality. +A sixth of the royal revenue was wasted +in pensions to foreign favourites. The debts of +the Crown amounted to four times its annual +income. Henry was forced to appeal for aid to +the great Council of the realm, and aid was granted +in 1237 on promise of control in its expenditure +and on condition that the king confirmed the +Charter. But Charter and promise were alike disregarded; +and in 1242 the resentment of the +barons expressed itself in a determined protest and + +<span class="pagenum"><a name="Vol2-Page-2-035"></a>2-035]</span> + +a refusal of further subsidies. In spite of their refusal +however Henry gathered money enough for a +costly expedition for the recovery of Poitou. The +attempt ended in failure and shame. At Taillebourg +the king's force fled in disgraceful rout before the +French as far as Saintes, and only the sudden +illness of Lewis the Ninth and a disease which +scattered his army saved Bordeaux from the +conquerors. The treasury was utterly drained, +and Henry was driven in 1244 to make a fresh +appeal with his own mouth to the baronage. But +the barons had now rallied to a plan of action, and +we can hardly fail to attribute their union to the +man who appears at their head. This was the +Earl of Leicester, Simon of Montfort. +</p> + +<p> +<span class="sidenote">Simon +of Montfort</span> +</p> + +<p> +Simon was the son of another Simon of Montfort, +whose name had become memorable for his ruthless +crusade against the Albigensian heretics in Southern +Gaul, and who had inherited the Earldom of +Leicester through his mother, a sister and co-heiress +of the last Earl of the house of Beaumont. +But as Simon's tendencies were for the most part +French John had kept the revenues of the earldom +in his own hands, and on his death the claim of +his elder son, Amaury, was met by the refusal of +Henry the Third to accept a divided allegiance. +The refusal marks the rapid growth of that sentiment +of nationality which the loss of Normandy +had brought home. Amaury chose to remain +French, and by a family arrangement with the + +<span class="pagenum"><a name="Vol2-Page-2-036"></a>2-036]</span> + +king's sanction the honour of Leicester passed in +1231 to his younger brother Simon. His choice +made Simon an Englishman, but his foreign blood +still moved the jealousy of the barons, and this +jealousy was quickened by a secret match in 1238 +with Eleanor, the king's sister and widow of the +second William Marshal. The match formed probably +part of a policy which Henry pursued +throughout his reign of bringing the great earldoms +into closer connexion with the Crown. That of +Chester had fallen to the king through the extinction +of the family of its earls; Cornwall was held +by his brother, Richard; Salisbury by his cousin. +Simon's marriage linked the Earldom of Leicester +to the royal house. But it at once brought Simon +into conflict with the nobles and the Church. The +baronage, justly indignant that such a step should +have been taken without their consent, for the +queen still remained childless and Eleanor's +children by one whom they looked on as a stranger +promised to be heirs of the Crown, rose in a revolt +which failed only through the desertion of their +head, Earl Richard of Cornwall, who was satisfied +with Earl Simon's withdrawal from the Royal +Council. The censures of the Church on Eleanor's +breach of a vow of chaste widowhood which she +had made at her first husband's death were averted +with hardly less difficulty by a journey to Rome. +It was after a year of trouble that Simon returned +to England to reap as it seemed the fruits of his + +<span class="pagenum"><a name="Vol2-Page-2-037"></a>2-037]</span> + +high alliance. He was now formally made Earl of +Leicester and re-entered the Royal Council. But +it is probable that he still found there the old +jealousy which had forced from him a pledge of +retirement after his marriage; and that his enemies +now succeeded in winning over the king. In a few +months, at any rate, he found the changeable king +alienated from him, he was driven by a burst of +royal passion from the realm, and was forced to +spend seven months in France. +</p> + +<p> +<span class="sidenote">Simon's +early action</span> +</p> + +<p> +Henry's anger passed as quickly as it had risen, +and in the spring of 1240 the Earl was again +received with honour at court. It was from this +moment however that his position changed. As +yet it had been that of a foreigner, confounded in +the eyes of the nation at large with the Poitevins and +Provençals who swarmed about the court. But in +the years of retirement which followed Simon's +return to England his whole attitude was reversed. +There was as yet no quarrel with the king: he +followed him in a campaign across the Channel, +and shared in his defeat at Saintes. But he was +a friend of Grosseteste and a patron of the Friars, +and became at last known as a steady opponent of +the misrule about him. When prelates and barons +chose twelve representatives to confer with Henry +in 1244 Simon stood with Earl Richard of Cornwall +at the head of them. A definite plan of reform +disclosed his hand. The confirmation of the +Charter was to be followed by the election of + +<span class="pagenum"><a name="Vol2-Page-2-038"></a>2-038]</span> + +Justiciar, Chancellor, Treasurer, in the Great +Council. Nor was this restoration of a responsible +ministry enough; a perpetual Council was to +attend the king and devise further reforms. The +plan broke against Henry's resistance and a Papal +prohibition; but from this time the Earl took his +stand in the front rank of the patriot leaders. The +struggle of the following years was chiefly with the +exactions of the Papacy, and Simon was one of the +first to sign the protest which the Parliament in +1246 addressed to the court of Rome. He was +present at the Lent Parliament of 1248, and we +can hardly doubt that he shared in its bold rebuke +of the king's misrule and its renewed demand for +the appointment of the higher officers of state by +the Council. It was probably a sense of the danger +of leaving at home such a centre of all efforts +after reform that brought Henry to send him in +the autumn of 1248 as Seneschal of Gascony to +save for the Crown the last of its provinces over +sea. +</p> + +<p> +<span class="sidenote">Simon in Gascony</span> +</p> + +<p> +Threatened by France and by Navarre without +as well as by revolt within, the loss of Gascony +seemed close at hand; but in a few months the +stern rule of the new Seneschal had quelled every +open foe within or without its bounds. To bring +the province to order proved a longer and a harder +task. Its nobles were like the robber-nobles of the +Rhine: "they rode the country by night," wrote +the Earl, "like thieves, in parties of twenty or + +<span class="pagenum"><a name="Vol2-Page-2-039"></a>2-039]</span> + +thirty or forty," and gathered in leagues against +the Seneschal, who set himself to exact their dues +to the Crown and to shield merchant and husbandman +from their violence. For four years Earl +Simon steadily warred down these robber bands, +storming castles where there was need, and bridling +the wilder country with a chain of forts. Hard +as the task was, his real difficulty lay at home. +Henry sent neither money nor men; and the Earl +had to raise both from his own resources, while the +men whom he was fighting found friends in Henry's +council-chamber. Again and again Simon was recalled +to answer charges of tyranny and extortion +made by the Gascon nobles and pressed by his +enemies at home on the king. Henry's feeble and +impulsive temper left him open to pressure like +this; and though each absence of the Earl from the +province was a signal for fresh outbreaks of disorder +which only his presence repressed, the +deputies of its nobles were still admitted to the +council-table and commissions sent over to report +on the Seneschal's administration. The strife +came to a head in 1252, when the commissioners +reported that stern as Simon's rule had been the +case was one in which sternness was needful. The +English barons supported Simon, and in the face of +their verdict Henry was powerless. But the king +was now wholly with his enemies; and his anger +broke out in a violent altercation. The Earl +offered to resign his post if the money he had + +<span class="pagenum"><a name="Vol2-Page-2-040"></a>2-040]</span> + +spent was repaid him, and appealed to Henry's +word. Henry hotly retorted that he was bound +by no promise to a false traitor. Simon at once +gave Henry the lie; "and but that thou bearest +the name of king it had been a bad hour for thee +when thou utteredst such a word!" A formal reconciliation +was brought about, and the Earl once +more returned to Gascony, but before winter had +come he was forced to withdraw to France. The +greatness of his reputation was shown in an offer +which its nobles made him of the regency of their +realm during the absence of King Lewis from the +land. But the offer was refused; and Henry, +who had himself undertaken the pacification of +Gascony, was glad before the close of 1253 to +recall its old ruler to do the work he had failed +to do. +</p> + +<p> +<span class="sidenote">Simon's temper</span> +</p> + +<p> +The Earl's character had now thoroughly developed. +He inherited the strict and severe piety +of his father; he was assiduous in his attendance +on religious services whether by night or day. In +his correspondence with Adam Marsh we see him +finding patience under his Gascon troubles in a +perusal of the Book of Job. His life was pure +and singularly temperate; he was noted for his +scant indulgence in meat, drink, or sleep. Socially +he was cheerful and pleasant in talk; but his +natural temper was quick and ardent, his sense of +honour keen, his speech rapid and trenchant. His +impatience of contradiction, his fiery temper, were + +<span class="pagenum"><a name="Vol2-Page-2-041"></a>2-041]</span> + +in fact the great stumbling-blocks in his after +career. His best friends marked honestly this +fault, and it shows the greatness of the man that +he listened to their remonstrances. "Better is a +patient man," writes honest Friar Adam, "than a +strong man, and he who can rule his own temper +than he who storms a city." But the one characteristic +which overmastered all was what men at that +time called his "constancy," the firm immoveable +resolve which trampled even death under foot in +its loyalty to the right. The motto which Edward +the First chose as his device, "Keep troth," was +far truer as the device of Earl Simon. We see in +his correspondence with what a clear discernment +of its difficulties both at home and abroad he +"thought it unbecoming to decline the danger of +so great an exploit" as the reduction of Gascony +to peace and order; but once undertaken, he persevered +in spite of the opposition he met with, the +failure of all support or funds from England, and +the king's desertion of his cause, till the work was +done. There was the same steadiness of will and +purpose in his patriotism. The letters of Robert +Grosseteste show how early Simon had learned to +sympathize with the Bishop in his resistance to +Rome, and at the crisis of the contest he offered +him his own support and that of his associates. +But Robert passed away, and as the tide of misgovernment +mounted higher and higher the Earl +silently trained himself for the day of trial. The + +<span class="pagenum"><a name="Vol2-Page-2-042"></a>2-042]</span> + +fruit of his self-discipline was seen when the crisis +came. While other men wavered and faltered +and fell away, the enthusiastic love of the people +clung to the grave, stern soldier who "stood like +a pillar," unshaken by promise or threat or fear of +death, by the oath he had sworn. +</p> + +<p> +<span class="sidenote">Matthew +Paris</span> +</p> + +<p> +While Simon had been warring with Gascon +rebels affairs in England had been going from bad +to worse. The scourge of Papal taxation fell +heavier on the clergy. After vain appeals to +Rome and to the king, Archbishop Edmund retired +to an exile of despair at Pontigny, and tax-gatherer +after tax-gatherer with powers of excommunication, +suspension from orders, and presentation to benefices, +descended on the unhappy priesthood. The +wholesale pillage kindled a wide spirit of resistance. +Oxford gave the signal by hunting a Papal legate +out of the city amid cries of "usurer" and +"simoniac" from the mob of students. Fulk Fitz-Warenne +in the name of the barons bade a Papal +collector begone out of England. "If you tarry +here three days longer," he added, "you and your +company shall be cut to pieces." For a time +Henry himself was swept away by the tide of +national indignation. Letters from the king, the +nobles, and the prelates, protested against the +Papal exactions, and orders were given that no +money should be exported from the realm. But +the threat of interdict soon drove Henry back on +a policy of spoliation in which he went hand in + +<span class="pagenum"><a name="Vol2-Page-2-043"></a>2-043]</span> + +hand with Rome. The temper which this oppression +begot among even the most sober churchmen +has been preserved for us by an annalist whose +pages glow with the new outburst of patriotic feeling. +Matthew Paris is the greatest, as he in reality +is the last, of our monastic historians. The school +of St. Alban's survived indeed till a far later time, +but its writers dwindle into mere annalists whose +view is bounded by the abbey precincts and whose +work is as colourless as it is jejune. In Matthew +the breadth and precision of the narrative, the +copiousness of his information on topics whether +national or European, the general fairness and +justice of his comments, are only surpassed by the +patriotic fire and enthusiasm of the whole. He +had succeeded Roger of Wendover as chronicler at +St. Alban's; and the Greater Chronicle with an +abridgement of it which long passed under the +name of Matthew of Westminster, a "History of +the English," and the "Lives of the Earlier Abbots," +are only a few among the voluminous works which +attest his prodigious industry. He was an artist +as well as an historian, and many of the manuscripts +which are preserved are illustrated by his own +hand. A large circle of correspondents--bishops +like Grosseteste, ministers like Hubert de Burgh, +officials like Alexander de Swereford--furnished +him with minute accounts of political and ecclesiastical +proceedings. Pilgrims from the East and +Papal agents brought news of foreign events to his + +<span class="pagenum"><a name="Vol2-Page-2-044"></a>2-044]</span> + +scriptorium at St. Alban's. He had access to and +quotes largely from state documents, charters, and +exchequer rolls. The frequency of royal visits to +the abbey brought him a store of political +intelligence, and Henry himself contributed to the great +chronicle which has preserved with so terrible a +faithfulness the memory of his weakness and +misgovernment. On one solemn feast-day the king +recognized Matthew, and bidding him sit on the +middle step between the floor and the throne +begged him to write the story of the day's proceedings. +While on a visit to St. Alban's he invited +him to his table and chamber, and enumerated +by name two hundred and fifty of the English +baronies for his information. But all this royal +patronage has left little mark on his work. "The +case," as Matthew says, "of historical writers is +hard, for if they tell the truth they provoke men, +and if they write what is false they offend God." +With all the fulness of the school of court +historians, such as Benedict and Hoveden, to which +in form he belonged, Matthew Paris combines an +independence and patriotism which is strange to +their pages. He denounces with the same unsparing +energy the oppression of the Papacy and of +the king. His point of view is neither that of a +courtier nor of a churchman but of an Englishman, +and the new national tone of his chronicle is but +the echo of a national sentiment which at last +bound nobles and yeomen and churchmen together + +<span class="pagenum"><a name="Vol2-Page-2-045"></a>2-045]</span> + +into a people resolute to wrest freedom from the Crown. +</p> + +<p> +<span class="sidenote">Wales</span> +</p> + +<p> +The nation was outraged like the Church. Two +solemn confirmations of the Charter failed to +bring about any compliance with its provisions. In +1248, in 1249, and again in 1255 the great Council +fruitlessly renewed its demand for a regular +ministry, and the growing resolve of the nobles to +enforce good government was seen in their offer of +a grant on condition that the great officers of the +Crown were appointed in the Council of the +Baronage. But Henry refused their offer with scorn +and sold his plate to the citizens of London to find +payment for his household. A spirit of mutinous +defiance broke out on the failure of all legal remedy. +When the Earl of Norfolk refused him aid Henry +answered with a threat. "I will send reapers and +reap your fields for you," he said. "And I will +send you back the heads of your reapers," replied +the Earl. Hampered by the profusion of the court +and the refusal of supplies, the Crown was in fact +penniless; and yet never was money more wanted, +for a trouble which had long pressed upon the +English kings had now grown to a height that +called for decisive action. Even his troubles at +home could not blind Henry to the need of dealing +with the difficulty of Wales. Of the three Welsh +states into which all that remained unconquered +of Britain had been broken by the victories of +Deorham and Chester, two had long ceased to + +<span class="pagenum"><a name="Vol2-Page-2-046"></a>2-046]</span> + +exist. The country between the Clyde and the +Dee had been gradually absorbed by the conquests +of Northumbria and the growth of the Scot +monarchy. West Wales, between the British Channel +and the estuary of the Severn, had yielded to the +sword of Ecgberht. But a fiercer resistance prolonged +the independence of the great central portion +which alone in modern language preserves the +name of Wales. Comprising in itself the largest +and most powerful of the British kingdoms, it was +aided in its struggle against Mercia by the weakness +of its assailant, the youngest and feeblest of +the English states, as well as by an internal warfare +which distracted the energies of the invaders. +But Mercia had no sooner risen to supremacy +among the English kingdoms than it took the work +of conquest vigorously in hand. Offa tore from +Wales the border-land between the Severn and +the Wye; the raids of his successors carried fire +and sword into the heart of the country; and an +acknowledgement of the Mercian overlordship was +wrested from the Welsh princes. On the fall of +Mercia this overlordship passed to the West-Saxon +kings, and the Laws of Howel Dda own the payment +of a yearly tribute by "the prince of Aberffraw" +to "the King of London." The weakness +of England during her long struggle with the Danes +revived the hopes of British independence; it was +the co-operation of the Welsh on which the northmen +reckoned in their attack on the house of + +<span class="pagenum"><a name="Vol2-Page-2-047"></a>2-047]</span> + +Ecgberht. But with the fall of the Danelaw the +British princes were again brought to submission, +and when in the midst of the Confessor's reign the +Welsh seized on a quarrel between the houses of +Leofric and Godwine to cross the border and carry +their attacks into England itself, the victories of +Harold reasserted the English supremacy. +Disembarking on the coast his light-armed troops he +penetrated to the heart of the mountains, and the +successors of the Welsh prince Gruffydd, whose +head was the trophy of the campaign, swore to +observe the old fealty and render the old tribute +to the English Crown. +</p> + +<p> +<span class="sidenote">Wales and the Normans</span> +</p> + +<p> +A far more desperate struggle began when the +wave of Norman conquest broke on the Welsh +frontier. A chain of great earldoms, settled by +William along the border-land, at once bridled the +old marauding forays. From his county palatine +of Chester Hugh the Wolf harried Flintshire into +a desert, Robert of Belesme in his earldom of +Shrewsbury "slew the Welsh," says a chronicler, +"like sheep, conquered them, enslaved them and +flayed them with nails of iron." The earldom of +Gloucester curbed Britain along the lower Severn. +Backed by these greater baronies a horde of lesser +adventurers obtained the royal "licence to make +conquest on the Welsh." Monmouth and Abergavenny +were seized and guarded by Norman castellans; +Bernard of Neufmarché won the lordship +of Brecknock; Roger of Montgomery raised + +<span class="pagenum"><a name="Vol2-Page-2-048"></a>2-048]</span> + +the town and fortress in Powysland which still +preserves his name. A great rising of the whole +people in the days of the second William won +back some of this Norman spoil. The new castle +of Montgomery was burned, Brecknock and +Cardigan were cleared of the invaders, and the +Welsh poured ravaging over the English border. +Twice the Red King carried his arms fruitlessly +among the mountains against enemies who took +refuge in their fastnesses till famine and hardship +drove his broken host into retreat. The wiser +policy of Henry the First fell back on his father's +system of gradual conquest. A new tide of invasion +flowed along the southern coast, where the +land was level and open and accessible from the +sea. The attack was aided by strife in the country +itself. Robert Fitz-Hamo, the lord of Gloucester, +was summoned to his aid by a Welsh chieftain; +and his defeat of Rhys ap Tewdor, the last +prince under whom Southern Wales was united, +produced an anarchy which enabled Robert to +land safely on the coast of Glamorgan, to conquer +the country round, and to divide it among his +soldiers. A force of Flemings and Englishmen +followed the Earl of Clare as he landed near +Milford Haven and pushing back the British +inhabitants settled a "Little England" in the +present Pembrokeshire. A few daring adventurers +accompanied the Norman Lord of Kemeys +into Cardigan, where land might be had for the + +<span class="pagenum"><a name="Vol2-Page-2-049"></a>2-049]</span> + +winning by any one who would "wage war on the Welsh." +</p> + +<p> +<span class="sidenote">The Welsh Revival</span> +</p> + +<p> +It was at this moment, when the utter subjugation +of the British race seemed at hand, that +a new outburst of energy rolled back the tide of +invasion and changed the fitful resistance of the +separate Welsh provinces into a national effort to +regain independence. To all outer seeming Wales +had become utterly barbarous. Stripped of every +vestige of the older Roman civilization by ages of +bitter warfare, of civil strife, of estrangement from +the general culture of Christendom, the +unconquered Britons had sunk into a mass of savage +herdsmen, clad in the skins and fed by the milk +of the cattle they tended. Faithless, greedy, and +revengeful, retaining no higher political +organization than that of the clan, their strength +was broken by ruthless feuds, and they were united +only in battle or in raid against the stranger. But +in the heart of the wild people there still lingered +a spark of the poetic fire which had nerved it +four hundred years before through Aneurin and +Llywarch Hen to its struggle with the earliest +Englishmen. At the hour of its lowest degradation +the silence of Wales was suddenly broken by +a crowd of singers. The song of the twelfth +century burst forth, not from one bard or another, +but from the nation at large. The Welsh temper +indeed was steeped in poetry. "In every house," +says the shrewd Gerald de Barri, "strangers who + +<span class="pagenum"><a name="Vol2-Page-2-050"></a>2-050]</span> + +arrived in the morning were entertained till eventide +with the talk of maidens and the music of the +harp." A romantic literature, which was destined +to leaven the fancy of western Europe, had grown +up among this wild people and found an admirable +means of utterance in its tongue. The Welsh language +was as real a developement of the old Celtic +language heard by Cæsar as the Romance tongues +are developements of Cæsar's Latin, but at a far +earlier date than any other language of modern +Europe it had attained to definite structure and to +settled literary form. No other mediæval literature +shows at its outset the same elaborate and +completed organization as that of the Welsh. But +within these settled forms the Celtic fancy played +with a startling freedom. In one of the later poems +Gwion the Little transforms himself into a hare, a +fish, a bird, a grain of wheat; but he is only the +symbol of the strange shapes in which the Celtic fancy +embodies itself in the romantic tales which reached +their highest perfection in the legends of Arthur. +</p> + +<p> +<span class="sidenote">The Welsh Poetry</span> +</p> + +<p> +The gay extravagance of these "Mabinogion" +flings defiance to all fact, tradition, probability, +and revels in the impossible and unreal. When +Arthur sails into the unknown world it is in a ship +of glass. The "descent into hell," as a Celtic poet +paints it, shakes off the mediæval horror with the +mediæval reverence, and the knight who achieves +the quest spends his years of infernal durance in +hunting and minstrelsy, and in converse with fair + +<span class="pagenum"><a name="Vol2-Page-2-051"></a>2-051]</span> + +women. The world of the Mabinogion is a world +of pure phantasy, a new earth of marvels and +enchantments, of dark forests whose silence is +broken by the hermit's bell and sunny glades +where the light plays on the hero's armour. Each +figure as it moves across the poet's canvas is +bright with glancing colour. "The maiden was +clothed in a robe of flame-coloured silk, and about +her neck was a collar of ruddy gold in which were +precious emeralds and rubies. Her head was of +brighter gold than the flower of the broom, her +skin was whiter than the foam of the wave, and +fairer were her hands and her fingers than the +blossoms of the wood-anemone amidst the spray of +the meadow fountain. The eye of the trained +hawk, the glance of the falcon, was not brighter +than hers. Her bosom was more snowy than the +breast of the white swan, her cheek was redder +than the reddest roses." Everywhere there is an +Oriental profusion of gorgeous imagery, but the +gorgeousness is seldom oppressive. The sensibility +of the Celtic temper, so quick to perceive beauty, +so eager in its thirst for life, its emotions, its +adventures, its sorrows, its joys, is tempered by a +passionate melancholy that expresses its revolt +against the impossible, by an instinct of what is +noble, by a sentiment that discovers the weird +charm of nature. The wildest extravagance of +the tale-teller is relieved by some graceful play of +pure fancy, some tender note of feeling, some + +<span class="pagenum"><a name="Vol2-Page-2-052"></a>2-052]</span> + +magical touch of beauty. As Kulwch's greyhounds +bound from side to side of their master's +steed, they "sport round him like two sea-swallows." +His spear is "swifter than the fall of +the dewdrop from the blade of reed-grass upon the +earth when the dew of June is at the heaviest." +A subtle, observant love of nature and natural +beauty takes fresh colour from the passionate +human sentiment with which it is imbued. "I +love the birds" sings Gwalchmai "and their sweet +voices in the lulling songs of the wood"; he +watches at night beside the fords "among the +untrodden grass" to hear the nightingale and +watch the play of the sea-mew. Even patriotism +takes the same picturesque form. The Welsh +poet hates the flat and sluggish land of the +Saxon; as he dwells on his own he tells of "its +sea-coast and its mountains, its towns on the +forest border, its fair landscape, its dales, its +waters, and its valleys, its white sea-mews, its +beauteous women." Here as everywhere the +sentiment of nature passes swiftly and subtly +into the sentiment of a human tenderness: "I +love its fields clothed with tender trefoil" goes on +the song; "I love the marches of Merioneth where +my head was pillowed on a snow-white arm." In +the Celtic love of woman there is little of the +Teutonic depth and earnestness, but in its stead a +childlike spirit of delicate enjoyment, a faint +distant flush of passion like the rose-light of dawn + +<span class="pagenum"><a name="Vol2-Page-2-053"></a>2-053]</span> + +on a snowy mountain peak, a playful delight in +beauty. "White is my love as the apple-blossom, +as the ocean's spray; her face shines like the +pearly dew on Eryri; the glow of her cheeks is +like the light of sunset." The buoyant and elastic +temper of the French trouveur was spiritualized +in the Welsh singers by a more refined poetic +feeling. "Whoso beheld her was filled with her +love. Four white trefoils sprang up wherever +she trod." A touch of pure fancy such as this +removes its object out of the sphere of passion +into one of delight and reverence. +</p> + +<p> +<span class="sidenote">The Bards</span> +</p> + +<p> +It is strange to pass from the world of actual +Welsh history into such a world as this. But side by +side with this wayward, fanciful stream of poesy and +romance ran a torrent of intenser song. The spirit +of the earlier bards, their joy in battle, their love +of freedom, broke out anew in ode after ode, in +songs extravagant, monotonous, often prosaic, but +fused into poetry by the intense fire of patriotism +which glowed within them. Every fight, every +hero had its verse. The names of older singers, +of Taliesin, Aneurin, and Llywarch Hen, were +revived in bold forgeries to animate the national +resistance and to prophesy victory. It was in +North Wales that the spirit of patriotism received +its strongest inspiration from this burst of song. +Again and again Henry the Second was driven +to retreat from the impregnable fastnesses where +the "Lords of Snowdon," the princes of the house + +<span class="pagenum"><a name="Vol2-Page-2-054"></a>2-054]</span> + +of Gruffydd ap Conan, claimed supremacy over +the whole of Wales. Once in the pass of Consilt +a cry arose that the king was slain, Henry of +Essex flung down the royal standard, and the +king's desperate efforts could hardly save his army +from utter rout. The bitter satire of the Welsh +singers bade him knight his horse, since its speed +had alone saved him from capture. In a later +campaign the invaders were met by storms of rain, +and forced to abandon their baggage in a headlong +flight to Chester. The greatest of the Welsh odes, +that known to English readers in Gray's translation +as "The Triumph of Owen," is Gwalchmai's song +of victory over the repulse of an English fleet from +Abermenai. +</p> + +<p> +<span class="sidenote">Llewelyn ap Jorwerth</span> +</p> + +<p> +The long reign of Llewelyn the son of Jorwerth +seemed destined to realize the hopes of his countrymen. +The homage which he succeeded in extorting +from the whole of the Welsh chieftains during +a reign which lasted from 1194 to 1246 placed him +openly at the head of his race, and gave a new +character to its struggle with the English king. +In consolidating his authority within his own +domains, and in the assertion of his lordship over +the princes of the south, Llewelyn ap Jorwerth +aimed steadily at securing the means of striking +off the yoke of the Saxon. It was in vain that +John strove to buy his friendship by the hand of +his natural daughter Johanna. Fresh raids on the +Marches forced the king to enter Wales in 1211; + +<span class="pagenum"><a name="Vol2-Page-2-055"></a>2-055]</span> + +but though his army reached Snowdon it fell back +like its predecessors, starved and broken before an +enemy it could never reach. A second attack in +the same year had better success. The chieftains +of South Wales were drawn from their new allegiance +to join the English forces, and Llewelyn, +prisoned in his fastnesses, was at last driven to +submit. But the ink of the treaty was hardly dry +before Wales was again on fire; a common fear of +the English once more united its chieftains, and +the war between John and his barons soon removed +all dread of a new invasion. Absolved from his +allegiance to an excommunicated king, and allied +with the barons under Fitz-Walter--too glad to enlist +in their cause a prince who could hold in check +the nobles of the border country where the royalist +cause was strongest--Llewelyn seized his opportunity +to reduce Shrewsbury, to annex Powys, the +central district of Wales where the English influence +had always been powerful, to clear the +royal garrisons from Caermarthen and Cardigan, +and to force even the Flemings of Pembroke to do +him homage. +</p> + +<p> +<span class="sidenote">Llewelyn +and the +Bards</span> +</p> + +<p> +England watched these efforts of the subject +race with an anger still mingled with contempt. +"Who knows not," exclaims Matthew Paris as he +dwells on the new pretensions of the Welsh ruler, +"who knows not that the Prince of Wales is a +petty vassal of the King of England?" But the +temper of Llewelyn's own people was far other + +<span class="pagenum"><a name="Vol2-Page-2-056"></a>2-056]</span> + +than the temper of the English chronicler. The +hopes of Wales rose higher and higher with each +triumph of the Lord of Snowdon. His court was +crowded with bardic singers. "He pours," sings +one of them, "his gold into the lap of the bard as +the ripe fruit falls from the trees." Gold however +was hardly needed to wake their enthusiasm. +Poet after poet sang of "the Devastator of England," +the "Eagle of men that loves not to lie nor +sleep," "towering above the rest of men with his +long red lance," his "red helmet of battle crested +with a fierce wolf." "The sound of his coming is +like the roar of the wave as it rushes to the shore, +that can neither be stayed nor hushed." Lesser +bards strung together Llewelyn's victories in rough +jingle of rime and hounded him on to the slaughter. +"Be of good courage in the slaughter," sings Elidir, +"cling to thy work, destroy England, and plunder +its multitudes." A fierce thirst for blood runs +through the abrupt, passionate verses of the court +singers. "Swansea, that tranquil town, was broken +in heaps," bursts out a triumphant bard; "St. +Clears, with its bright white lands, it is not Saxons +who hold it now!" "In Swansea, the key of +Lloegria, we made widows of all the wives." "The +dread Eagle is wont to lay corpses in rows, and to +feast with the leader of wolves and with hovering +ravens glutted with flesh, butchers with keen +scent of carcases." "Better," closes the song, +"better the grave than the life of man who sighs + +<span class="pagenum"><a name="Vol2-Page-2-057"></a>2-057]</span> + +when the horns call him forth, to the squares of +battle." +</p> + +<p> +<span class="sidenote">The Welsh +hopes</span> +</p> + +<p> +But even in bardic verse Llewelyn rises high out +of the mere mob of chieftains who live by rapine, +and boast as the Hirlas-horn passes from hand +to hand through the hall that "they take and give +no quarter." "Tender-hearted, wise, witty, ingenious," +he was "the great Caesar" who was to +gather beneath his sway the broken fragments of +the Celtic race. Mysterious prophecies, the +prophecies of Merlin the Wise which floated from +lip to lip and were heard even along the Seine and +the Rhine, came home again to nerve Wales to +its last struggle with the stranger. Medrawd and +Arthur, men whispered, would appear once more +on earth to fight over again the fatal battle of +Camlan in which the hero-king perished. The +last conqueror of the Celtic race, Cadwallon, still +lived to combat for his people. The supposed +verses of Taliesin expressed the undying hope of a +restoration of the Cymry. "In their hands shall +be all the land from Britanny to Man: ... a +rumour shall arise that the Germans are moving +out of Britain back again to their fatherland." +Gathered up in the strange work of Geoffry of +Monmouth, these predictions had long been making +a deep impression not on Wales only but on its +conquerors. It was to meet the dreams of a yet +living Arthur that the grave of the legendary hero-king +at Glastonbury was found and visited by + +<span class="pagenum"><a name="Vol2-Page-2-058"></a>2-058]</span> + +Henry the Second. But neither trick nor conquest +could shake the firm faith of the Celt in the +ultimate victory of his race. "Think you," said +Henry to a Welsh chieftain who joined his host, +"that your people of rebels can withstand my +army?" "My people," replied the chieftain, "may +be weakened by your might, and even in great +part destroyed, but unless the wrath of God be on +the side of its foe it will not perish utterly. Nor +deem I that other race or other tongue will +answer for this corner of the world before the +Judge of all at the last day save this people and +tongue of Wales." So ran the popular rime, +"Their Lord they will praise, their speech they +shall keep, their land they shall lose--except wild +Wales." +</p> + +<p> +<span class="sidenote">The Provisions of Oxford</span> +</p> + +<p> +Faith and prophecy seemed justified by the +growing strength of the British people. The +weakness and dissensions which characterized the +reign of Henry the Third enabled Llewelyn ap +Jorwerth to preserve a practical independence till +the close of his life, when a fresh acknowledgement +of the English supremacy was wrested from +him by Archbishop Edmund. But the triumphs +of his arms were renewed by Llewelyn the son of +Gruffydd, who followed him in 1246. The raids +of the new chieftain swept the border to the very +gates of Chester, while his conquest of Glamorgan +seemed to bind the whole people together in a +power strong enough to meet any attack from the + +<span class="pagenum"><a name="Vol2-Page-2-059"></a>2-059]</span> + +stranger. So pressing was the danger that it +called the king's eldest son, Edward, to the field; +but his first appearance in arms ended in a crushing +defeat. The defeat however remained unavenged. +Henry's dreams were of mightier enterprises +than the reduction of the Welsh. The +Popes were still fighting their weary battle against +the House of Hohenstaufen, and were offering its +kingdom of Sicily, which they regarded as a forfeited +fief of the Holy See, to any power that +would aid them in the struggle. In 1254 it was +offered to the king's second son, Edmund. With +imbecile pride Henry accepted the offer, prepared +to send an army across the Alps, and pledged +England to repay the sums which the Pope was +borrowing for the purposes of his war. In a +Parliament at the opening of 1257 he demanded +an aid and a tenth from the clergy. A fresh +demand was made in 1258. But the patience of +the realm was at last exhausted. Earl Simon had +returned in 1253 from his government of Gascony, +and the fruit of his meditations during the four +years of his quiet stay at home, a quiet broken +only by short embassies to France and Scotland +which showed there was as yet no open quarrel +with Henry, was seen in a league of the baronage +and in their adoption of a new and startling +policy. The past half-century had shown both +the strength and weakness of the Charter: its +strength as a rallying-point for the baronage and + +<span class="pagenum"><a name="Vol2-Page-2-060"></a>2-060]</span> + +a definite assertion of rights which the king could +be made to acknowledge; its weakness in providing +no means for the enforcement of its own stipulations. +Henry had sworn again and again to +observe the Charter and his oath was no sooner +taken than it was unscrupulously broken. The +barons had secured the freedom of the realm; the +secret of their long patience during the reign of +Henry lay in the difficulty of securing its right +administration. It was this difficulty which Earl +Simon was prepared to solve when action was +forced on him by the stir of the realm. A great +famine added to the sense of danger from Wales +and from Scotland and to the irritation at the new +demands from both Henry and Rome with which +the year 1258 opened. It was to arrange for a +campaign against Wales that Henry called a parliament +in April. But the baronage appeared in +arms with Gloucester and Leicester at their head. +The king was forced to consent to the appointment +of a committee of twenty-four to draw up +terms for the reform of the state. The Twenty-four +again met the Parliament at Oxford in June, +and although half the committee consisted of royal +ministers and favourites it was impossible to resist +the tide of popular feeling. Hugh Bigod, one of +the firmest adherents of the two Earls, was chosen +as Justiciar. The claim to elect this great officer +was in fact the leading point in the baronial +policy. But further measures were needed to hold + +<span class="pagenum"><a name="Vol2-Page-2-061"></a>2-061]</span> + +in check such arbitrary misgovernment as had +prevailed during the last twenty years. By the +"Provisions of Oxford" it was agreed that the +Great Council should assemble thrice in the year, +whether summoned by the king or no; and on +each occasion "the Commonalty shall elect twelve +honest men who shall come to the Parliaments, +and at other times when occasion shall be when +the King and his Council shall send for them, to +treat of the wants of the king and of his kingdom. +And the Commonalty shall hold as established +that which these Twelve shall do." Three permanent +committees of barons and prelates were +named to carry out the work of reform and +administration. The reform of the Church was +left to the original Twenty-four; a second Twenty-four +negotiated the financial aids; a Permanent +Council of Fifteen advised the king in the ordinary +work of government. The complexity of +such an arrangement was relieved by the fact that +the members of each of these committees were in +great part the same persons. The Justiciar, +Chancellor, and the guardians of the king's +castles swore to act only with the advice and +assent of the Permanent Council, and the first two +great officers, with the Treasurer, were to give +account of their proceedings to it at the end of the +year. Sheriffs were to be appointed for a single +year only, no doubt by the Council, from among +the chief tenants of the county, and no undue + +<span class="pagenum"><a name="Vol2-Page-2-062"></a>2-062]</span> + +fees were to be exacted for the administration of +justice in their court. +</p> + +<p> +<span class="sidenote">Government +of the +Barons</span> +</p> + +<p> +A royal proclamation in the English tongue, +the first in that tongue since the Conquest which +has reached us, ordered the observance of these +Provisions. The king was in fact helpless, and +resistance came only from the foreign favourites, +who refused to surrender the castles and honours +which had been granted to them. But the +Twenty-four were resolute in their action; and an +armed demonstration of the barons drove the +foreigners in flight over sea. The whole royal +power was now in fact in the hands of the +committees appointed by the Great Council. But +the measures of the barons showed little of the +wisdom and energy which the country had hoped +for. In October 1259 the knighthood complained +that the barons had done nothing but seek their +own advantage in the recent changes. This protest +produced the Provisions of Westminster, which +gave protection to tenants against their feudal lords, +regulated legal procedure in the feudal courts, +appointed four knights in each shire to watch the +justice of the sheriffs, and made other temporary +enactments for the furtherance of justice. But +these Provisions brought little fruit, and a tendency +to mere feudal privilege showed itself in an exemption +of all nobles and prelates from attendance at +the Sheriff's courts. Their foreign policy was +more vigorous and successful. All further payment + +<span class="pagenum"><a name="Vol2-Page-2-063"></a>2-063]</span> + +to Rome, whether secular or ecclesiastical, +was prohibited, formal notice was given to the Pope +of England's withdrawal from the Sicilian enterprise, +peace put an end to the incursions of the +Welsh, and negotiations on the footing of a formal +abandonment of the king's claim to Normandy, +Anjou, Maine, Touraine, and Poitou ended in +October 1259 in a peace with France. +</p> + +<p> +<span class="sidenote">Simon and the Baronage</span> +</p> + +<p> +This peace, the triumph of that English policy +which had been struggling ever since the days of +Hubert de Burgh with the Continental policy of +Henry and his foreign advisers, was the work of +the Earl of Leicester. The revolution had doubtless +been mainly Simon's doing. In the summer +of 1258, while the great change was going on, a +thunderstorm drove the king as he passed along +the river to the house of the Bishop of Durham +where the Earl was then sojourning. Simon bade +Henry take shelter with him and have no fear of +the storm. The king refused with petulant wit. +"If I fear the thunder, I fear you, Sir Earl, more +than all the thunder in the world." But Simon +had probably small faith in the cumbrous system +of government which the Barons devised, and it +was with reluctance that he was brought to swear +to the Provisions of Oxford which embodied it. +With their home government he had little to do, +for from the autumn of 1258 to that of 1259 he +was chiefly busied in negotiation in France. +But already his breach with Gloucester and the + +<span class="pagenum"><a name="Vol2-Page-2-064"></a>2-064]</span> + +bulk of his fellow councillors was marked. In the +Lent Parliament of 1259 he had reproached them, +and Gloucester above all, with faithlessness to their +trust. "The things we are treating of," he cried, +"we have sworn to carry out. With such feeble +and faithless men I care not to have ought to do!" +The peace with France was hardly signed when +his distrust of his colleagues was verified. Henry's +withdrawal to the French court at the close of the +year for the formal signature of the treaty was the +signal for a reactionary movement. From France +the king forbade the summoning of a Lent Parliament +in 1260 and announced his resumption of the +enterprise against Sicily. Both acts were distinct +breaches of the Provisions of Oxford, but Henry +trusted to the divisions of the Twenty-four. +Gloucester was in open feud with Leicester; the +Justiciar, Hugh Bigod, resigned his office in the +spring; and both of these leaders drew cautiously +to the king. Roger Mortimer and the Earls of +Hereford and Norfolk more openly espoused the +royal cause, and in February 1260 Henry had +gained confidence enough to announce that as the +barons had failed to keep their part of the Provisions +he should not keep his. +</p> + +<p> +<span class="sidenote">The Counter +Revolution</span> +</p> + +<p> +Earl Simon almost alone remained unshaken. +But his growing influence was seen in the appointment +of his supporter, Hugh Despenser, as Justiciar +in Bigod's place, while his strength was doubled +by the accession of the King's son Edward to his + +<span class="pagenum"><a name="Vol2-Page-2-065"></a>2-065]</span> + +side. In the moment of the revolution Edward +had vehemently supported the party of the +foreigners. But he had sworn to observe the +Provisions, and the fidelity to his pledge which +remained throughout his life the chief note of his +temper at once showed itself. Like Simon he protested +against the faithlessness of the barons in the +carrying out of their reforms, and it was his strenuous +support of the petition of the knighthood that +brought about the additional Provisions of 1259. +He had been brought up with Earl Simon's sons, +and with the Earl himself his relations remained +friendly even at the later time of their fatal +hostilities. But as yet he seems to have had no +distrust of Simon's purposes or policy. His adhesion +to the Earl recalled Henry from France; +and the king was at once joined by Gloucester in +London while Edward and Simon remained without +the walls. But the love of father and son +proved too strong to bear political severance, and +Edward's reconciliation foiled the Earl's plans. +He withdrew to the Welsh border, where fresh +troubles were breaking out, while Henry prepared +to deal his final blow at the government which, +tottering as it was, still held him in check. Rome +had resented the measures which had put an end +to her extortions, and it was to Rome that Henry +looked for a formal absolution from his oath to +observe the Provisions. In June 1261 he produced +a Bull annulling the Provisions and freeing + +<span class="pagenum"><a name="Vol2-Page-2-066"></a>2-066]</span> + +him from his oath in a Parliament at Winchester. +The suddenness of the blow forbade open protest +and Henry quickly followed up his victory. Hugh +Bigod, who had surrendered the Tower and Dover +in the spring, surrendered the other castles he held +in the autumn. Hugh Despenser was deposed +from the Justiciarship and a royalist, Philip Basset, +appointed in his place. +</p> + +<p> +<span class="sidenote">Simon's rising</span> +</p> + +<p> +The news of this counter-revolution reunited +for a moment the barons. Gloucester joined Earl +Simon in calling an autumn Parliament at St. +Alban's, and in summoning to it three knights from +every shire south of Trent. But the union was a +brief one. Gloucester consented to refer the +quarrel with the king to arbitration and the Earl +of Leicester withdrew in August to France. He +saw that for the while there was no means of withstanding +Henry, even in his open defiance of the +Provisions. Foreign soldiers were brought into +the land; the king won back again the appointment +of sheriffs. For eighteen months of this +new rule Simon could do nothing but wait. But +his long absence lulled the old jealousies against +him. The confusion of the realm and a fresh outbreak +of troubles in Wales renewed the disgust at +Henry's government, while his unswerving faithfulness +to the Provisions fixed the eyes of all +Englishmen upon the Earl as their natural leader. +The death of Gloucester in the summer of 1262 +removed the one barrier to action; and in the + +<span class="pagenum"><a name="Vol2-Page-2-067"></a>2-067]</span> + +spring of 1263 Simon landed again in England as +the unquestioned head of the baronial party. +What immediately forced him to action was a +march of Edward with a body of foreign troops +against Llewelyn, who was probably by this time +in communication if not in actual alliance with the +Earl. The chief opponents of Llewelyn among +the Marcher Lords were ardent supporters of +Henry's misgovernment, and when a common +hostility drew the Prince and Earl together, the +constitutional position of Llewelyn as an English +noble gave formal justification for co-operation +with him. At Whitsuntide the barons met Simon +at Oxford and finally summoned Henry to observe +the Provisions. His refusal was met by an appeal +to arms. Throughout the country the younger +nobles flocked to Simon's standard, and the young +Earl of Gloucester, Gilbert of Clare, became his +warmest supporter. His rapid movements foiled +all opposition. While Henry vainly strove to +raise money and men, Simon swept the Welsh +border, marched through Reading on Dover, and +finally appeared before London. +</p> + +<p> +<span class="sidenote">Mise of Amiens</span> +</p> + +<p> +The Earl's triumph was complete. Edward +after a brief attempt at resistance was forced to +surrender Windsor and disband his foreign troops. +The rising of London in the cause of the barons +left Henry helpless. But at the moment of +triumph the Earl saw himself anew forsaken. +The bulk of the nobles again drew towards the + +<span class="pagenum"><a name="Vol2-Page-2-068"></a>2-068]</span> + +king; only six of the twelve barons who had +formed the patriot half of the committee of 1258, +only four of the twelve representatives of the +community at that date, were now with the Earl. +The dread too of civil war gave strength to the +cry for a compromise, and at the end of the year +it was agreed that the strife should be left to the +arbitration of the French king, Lewis the Ninth. +But saint and just ruler as he was, the royal power +was in the conception of Lewis a divine thing, +which no human power could limit or fetter, and +his decision, which was given in January 1264, +annulled the whole of the Provisions. Only the +Charters granted before the Provisions were to be +observed. The appointment and removal of all +officers of state was to be wholly with the king, +and he was suffered to call aliens to his councils if +he would. The Mise of Amiens was at once confirmed +by the Pope, and, crushing blow as it was, +the barons felt themselves bound by the award. +It was only the exclusion of aliens--a point which +they had not purposed to submit to arbitration--which +they refused to concede. Luckily Henry +was as inflexible on this point as on the rest, and +the mutual distrust prevented any real accommodation. +</p> + +<p> +<span class="sidenote">Battle of Lewes</span> +</p> + +<p> +But Henry had to reckon on more than the +baronage. Deserted as he was by the greater +nobles, Simon was far from standing alone. +Throughout the recent struggle the new city + +<span class="pagenum"><a name="Vol2-Page-2-069"></a>2-069]</span> + +governments of the craft-gilds, which were known +by the name of "Communes," had shown an +enthusiastic devotion to his cause. The queen +was stopped in her attempt to escape from the +Tower by an angry mob, who drove her back with +stones and foul words. When Henry attempted +to surprise Leicester in his quarters at Southwark, +the Londoners burst the gates which had been +locked by the richer burghers against him, and +rescued him by a welcome into the city. The +clergy and the universities went in sympathy with +the towns, and in spite of the taunts of the +royalists, who accused him of seeking allies against +the nobility in the common people, the popular +enthusiasm gave a strength to the Earl which +sustained him even in this darkest hour of the +struggle. He at once resolved on resistance. The +French award had luckily reserved the rights of +Englishmen to the liberties they had enjoyed +before the Provisions of Oxford, and it was easy +for Simon to prove that the arbitrary power it gave +to the Crown was as contrary to the Charter as +to the Provisions themselves. London was the +first to reject the decision; in March 1264 its +citizens mustered at the call of the town-bell at +Saint Paul's, seized the royal officials, and plundered +the royal parks. But an army had already +mustered in great force at the king's summons, +while Leicester found himself deserted by the bulk +of the baronage. Every day brought news of ill. + +<span class="pagenum"><a name="Vol2-Page-2-070"></a>2-070]</span> + +A detachment from Scotland joined Henry's forces. +The younger De Montfort was taken prisoner. +Northampton was captured, the king raised the +siege of Rochester, and a rapid march of Earl +Simon's only saved London itself from a surprise +by Edward. But, betrayed as he was, the Earl +remained firm to the cause. He would fight to +the end, he said, even were he and his sons left to +fight alone. With an army reinforced by 15,000 +Londoners, he marched in May to the relief of the +Cinque Ports which were now threatened by the +king. Even on the march he was forsaken by +many of the nobles who followed him. Halting at +Fletching in Sussex, a few miles from Lewes, +where the royal army was encamped, Earl Simon +with the young Earl of Gloucester offered the +king compensation for all damage if he would +observe the Provisions. Henry's answer was one +of defiance, and though numbers were against him, +the Earl resolved on battle. His skill as a soldier +reversed the advantages of the ground; marching +at dawn on the 14th of May he seized the heights +eastward of the town, and moved down these slopes +to an attack. His men with white crosses on back +and breast knelt in prayer before the battle opened, +and all but reached the town before their approach +was perceived. Edward however opened the fight +by a furious charge which broke the Londoners on +Leicester's left. In the bitterness of his hatred for +the insult to his mother he pursued them for four + +<span class="pagenum"><a name="Vol2-Page-2-071"></a>2-071]</span> + +miles, slaughtering three thousand men. But he +returned to find the battle lost. Crowded in the +narrow space between the heights and the river +Ouse, a space broken by marshes and by the long +street of the town, the royalist centre and left +were crushed by Earl Simon. The Earl of Cornwall, +now King of the Romans, who, as the mocking +song of the victors ran, "makede him a castel +of a mulne post" ("he weened that the mill-sails +were mangonels" goes on the sarcastic verse), was +taken prisoner, and Henry himself captured. +Edward cut his way into the Priory only to join +in his father's surrender. +</p> + +<p> +<span class="sidenote">Simon's rule</span> +</p> + +<p> +The victory of Lewes placed Earl Simon at the +head of the state. "Now England breathes in the +hope of liberty," sang a poet of the time; "the +English were despised like dogs, but now they +have lifted up their head and their foes are +vanquished." But the moderation of the terms +agreed upon in the Mise of Lewes, a convention +between the king and his captors, shows Simon's +sense of the difficulties of his position. The +question of the Provisions was again to be submitted +to arbitration; and a parliament in June, to which +four knights were summoned from every county, +placed the administration till this arbitration was +complete in the hands of a new council of nine to +be nominated by the Earls of Leicester and +Gloucester and the patriotic Bishop of Chichester. +Responsibility to the community was provided for + +<span class="pagenum"><a name="Vol2-Page-2-072"></a>2-072]</span> + +by the declaration of a right in the body of barons +and prelates to remove either of the Three Electors, +who in turn could displace or appoint the members +of the Council. Such a constitution was of a +different order from the cumbrous and oligarchical +committees of 1258. But it had little time to +work in. The plans for a fresh arbitration broke +down. Lewis refused to review his decision, and +all schemes for setting fresh judges between the +king and his people were defeated by a formal +condemnation of the barons' cause issued by the +Pope. Triumphant as he was indeed Earl Simon's +difficulties thickened every day. The queen with +Archbishop Boniface gathered an army in France +for an invasion; Roger Mortimer with the border +barons was still in arms and only held in check by +Llewelyn. It was impossible to make binding +terms with an imprisoned king, yet to release +Henry without terms was to renew the war. The +imprisonment too gave a shock to public feeling +which thinned the Earl's ranks. In the new +Parliament which he called at the opening of +1265 the weakness of the patriotic party among +the baronage was shown in the fact that only +twenty-three earls and barons could be found to +sit beside the hundred and twenty ecclesiastics. +</p> + +<p> +<span class="sidenote">Summons +of the +Commons</span> +</p> + +<p> +But it was just this sense of his weakness which +prompted the Earl to an act that has done more +than any incident of this struggle to immortalize +his name. Had the strife been simply a strife for + +<span class="pagenum"><a name="Vol2-Page-2-073"></a>2-073]</span> + +power between the king and the baronage the +victory of either would have been equally fatal in +its results. The success of the one would have +doomed England to a royal despotism, that of the +other to a feudal aristocracy. Fortunately for our +freedom the English baronage had been brought +too low by the policy of the kings to be able to +withstand the crown single-handed. From the +first moment of the contest it had been forced to +make its cause a national one. The summons of +two knights from each county, elected in its county +court, to a Parliament in 1254, even before the +opening of the struggle, was a recognition of the +political weight of the country gentry which was +confirmed by the summons of four knights from +every county to the Parliament assembled after +the battle of Lewes. The Provisions of Oxford, +in stipulating for attendance and counsel on the +part of twelve delegates of the "commonalty," +gave the first indication of a yet wider appeal to +the people at large. But it was the weakness of +his party among the baronage at this great crisis +which drove Earl Simon to a constitutional change +of mighty issue in our history. As before, he +summoned two knights from every county. But +he created a new force in English politics when he +summoned to sit beside them two citizens from +every borough. The attendance of delegates from +the towns had long been usual in the county courts +when any matter respecting their interests was in + +<span class="pagenum"><a name="Vol2-Page-2-074"></a>2-074]</span> + +question; but it was the writ issued by Earl Simon +that first summoned the merchant and the trader +to sit beside the knight of the shire, the baron, +and the bishop in the parliament of the realm. +</p> + +<p> +<span class="sidenote">Simon's +difficulties</span> +</p> + +<p> +It is only this great event however which +enables us to understand the large and prescient +nature of Earl Simon's designs. Hardly a few +months had passed away since the victory of Lewes +when the burghers took their seats at Westminster, +yet his government was tottering to its fall. We +know little of the Parliament's acts. It seems to +have chosen Simon as Justiciar and to have provided +for Edward's liberation, though he was still +to live under surveillance at Hereford and to +surrender his earldom of Chester to Simon, who +was thus able to communicate with his Welsh +allies. The Earl met the dangers from without +with complete success. In September 1264 a +general muster of the national forces on Barham +Down and a contrary wind put an end to the +projects of invasion entertained by the mercenaries +whom the queen had collected in Flanders; the +threats of France died away into negotiations; the +Papal Legate was forbidden to cross the Channel, +and his bulls of excommunication were flung into +the sea. But the difficulties at home grew more +formidable every day. The restraint upon Henry +and Edward jarred against the national feeling of +loyalty, and estranged the mass of Englishmen +who always side with the weak. Small as the + +<span class="pagenum"><a name="Vol2-Page-2-075"></a>2-075]</span> + +patriotic party among the barons had been from +the first, it grew smaller as dissensions broke out +over the spoils of victory. The Earl's justice and +resolve to secure the public peace told heavily +against him. John Giffard left him because he +refused to allow him to exact ransom from a +prisoner, contrary to the agreement made after +Lewes. A greater danger opened when the young +Earl of Gloucester, though enriched with the +estates of the foreigners, held himself aloof from +the Justiciar, and resented Leicester's prohibition +of a tournament, his naming the wardens of the +royal castles by his own authority, his holding +Edward's fortresses on the Welsh marches by his +own garrisons. +</p> + +<p> +<span class="sidenote">Edward and +Gloucester</span> +</p> + +<p> +Gloucester's later conduct proves the wisdom of +Leicester's precautions. In the spring Parliament +of 1265 he openly charged the Earl with violating +the Mise of Lewes, with tyranny, and with aiming +at the crown. Before its close he withdrew to his +own lands in the west and secretly allied himself +with Roger Mortimer and the Marcher Barons. +Earl Simon soon followed him to the west, taking +with him the king and Edward. He moved along +the Severn, securing its towns, advanced westward +to Hereford, and was marching at the end of May +along bad roads into the heart of South Wales to +attack the fortresses of Earl Gilbert in Glamorgan +when Edward suddenly made his escape from +Hereford and joined Gloucester at Ludlow. The + +<span class="pagenum"><a name="Vol2-Page-2-076"></a>2-076]</span> + +moment had been skilfully chosen, and Edward +showed a rare ability in the movements by which +he took advantage of the Earl's position. Moving +rapidly along the Severn he seized Gloucester and +the bridges across the river, destroyed the ships +by which Leicester strove to escape across the +Channel to Bristol, and cut him off altogether +from England. By this movement too he placed +himself between the Earl and his son Simon, who +was advancing from the east to his father's relief. +Turning rapidly on this second force Edward surprised +it at Kenilworth and drove it with heavy +loss within the walls of the castle. But the success +was more than compensated by the opportunity +which his absence gave to the Earl of breaking +the line of the Severn. Taken by surprise and +isolated as he was, Simon had been forced to seek +for aid and troops in an avowed alliance with +Llewelyn, and it was with Welsh reinforcements +that he turned to the east. But the seizure of his +ships and of the bridges of the Severn held him a +prisoner in Edward's grasp, and a fierce attack +drove him back, with broken and starving forces, +into the Welsh hills. In utter despair he struck +northward to Hereford; but the absence of Edward +now enabled him on the 2nd of August to throw +his troops in boats across the Severn below +Worcester. The news drew Edward quickly back +in a fruitless counter-march to the river, for the +Earl had already reached Evesham by a long night + + +<span class="pagenum"><a name="Vol2-Page-2-077"></a>2-077]</span> + +march on the morning of the 4th, while his son, +relieved in turn by Edward's counter-march, had +pushed in the same night to the little town of +Alcester. The two armies were now but some ten +miles apart, and their junction seemed secured. +But both were spent with long marching, and +while the Earl, listening reluctantly to the request +of the King who accompanied him, halted at +Evesham for mass and dinner, the army of the +younger Simon halted for the same purpose at +Alcester. +</p> + +<p> +<span class="sidenote">Battle of Evesham</span> +</p> + +<p> +"Those two dinners doleful were, alas!" sings +Robert of Gloucester; for through the same +memorable night Edward was hurrying back from +the Severn by country cross-lanes to seize the +fatal gap that lay between them. As morning +broke his army lay across the road that led northward +from Evesham to Alcester. Evesham lies +in a loop of the river Avon where it bends to the +south; and a height on which Edward ranged his +troops closed the one outlet from it save across +the river. But a force had been thrown over the +river under Mortimer to seize the bridges, and all +retreat was thus finally cut off. The approach of +Edward's army called Simon to the front, and for +the moment he took it for his son's. Though the +hope soon died away a touch of soldierly pride +moved him as he recognised in the orderly advance +of his enemies a proof of his own training. "By +the arm of St. James," he cried, "they come on + +<span class="pagenum"><a name="Vol2-Page-2-078"></a>2-078]</span> + +in wise fashion, but it was from me that they +learnt it." A glance however satisfied him of the +hopelessness of a struggle; it was impossible for +a handful of horsemen with a mob of half-armed +Welshmen to resist the disciplined knighthood of +the royal army. "Let us commend our souls to +God," Simon said to the little group around him, +"for our bodies are the foe's." He bade Hugh +Despenser and the rest of his comrades fly from +the field. "If he died," was the noble answer, +"they had no will to live." In three hours the +butchery was over. The Welsh fled at the first +onset like sheep, and were cut ruthlessly down in +the cornfields and gardens where they sought +refuge. The little group of knights around Simon +fought desperately, falling one by one till the +Earl was left alone. So terrible were his sword-strokes +that he had all but gained the hill-top +when a lance-thrust brought his horse to the +ground, but Simon still rejected the summons to +yield till a blow from behind felled him mortally +wounded to the ground. Then with a last cry of +"It is God's grace," the soul of the great patriot +passed away. +</p> + +<p> +<span class="sidenote">The Royalist reaction</span> +</p> + +<p> +The triumphant blare of trumpets which welcomed +the rescued king into Evesham, "his men +weeping for joy," rang out in bitter contrast to +the mourning of the realm. It sounded like the +announcement of a reign of terror. The rights +and laws for which men had toiled and fought so + +<span class="pagenum"><a name="Vol2-Page-2-079"></a>2-079]</span> + +long seemed to have been swept away in an hour. +Every town which had supported Earl Simon was +held to be at the king's mercy, its franchises to +be forfeited. The Charter of Lynn was annulled; +London was marked out as the special object of +Henry's vengeance, and the farms and merchandise +of its citizens were seized as first-fruits of its +plunder. The darkness which on that fatal +morning hid their books from the monks of +Evesham as they sang in choir was but a presage +of the gloom which fell on the religious houses. +From Ramsey, from Evesham, from St. Alban's +rose the same cry of havoc and rapine. But the +plunder of monk and burgess was little to the +vast sentence of confiscation which the mere fact +of rebellion was held to have passed on all the +adherents of Earl Simon. To "disinherit" these +of their lands was to confiscate half the estates of +the landed gentry of England; but the hotter +royalists declared them disinherited, and Henry +was quick to lavish their lands away on favourites +and foreigners. The very chroniclers of their +party recall the pillage with shame. But all +thought of resistance lay hushed in a general +terror. Even the younger Simon "saw no other +rede" than to release his prisoners. His army, +after finishing its meal, was again on its march to +join the Earl when the news of his defeat met +it, heralded by a strange darkness that, rising +suddenly in the north-west and following as it + +<span class="pagenum"><a name="Vol2-Page-2-080"></a>2-080]</span> + +were on Edward's track, served to shroud the +mutilations and horrors of the battle-field. The +news was soon fatally confirmed. Simon himself +could see from afar his father's head borne off on +a spear-point to be mocked at Wigmore. But the +pursuit streamed away southward and westward +through the streets of Tewkesbury, heaped with +corpses of the panic-struck Welshmen whom the +townsmen slaughtered without pity; and there +was no attack as the little force fell back through +the darkness and big thunder-drops in despair +upon Kenilworth. "I may hang up my axe," are +the bitter words which a poet attributes to their +leader, "for feebly have I gone"; and once +within the castle he gave way to a wild sorrow, +day after day tasting neither meat nor drink. +</p> + +<p> +<span class="sidenote">Edward</span> +</p> + +<p> +He was roused into action again by news +of the shameful indignities which the Marcher +Lords had offered to the body of the great Earl +before whom they had trembled so long. The +knights around him broke out at the tidings in a +passionate burst of fury, and clamoured for the +blood of Richard of Cornwall and his son, who +were prisoners in the castle. But Simon had +enough nobleness left to interpose. "To God +and him alone was it owing" Richard owned +afterwards, "that I was snatched from death." +The captives were not only saved, but set free. +A Parliament had been called at Winchester at +the opening of September, and its mere assembly + +<span class="pagenum"><a name="Vol2-Page-2-081"></a>2-081]</span> + +promised an end to the reign of utter lawlessness. +A powerful party, too, was known to exist in the +royal camp which, hostile as it had shown itself +to Earl Simon, shared his love for English liberties, +and the liberation of Richard was sure to aid its +efforts. At the head of this party stood the +young Earl of Gloucester, Gilbert of Clare, to +whose action above all the Earl's overthrow was +due. And with Gilbert stood Edward himself. +The passion for law, the instinct of good government, +which were to make his reign so memorable +in our history, had declared themselves from the +first. He had sided with the barons at the outset +of their struggle with Henry; he had striven to +keep his father true to the Provisions of Oxford. +It was only when the figure of Earl Simon seemed +to tower above that of Henry himself, when the +Crown seemed falling into bondage, that Edward +passed to the royal side; and now that the danger +which he dreaded was over he returned to his +older attitude. In the first flush of victory, while +the doom of Simon was as yet unknown, Edward +had stood alone in desiring his captivity against +the cry of the Marcher Lords for his blood. When +all was done he wept over the corpse of his cousin +and playfellow, Henry de Montfort, and followed +the Earl's body to the tomb. But great as was +Edward's position after the victory of Evesham, +his moderate counsels were as yet of little avail. +His efforts in fact were met by those of Henry's + +<span class="pagenum"><a name="Vol2-Page-2-082"></a>2-082]</span> + +second son, Edmund, who had received the lands +and earldom of Earl Simon, and whom the dread +of any restoration of the house of De Montfort +set at the head of the ultra-royalists. Nor was +any hope of moderation to be found in the Parliament +which met in September 1265. It met in +the usual temper of a restoration-Parliament to +legalize the outrages of the previous month. The +prisoners who had been released from the dungeons +of the barons poured into Winchester to add fresh +violence to the demands of the Marchers. The +wives of the captive loyalists and the widows of +the slain were summoned to give fresh impulse to +the reaction. Their place of meeting added fuel +to the fiery passions of the throng, for Winchester +was fresh from its pillage by the younger Simon +on his way to Kenilworth, and its stubborn +loyalty must have been fanned into a flame by +the losses it had endured. In such an assembly +no voice of moderation could find a hearing. +The four bishops who favoured the national cause, +the bishops of London and Lincoln, of Worcester +and Chichester, were excluded from it, and the +heads of the religious houses were summoned for +the mere purpose of extortion. Its measures +were but a confirmation of the violence which +had been wrought. All grants made during the +king's "captivity" were revoked. The house of +De Montfort was banished from the realm. The +charter of London was annulled. The adherents + +<span class="pagenum"><a name="Vol2-Page-2-083"></a>2-083]</span> + +of Earl Simon were disinherited and seizin of +their lands was given to the king. +</p> + +<p> +<span class="sidenote">Simon's Miracles</span> +</p> + +<p> +Henry at once appointed commissioners to +survey and take possession of his spoil while he +moved to Windsor to triumph in the humiliation +of London. Its mayor and forty of its chief +citizens waited in the castle yard only to be +thrown into prison in spite of a safe-conduct, and +Henry entered his capital in triumph as into an +enemy's city. The surrender of Dover came to +fill his cup of joy, for Richard and Amaury of +Montfort had sailed with the Earl's treasure to +enlist foreign mercenaries, and it was by this +port that their force was destined to land. But a +rising of the prisoners detained there compelled +its surrender in October, and the success of the +royalists seemed complete. In reality their difficulties +were but beginning. Their triumph over +Earl Simon had been a triumph over the religious +sentiment of the time, and religion avenged itself +in its own way. Everywhere the Earl's death +was looked upon as a martyrdom; and monk and +friar united in praying for the souls of the men +who fell at Evesham as for soldiers of Christ. It +was soon whispered that heaven was attesting the +sanctity of De Montfort by miracles at his tomb. +How great was the effect of this belief was seen in +the efforts of King and Pope to suppress the +miracles, and in their continuance not only +through the reign of Edward the First but even + +<span class="pagenum"><a name="Vol2-Page-2-084"></a>2-084]</span> + +in the days of his successor. But its immediate +result was a sudden revival of hope. "Sighs are +changed into songs of praise," breaks out a monk +of the time, "and the greatness of our former joy +has come to life again!" Nor was it in miracles +alone that the "faithful," as they proudly styled +themselves, began to look for relief "from the +oppression of the malignants." A monk of St. +Alban's who was penning a eulogy of Earl Simon +in the midst of this uproar saw the rise of a new +spirit of resistance in the streets of the little +town. In dread of war it was guarded and +strongly closed with bolts and bars, and refused +entrance to all strangers, and above all to horsemen, +who wished to pass through. The Constable +of Hertford, an old foe of the townsmen, boasted +that spite of bolts and bars he would enter the +place and carry off four of the best villeins captive. +He contrived to make his way in; but as he +loitered idly about a butcher who passed by heard +him ask his men how the wind stood. The +butcher guessed his design to burn the town, and +felled him to the ground. The blow roused the +townsmen. They secured the Constable and his +followers, struck off their heads, and fixed them +at the four corners of the borough. +</p> + +<p> +<span class="sidenote">The Younger Simon</span> +</p> + +<p> +The popular reaction gave fresh heart to the +younger Simon. Quitting Kenilworth, he joined +in November John D'Eyvill and Baldewin Wake in +the Isle of Axholme where the Disinherited were + +<span class="pagenum"><a name="Vol2-Page-2-085"></a>2-085]</span> + +gathering in arms. So fast did horse and foot +flow in to him that Edward himself hurried into +Lincolnshire to meet this new danger. He saw +that the old strife was just breaking out again. +The garrison of Kenilworth scoured the country; +the men of the Cinque Ports, putting wives and +children on board their barks, swept the Channel +and harried the coasts; while Llewelyn, who had +brought about the dissolution of Parliament by a +raid upon Chester, butchered the forces sent +against him and was master of the border. The +one thing needed to link the forces of resistance +together was a head, and such a head the +appearance of Simon at Axholme seemed to +promise. But Edward was resolute in his plan of +conciliation. Arriving before the camp at the +close of 1265, he at once entered into negotiations +with his cousin, and prevailed on him to quit the +island and appear before the king. Richard of +Cornwall welcomed Simon at the court, he +presented him to Henry as the saviour of his life, +and on his promise to surrender Kenilworth Henry +gave him the kiss of peace. In spite of the +opposition of Roger Mortimer and the Marcher +Lords success seemed to be crowning this bold +stroke of the peace party when the Earl of +Gloucester interposed. Desirous as he was of +peace, the blood of De Montfort lay between him +and the Earl's sons, and the safety of the one lay +in the ruin of the other. In the face of this + +<span class="pagenum"><a name="Vol2-Page-2-086"></a>2-086]</span> + +danger Earl Gilbert threw his weight into the scale +of the ultra-royalists, and peace became impossible. +The question of restitution was shelved by a +reference to arbitrators; and Simon, detained in +spite of a safe-conduct, moved in Henry's train at +Christmas to witness the surrender of Kenilworth +which had been stipulated as the price of his full +reconciliation with the king. But hot blood was +now stirred again on both sides. The garrison +replied to the royal summons by a refusal to +surrender. They had received ward of the castle, +they said, not from Simon but from the Countess, +and to none but her would they give it up. The +refusal was not likely to make Simon's position an +easier one. On his return to London the award +of the arbitrators bound him to quit the realm and +not to return save with the assent of king and +baronage when all were at peace. He remained +for a while in free custody at London; but +warnings that he was doomed to lifelong imprisonment +drove him to flight, and he finally sought a +refuge over sea. +</p> + +<p> +<span class="sidenote">Ban of +Kenilworth</span> +</p> + +<p> +His escape set England again on fire. Llewelyn +wasted the border; the Cinque Ports held the sea; +the garrison of Kenilworth pushed their raids as +far as Oxford; Baldewin Wake with a band of +the Disinherited threw himself into the woods and +harried the eastern counties; Sir Adam Gurdon, a +knight of gigantic size and renowned prowess, +wasted with a smaller party the shires of the + +<span class="pagenum"><a name="Vol2-Page-2-087"></a>2-087]</span> + +south. In almost every county bands of outlaws +were seeking a livelihood in rapine and devastation, +while the royal treasury stood empty and the +enormous fine imposed upon London had been +swept into the coffers of French usurers. But a +stronger hand than the king's was now at the +head of affairs, and Edward met his assailants +with untiring energy. King Richard's son, Henry +of Almaine, was sent with a large force to the +north; Mortimer hurried to hold the Welsh +border; Edmund was despatched to Warwick to +hold Kenilworth in check; while Edward himself +marched at the opening of March to the south. +The Berkshire woods were soon cleared, and at +Whitsuntide Edward succeeded in dispersing Adam +Gurdon's band and in capturing its renowned +leader in single combat. The last blow was +already given to the rising in the north, where +Henry of Almaine surprised the Disinherited at +Chesterfield and took their leader, the Earl of +Derby, in his bed. Though Edmund had done +little but hold the Kenilworth knights in check, +the submission of the rest of the country now +enabled the royal army to besiege it in force. But +the king was penniless, and the Parliament which +he called to replenish his treasury in August +showed the resolve of the nation that the strife +should cease. They would first establish peace, if +peace were possible, they said, and then answer +the king's demand. Twelve commissioners, with + +<span class="pagenum"><a name="Vol2-Page-2-088"></a>2-088]</span> + +Earl Gilbert at their head, were appointed on +Henry's assent to arrange terms on reconciliation. +They at once decided that none should be utterly +disinherited for their part in the troubles, but that +liberty of redemption should be left open to all. +Furious at the prospect of being forced to disgorge +their spoil, Mortimer and the ultra-royalists broke +out in mad threats of violence, even against the +life of the Papal legate who had pressed for the +reconciliation. But the power of the ultra-royalists +was over. The general resolve was not to be +shaken by the clamour of a faction, and Mortimer's +rout at Brecknock by Llewelyn, the one defeat +that chequered the tide of success, had damaged +that leader's influence. Backed by Edward and +Earl Gilbert, the legate met their opposition with +a threat of excommunication, and Mortimer withdrew +sullenly from the camp. Fresh trouble in +the country and the seizure of the Isle of Ely by +a band of the Disinherited quickened the labours +of the Twelve. At the close of September they +pronounced their award, restoring the lands to +all who made submission on a graduated scale of +redemption, promising indemnity for all wrong +done during the troubles, and leaving the restoration +of the house of De Montfort to the royal will. +But to these provisions was added an emphatic +demand that "the king fully keep and observe +those liberties of the Church, charters of liberties, +and forest charters, which he is expressly and by + +<span class="pagenum"><a name="Vol2-Page-2-089"></a>2-089]</span> + +his own mouth bound to preserve and keep." +"Let the King," they add, "establish on a lasting +foundation those concessions which he has hitherto +made of his own will and not on compulsion, and +those needful ordinances which have been devised +by his subjects and by his own good pleasure." +</p> + +<p> +<span class="sidenote">Close of the Struggle</span> +</p> + +<p> +With this Award the struggle came to an end. +The garrison of Kenilworth held out indeed till +November, and the full benefit of the Ban was +only secured when Earl Gilbert in the opening of +the following year suddenly appeared in arms and +occupied London. But the Earl was satisfied, the +Disinherited were at last driven from Ely, and +Llewelyn was brought to submission by the +appearance of an army at Shrewsbury. All was +over by the close of 1267. His father's age and +weakness, his own brilliant military successes, left +Edward practically in possession of the royal +power; and his influence at once made itself felt. +There was no attempt to return to the misrule of +Henry's reign, to his projects of continental +aggrandizement or internal despotism. The constitutional +system of government for which the Barons +had fought was finally adopted by the Crown, and +the Parliament of Marlborough which assembled +in November 1267 renewed the provisions by +which the baronage had remedied the chief abuses +of the time in their Provisions of Oxford and +Westminster. The appointment of all officers of +state indeed was jealously reserved to the crown. + +<span class="pagenum"><a name="Vol2-Page-2-090"></a>2-090]</span> + +But the royal expenditure was brought within +bounds. Taxation was only imposed with the +assent of the Great Council. So utterly was the +land at rest that Edward felt himself free to take +the cross in 1268 and to join the Crusade which +was being undertaken by St. Lewis of France. +He reached Tunis only to find Lewis dead and his +enterprise a failure, wintered in Sicily, made his +way to Acre in the spring of 1271, and spent more +than a year in exploits which want of force +prevented from growing into a serious campaign. +He was already on his way home when the death +of Henry the Third in November 1272 called him +to the throne. +</p> + +</div> + +<span class="pagenum"><a name="Vol2-Page-2-091"></a>2-091]</span> + +<div class="chapter"> +<div class="head"> +<hr> +<a name="Bk3-Ch4"></a><ul> + +<li> +<a name="id4537421"></a>CHAPTER IV</li> +<li> +<a name="id4537427"></a>EDWARD THE FIRST</li> +<li> +<a name="id4537432"></a>1272-1307</li> + +</ul> +</div> + + + +<p> +<span class="sidenote">Edward's Temper</span> +</p> + +<p> +In his own day and among his own subjects +Edward the First was the object of an almost +boundless admiration. He was in the truest +sense a national king. At the moment when +the last trace of foreign conquest passed away, +when the descendants of those who won and +those who lost at Senlac blended for ever into +an English people, England saw in her ruler no +stranger but an Englishman. The national tradition +returned in more than the golden hair or the +English name which linked him to our earlier +kings. Edward's very temper was English to the +core. In good as in evil he stands out as the +typical representative of the race he ruled, like +them wilful and imperious, tenacious of his rights, +indomitable in his pride, dogged, stubborn, slow +of apprehension, narrow in sympathy, but like +them, too, just in the main, unselfish, laborious, + +<span class="pagenum"><a name="Vol2-Page-2-092"></a>2-092]</span> + +conscientious, haughtily observant of truth and +self-respect, temperate, reverent of duty, religious. +It is this oneness with the character of his people +which parts the temper of Edward from what had +till now been the temper of his house. He inherited +indeed from the Angevins their fierce +and passionate wrath; his punishments, when he +punished in anger, were without pity; and a +priest who ventured at a moment of storm into +his presence with a remonstrance dropped dead +from sheer fright at his feet. But his nature +had nothing of the hard selfishness, the vindictive +obstinacy which had so long characterized the +house of Anjou. His wrath passed as quickly as it +gathered; and for the most part his conduct was +that of an impulsive, generous man, trustful, averse +from cruelty, prone to forgive. "No man ever +asked mercy of me," he said in his old age, "and +was refused." The rough soldierly nobleness of his +nature broke out in incidents like that at Falkirk +where he lay on the bare ground among his men, +or in his refusal during a Welsh campaign to +drink of the one cask of wine which had been +saved from marauders. "It is I who have brought +you into this strait," he said to his thirsty fellow-soldiers, +"and I will have no advantage of you in +meat or drink." Beneath the stern imperiousness +of his outer bearing lay in fact a strange tenderness +and sensitiveness to affection. Every subject +throughout his realm was drawn closer to the + +<span class="pagenum"><a name="Vol2-Page-2-093"></a>2-093]</span> + +king who wept bitterly at the news of his +father's death though it gave him a crown, +whose fiercest burst of vengeance was called out +by an insult to his mother, whose crosses rose +as memorials of his love and sorrow at every +spot where his wife's bier rested. "I loved her +tenderly in her lifetime," wrote Edward to Eleanor's +friend, the Abbot of Cluny; "I do not cease to +love her now she is dead." And as it was with +mother and wife, so it was with his people at +large. All the self-concentrated isolation of the +foreign kings disappeared in Edward. He was the +first English ruler since the Conquest who loved +his people with a personal love and craved for +their love back again. To his trust in them we +owe our Parliament, to his care for them the +great statutes which stand in the forefront of our +laws. Even in his struggles with her England +understood a temper which was so perfectly her +own, and the quarrels between king and people +during his reign are quarrels where, doggedly +as they fought, neither disputant doubted for a +moment the worth or affection of the other. Few +scenes in our history are more touching than a +scene during the long contest over the Charter, +when Edward stood face to face with his people in +Westminster Hall, and with a sudden burst of tears +owned himself frankly in the wrong. +</p> + +<p> +<span class="sidenote">Influence of Chivalry</span> +</p> + +<p> +But it was just this sensitiveness, this openness +to outer impressions and outer influences, that led + +<span class="pagenum"><a name="Vol2-Page-2-094"></a>2-094]</span> + +to the strange contradictions which meet us in +Edward's career. His reign was a time in which a +foreign, influence told strongly on our manners, our +literature, our national spirit, for the sudden rise +of France into a compact and organized monarchy +was now making its influence dominant in Western +Europe. The "chivalry" so familiar to us in the +pages of Froissart, that picturesque mimicry of high +sentiment, of heroism, love, and courtesy before +which all depth and reality of nobleness disappeared +to make room for the coarsest profligacy, the narrowest +caste-spirit, and a brutal indifference to +human suffering, was specially of French creation. +There was a nobleness in Edward's nature from +which the baser influences of this chivalry fell +away. His life was pure, his piety, save when it +stooped to the superstition of the time, manly and +sincere, while his high sense of duty saved him +from the frivolous self-indulgence of his successors. +But he was far from being wholly free from the +taint of his age. His passionate desire was to be +a model of the fashionable chivalry of his day. +His frame was that of a born soldier--tall, deep-chested, +long of limb, capable alike of endurance +or action, and he shared to the full his people's +love of venture and hard fighting. When he +encountered Adam Gurdon after Evesham he +forced him single-handed to beg for mercy. At +the opening of his reign he saved his life by sheer +fighting in a tournament at Challon. It was this + +<span class="pagenum"><a name="Vol2-Page-2-095"></a>2-095]</span> + +love of adventure which lent itself to the frivolous +unreality of the new chivalry. His fame as a +general seemed a small thing to Edward when +compared with his fame as a knight. At his +"Round Table of Kenilworth" a hundred lords +and ladies, "clad all in silk," renewed the faded +glories of Arthur's Court. The false air of +romance which was soon to turn the gravest +political resolutions into outbursts of sentimental +feeling appeared in his "Vow of the Swan," when +rising at the royal board he swore on the dish +before him to avenge on Scotland the murder of +Comyn. Chivalry exerted on him a yet more +fatal influence in its narrowing of his sympathy +to the noble class and in its exclusion of the +peasant and the craftsman from all claim to pity. +"Knight without reproach" as he was, he looked +calmly on at the massacre of the burghers of +Berwick, and saw in William Wallace nothing but +a common robber. +</p> + +<p> +<span class="sidenote">Influence of Legality</span> +</p> + +<p> +The French notion of chivalry had hardly more +power over Edward's mind than the French conception +of kingship, feudality, and law. The rise +of a lawyer class was everywhere hardening customary +into written rights, allegiance into subjection, +loose ties such as commendation into a +definite vassalage. But it was specially through +French influence, the influence of St. Lewis and +his successors, that the imperial theories of the +Roman Law were brought to bear upon this + +<span class="pagenum"><a name="Vol2-Page-2-096"></a>2-096]</span> + +natural tendency of the time. When the "sacred +majesty" of the Cæsars was transferred by a legal +fiction to the royal head of a feudal baronage +every constitutional relation was changed. The +"defiance" by which a vassal renounced service +to his lord became treason, his after resistance +"sacrilege." That Edward could appreciate what +was sound and noble in the legal spirit around +him was shown in his reforms of our judicature +and our Parliament; but there was something +as congenial to his mind in its definiteness, its +rigidity, its narrow technicalities. He was never +wilfully unjust, but he was too often captious in +his justice, fond of legal chicanery, prompt to take +advantage of the letter of the law. The high conception +of royalty which he borrowed from St. +Lewis united with this legal turn of mind in the +worst acts of his reign. Of rights or liberties +unregistered in charter or roll Edward would +know nothing, while his own good sense was +overpowered by the majesty of his crown. It +was incredible to him that Scotland should revolt +against a legal bargain which made her national +independence conditional on the terms extorted +from a claimant of her throne; nor could he view +in any other light but as treason the resistance of +his own baronage to an arbitrary taxation which +their fathers had borne. +</p> + +<p> +<span class="sidenote">His Moral Grandeur</span> +</p> + +<p> +It is in the anomalies of such a character as +this, in its strange mingling of justice and wrong-doing, + +<span class="pagenum"><a name="Vol2-Page-2-097"></a>2-097]</span> + +of grandeur and littleness, that we must +look for any fair explanation of much that has +since been bitterly blamed in Edward's conduct +and policy. But what none of these anomalies +can hide from us is the height of moral temper +which shows itself in the tenor of his rule. +Edward was every inch a king; but his notion +of kingship was a lofty and a noble one. He +loved power; he believed in his sovereign rights +and clung to them with a stubborn tenacity. But +his main end in clinging to them was the welfare +of his people. Nothing better proves the self-command +which he drew from the purpose he set +before him than his freedom from the common +sin of great rulers--the lust of military glory. +He was the first of our kings since William the +Conqueror who combined military genius with +political capacity; but of the warrior's temper, of +the temper that finds delight in war, he had little +or none. His freedom from it was the more +remarkable that Edward was a great soldier. His +strategy in the campaign before Evesham marked +him as a consummate general. Earl Simon was +forced to admire the skill of his advance on the +fatal field, and the operations by which he met +the risings that followed it were a model of +rapidity and military grasp. In his Welsh campaigns +he was soon to show a tenacity and force +of will which wrested victory out of the midst of +defeat. He could head a furious charge of horse + +<span class="pagenum"><a name="Vol2-Page-2-098"></a>2-098]</span> + +as at Lewes, or organize a commissariat which +enabled him to move army after army across the +harried Lowlands. In his old age he was quick +to discover the value of the English archery and +to employ it as a means of victory at Falkirk. +But master as he was of the art of war, and forced +from time to time to show his mastery in great +campaigns, in no single instance was he the +assailant. He fought only when he was forced +to fight; and when fighting was over he turned +back quietly to the work of administration and +the making of laws. +</p> + +<p> +<span class="sidenote">His Political +Genius</span> +</p> + +<p> +War in fact was with Edward simply a means +of carrying out the ends of statesmanship, and it +was in the character of his statesmanship that his +real greatness made itself felt. His policy was an +English policy; he was firm to retain what was +left of the French dominion of his race, but he +abandoned from the first all dreams of recovering +the wider dominions which his grandfather had +lost. His mind was not on that side of the +Channel, but on this. He concentrated his +energies on the consolidation and good government +of England itself. We can only fairly judge +the annexation of Wales or his attempt to annex +Scotland if we look on his efforts in either quarter +as parts of the same scheme of national administration +to which we owe his final establishment of +our judicature, our legislation, our parliament. +The character of his action was no doubt determined + +<span class="pagenum"><a name="Vol2-Page-2-099"></a>2-099]</span> + +in great part by the general mood of his +age, an age whose special task and aim seemed to +be that of reducing to distinct form the principles +which had sprung into a new and vigorous life +during the age which preceded it. As the opening +of the thirteenth century had been an age of +founders, creators, discoverers, so its close was an +age of lawyers, of rulers such as St. Lewis of +France or Alfonso the Wise of Castille, organizers, +administrators, framers of laws and institutions. +It was to this class that Edward himself belonged. +He had little of creative genius, of political +originality, but he possessed in a high degree the +passion for order and good government, the +faculty of organization, and a love of law which +broke out even in the legal chicanery to which he +sometimes stooped. In the judicial reforms to +which so much of his attention was directed he +showed himself, if not an "English Justinian," at +any rate a clear-sighted and judicious man of +business, developing, reforming, bringing into a +shape which has borne the test of five centuries' +experience the institutions of his predecessors. If +the excellence of a statesman's work is to be +measured by its duration and the faculty it has +shown of adapting itself to the growth and +developement of a nation, then the work of Edward +rises to the highest standard of excellence. Our +law courts preserve to this very day the form +which he gave them. Mighty as has been the + +<span class="pagenum"><a name="Vol2-Page-2-100"></a>2-100]</span> + +growth of our Parliament, it has grown on the +lines which he laid down. The great roll of +English Statutes reaches back in unbroken series +to the Statutes of Edward. The routine of the +first Henry, the administrative changes which +had been imposed on the nation by the clear head +and imperious will of the second, were transformed +under Edward into a political organization +with carefully-defined limits, directed not by the +king's will alone but by the political impulse of +the people at large. His social legislation was +based in the same fashion on principles which had +already been brought into practical working by +Henry the Second. It was no doubt in great +measure owing to this practical sense of its +financial and administrative value rather than to +any foresight of its political importance that we +owe Edward's organization of our Parliament. +But if the institutions which we commonly associate +with his name owe their origin to others, they +owe their form and their perpetuity to him. +</p> + +<p> +<span class="sidenote">Constitutional Aspect of his Reign</span> +</p> + +<p> +The king's English policy, like his English +name, was in fact the sign of a new epoch. England +was made. The long period of national +formation had come practically to an end. With +the reign of Edward begins the constitutional +England in which we live. It is not that any +chasm separates our history before it from our +history after it as the chasm of the Revolution +divides the history of France, for we have traced + +<span class="pagenum"><a name="Vol2-Page-2-101"></a>2-101]</span> + +the rudiments of our constitution to the first +moment of the English settlement in Britain. +But it is with these as with our language. The +tongue of Ælfred is the very tongue we speak, +but in spite of its identity with modern English it +has to be learned like the tongue of a stranger. +On the other hand, the English of Chaucer is +almost as intelligible as our own. In the first the +historian and philologer can study the origin and +developement of our national speech, in the last a +schoolboy can enjoy the story of Troilus and +Cressida or listen to the gay chat of the Canterbury +Pilgrims. In precisely the same way a +knowledge of our earliest laws is indispensable for +the right understanding of later legislation, its +origin and its developement, while the principles +of our Parliamentary system must necessarily be +studied in the Meetings of Wise Men before the +Conquest or the Great Council of barons after it. +But the Parliaments which Edward gathered at +the close of his reign are not merely illustrative of +the history of later Parliaments, they are absolutely +identical with those which still sit at St. +Stephen's. At the close of his reign King, Lords, +Commons, the Courts of Justice, the forms of +public administration, the relations of Church and +State, all local divisions and provincial jurisdictions, +in great measure the framework of society +itself, have taken the shape which they essentially +retain. In a word the long struggle of the constitution + +<span class="pagenum"><a name="Vol2-Page-2-102"></a>2-102]</span> + +for actual existence has come to an end. +The contests which follow are not contests that +tell, like those that preceded them, on the actual +fabric of our institutions; they are simply stages +in the rough discipline by which England has +learned and is still learning how best to use and +how wisely to develope the latent powers of its +national life, how to adjust the balance of its +social and political forces, how to adapt its constitutional +forms to the varying conditions of the +time. +</p> + +<p> +<span class="sidenote">The Earlier Finance</span> +</p> + +<p> +The news of his father's death found Edward +at Capua in the opening of 1273; but the quiet +of his realm under a regency of which Roger +Mortimer was the practical head left him free to +move slowly homewards. Two of his acts while +thus journeying through Italy show that his mind +was already dwelling on the state of English +finance and of English law. His visit to the Pope +at Orvieto was with a view of gaining permission +to levy from the clergy a tenth of their income +for the three coming years, while he drew from +Bologna its most eminent jurist, Francesco Accursi, +to aid in the task of legal reform. At Paris he +did homage to Philip the Third for his French +possessions, and then turning southward he +devoted a year to the ordering of Gascony. It +was not till the summer of 1274 that the king +reached England. But he had already planned +the work he had to do, and the measures which + +<span class="pagenum"><a name="Vol2-Page-2-103"></a>2-103]</span> + +he laid before the Parliament of 1275 were signs +of the spirit in which he was to set about it. +The First Statute of Westminster was rather a +code than a statute. It contained no less than +fifty-one clauses, and was an attempt to summarize +a number of previous enactments contained in the +Great Charter, the Provisions of Oxford, and the +Statute of Marlborough, as well as to embody +some of the administrative measures of Henry the +Second and his son. But a more pressing need +than that of a codification of the law was the need +of a reorganization of finance. While the necessities +of the Crown were growing with the widening +of its range of administrative action, the +revenues of the Crown admitted of no corresponding +expansion. In the earliest times of our history +the outgoings of the Crown were as small as its +income. All local expenses, whether for justice +or road-making or fortress-building, were paid by +local funds; and the national "fyrd" served at +its own cost in the field. The produce of a king's +private estates with the provisions due to him +from the public lands scattered over each county, +whether gathered by the king himself as he +moved over his realm, or as in later days fixed +at a stated rate and collected by his sheriff, were +sufficient to defray the mere expenses of the +Court. The Danish wars gave the first shock to +this simple system. To raise a ransom which +freed the land from the invader, the first land-tax, + +<span class="pagenum"><a name="Vol2-Page-2-104"></a>2-104]</span> + +under the name of the Danegeld, was laid on +every hide of ground; and to this national taxation +the Norman kings added the feudal burthens +of the new military estates created by the Conquest, +reliefs paid on inheritance, profits of +marriages and wardship, and the three feudal aids. +But foreign warfare soon exhausted these means +of revenue; the barons and bishops in their Great +Council were called on at each emergency for a +grant from their lands, and at each grant a corresponding +demand was made by the king as a +landlord on the towns, as lying for the most part +in the royal demesne. The cessation of Danegeld +under Henry the Second and his levy of scutage +made little change in the general incidence of +taxation: it still fell wholly on the land, for even +the townsmen paid as holders of their tenements. +But a new principle of taxation was disclosed in +the tithe levied for a Crusade at the close of +Henry's reign. Land was no longer the only +source of wealth. The growth of national prosperity, +of trade and commerce, was creating a +mass of personal property which offered irresistible +temptations to the Angevin financiers. The old +revenue from landed property was restricted and +lessened by usage and compositions. Scutage +was only due for foreign campaigns: the feudal +aids only on rare and stated occasions: and +though the fines from the shire-courts grew with +the growth of society the dues from the public + +<span class="pagenum"><a name="Vol2-Page-2-105"></a>2-105]</span> + +lands were fixed and incapable of developement. +But no usage fettered the Crown in dealing with +personal property, and its growth in value promised +a growing revenue. From the close of +Henry the Second's reign therefore this became +the most common form of taxation. Grants of +from a seventh to a thirtieth of moveables, household-property, +and stock were demanded; and it +was the necessity of procuring their assent to +these demands which enabled the baronage +through the reign of Henry the Third to bring a +financial pressure to bear on the Crown. +</p> + +<p> +<span class="sidenote">Indirect Taxation</span> +</p> + +<p> +But in addition to these two forms of direct +taxation indirect taxation also was coming more +and more to the front. The right of the king to +grant licences to bring goods into or to trade within +the realm, a right springing from the need for his +protection felt by the strangers who came there for +purposes of traffic, laid the foundation of our taxes +on imports. Those on exports were only a part of +the general system of taxing personal property +which we have already noticed. How tempting +this source of revenue was proving we see from a +provision of the Great Charter which forbids the +levy of more than the ancient customs on merchants +entering or leaving the realm. Commerce was in +fact growing with the growing wealth of the people. +The crowd of civil and ecclesiastical buildings which +date from this period shows the prosperity of the +country. Christian architecture reached its highest + +<span class="pagenum"><a name="Vol2-Page-2-106"></a>2-106]</span> + +beauty in the opening of Edward's reign; a reign +marked by the completion of the abbey church +of Westminster and of the cathedral church at +Salisbury. An English noble was proud to be +styled "an incomparable builder," while some +traces of the art which was rising into life across +the Alps flowed in, it may be, with the Italian +ecclesiastics whom the Papacy forced on the English +Church. The shrine of the Confessor at Westminster, +the mosaic pavement beside the altar of +the abbey, the paintings on the walls of its chapterhouse +remind us of the schools which were springing +up under Giotto and the Pisans. But the +wealth which this art progress shows drew trade +to English shores. England was as yet simply an +agricultural country. Gascony sent her wines; +her linens were furnished by the looms of Ghent +and Liége; Genoese vessels brought to her fairs +the silks, the velvets, the glass of Italy. In the +barks of the Hanse merchants came fur and amber +from the Baltic, herrings, pitch, timber, and naval +stores from the countries of the north. Spain +sent us iron and war-horses. Milan sent armour. +The great Venetian merchant-galleys touched the +southern coasts and left in our ports the dates of +Egypt, the figs and currants of Greece, the silk of +Sicily, the sugar of Cyprus and Crete, the spices +of the Eastern seas. Capital too came from abroad. +The bankers of Florence and Lucca were busy +with loans to the court or vast contracts with the + +<span class="pagenum"><a name="Vol2-Page-2-107"></a>2-107]</span> + +wool-growers. The bankers of Cahors had already +dealt a death-blow to the usury of the Jew. +Against all this England had few exports to set. +The lead supplied by the mines of Derbyshire, +the salt of the Worcestershire springs, the iron +of the Weald, were almost wholly consumed at +home. The one metal export of any worth was +that of tin from the tin-mines of Cornwall. But +the production of wool was fast becoming a main +element of the nation's wealth. Flanders, the +great manufacturing country of the time, lay +fronting our eastern coast; and with this market +close at hand the pastures of England found more +and more profit in the supply of wool. The +Cistercian order which possessed vast ranges of +moorland in Yorkshire became famous as wool-growers; +and their wool had been seized for +Richard's ransom. The Florentine merchants were +developing this trade by their immense contracts; +we find a single company of merchants contracting +for the purchase of the Cistercian wool throughout +the year. It was after counsel with the Italian +bankers that Edward devised his scheme for drawing +a permanent revenue from this source. In +the Parliament of 1275 he obtained the grant of +half a mark, or six shillings and eightpence, on +each sack of wool exported; and this grant, a +grant memorable as forming the first legal foundation +of our customs-revenue, at once relieved the +necessities of the Crown. +</p> + + + +<span class="pagenum"><a name="Vol2-Page-2-108"></a>2-108]</span> + + +<p> +<span class="sidenote">Welsh Campaign</span> +</p> + +<p> +The grant of the wool tax enabled Edward in +fact to deal with the great difficulty of his realm. +The troubles of the Barons' war, the need which +Earl Simon felt of Llewelyn's alliance to hold in +check the Marcher Barons, had all but shaken off +from Wales the last traces of dependence. Even +at the close of the war the threat of an attack +from the now united kingdom only forced Llewelyn +to submission on a practical acknowledgement of +his sovereignty. Although the title which Llewelyn +ap Jorwerth claimed of Prince of North Wales was +recognized by the English court in the earlier days +of Henry the Third, it was withdrawn after 1229 +and its claimant known only as Prince of Aberffraw. +But the loftier title of Prince of Wales which +Llewelyn ap Gruffydd assumed in 1256 was +formally conceded to him in 1267, and his right +to receive homage from the other nobles of his +principality was formally sanctioned. Near however +as he seemed to the final realization of his +aims, Llewelyn was still a vassal of the English +Crown, and the accession of Edward to the throne +was at once followed by the demand of homage. +But the summons was fruitless; and the next two +years were wasted in as fruitless negotiation. The +kingdom, however, was now well in hand. The +royal treasury was filled again, and in 1277 Edward +marched on North Wales. The fabric of Welsh +greatness fell at a single blow. The chieftains +who had so lately sworn fealty to Llewelyn in the + +<span class="pagenum"><a name="Vol2-Page-2-109"></a>2-109]</span> + +southern and central parts of the country deserted +him to join his English enemies in their attack; +an English fleet reduced Anglesea; and the Prince +was cooped up in his mountain fastnesses and +forced to throw himself on Edward's mercy. With +characteristic moderation the conqueror contented +himself with adding to the English dominions the +coast-district as far as Conway and with providing +that the title of Prince of Wales should cease at +Llewelyn's death. A heavy fine which he had +incurred by his refusal to do homage was remitted; +and Eleanor, a daughter of Earl Simon of Montfort +whom he had sought as his wife but who had been +arrested on her way to him, was wedded to the +Prince at Edward's court. +</p> + +<p> +<span class="sidenote">Judicial +Reforms</span> +</p> + +<p> +For four years all was quiet across the Welsh +Marches, and Edward was able again to turn his +attention to the work of internal reconstruction. +It is probably to this time, certainly to the earlier +years of his reign, that we may attribute his +modification of our judicial system. The King's +Court was divided into three distinct tribunals, +the Court of Exchequer which took cognizance of +all causes in which the royal revenue was concerned; +the Court of Common Pleas for suits between +private persons; and the King's Bench, which had +jurisdiction in all matters that affected the sovereign +as well as in "pleas of the crown" or criminal causes +expressly reserved for his decision. Each court +was now provided with a distinct staff of judges. +</p> + + + +<span class="pagenum"><a name="Vol2-Page-2-110"></a>2-110]</span> + + +<p> +Of yet greater importance than this change, which +was in effect but the completion of a process of +severance that had long been going on, was the +establishment of an equitable jurisdiction side by +side with that of the common law. In his reform +of 1178 Henry the Second broke up the older +King's Court, which had till then served as the +final Court of Appeal, by the severance of the +purely legal judges who had been gradually added +to it from the general body of his councillors. +The judges thus severed from the Council retained +the name and the ordinary jurisdiction of "the +King's Court," but the mere fact of their severance +changed in an essential way the character of the +justice they dispensed. The King in Council +wielded a power which was not only judicial but +executive; his decisions though based upon custom +were not fettered by it, they wore the expressions +of his will, and it was as his will that they were +carried out by officers of the Crown. But the +separate bench of judges had no longer this unlimited +power at their command. They had not +the king's right as representative of the community +to make the law for the redress of a wrong. They +professed simply to declare what the existing law +was, even if it was insufficient for the full purpose +of redress. The authority of their decision rested +mainly on their adhesion to ancient custom or as +it was styled the "common law" which had grown +up in the past. They could enforce their decisions + +<span class="pagenum"><a name="Vol2-Page-2-111"></a>2-111]</span> + +only by directions to an independent officer, the +sheriff, and here again their right was soon rigidly +bounded by set form and custom. These bonds +in fact became tighter every day, for their decisions +were now beginning to be reported, and the cases +decided by one bench of judges became authorities +for their successors. It is plain that such a state +of things has the utmost value in many ways, +whether in creating in men's minds that impersonal +notion of a sovereign law which exercises +its imaginative force on human action, or in furnishing +by the accumulation and sacredness of precedents +a barrier against the invasion of arbitrary +power. But it threw a terrible obstacle in the +way of the actual redress of wrong. The increasing +complexity of human action as civilization +advanced outstripped the efforts of the law. Sometimes +ancient custom furnished no redress for a +wrong which sprang from modern circumstances. +Sometimes the very pedantry and inflexibility of +the law itself became in individual cases the highest +injustice. +</p> + +<p> +<span class="sidenote">Equitable +Jurisdiction</span> +</p> + +<p> +It was the consciousness of this that made men +cling even from the first moment of the independent +existence of these courts to the judicial power +which still remained inherent in the Crown itself. +If his courts fell short in any matter the duty of +the king to do justice to all still remained, and it +was this obligation which was recognized in the +provision of Henry the Second by which all cases + +<span class="pagenum"><a name="Vol2-Page-2-112"></a>2-112]</span> + +in which his judges failed to do justice were +reserved for the special cognizance of the royal +Council itself. To this final jurisdiction of the +King in Council Edward gave a wide developement. +His assembly of the ministers, the higher +permanent officials, and the law officers of the +Crown for the first time reserved to itself in its +judicial capacity the correction of all breaches of +the law which the lower courts had failed to +repress, whether from weakness, partiality, or +corruption, and especially of those lawless outbreaks +of the more powerful baronage which +defied the common authority of the judges. Such +powers were of course capable of terrible abuse, +and it shows what real need there was felt to be +for their exercise that though regarded with +jealousy by Parliament the jurisdiction of the +royal Council appears to have been steadily put +into force through the two centuries which +followed. In the reign of Henry the Seventh it +took legal and statutory form in the shape of the +Court of Star Chamber, and its powers are still +exercised in our own day by the Judicial +Committee of the Privy Council. But the same +duty of the Crown to do justice where its courts +fell short of giving due redress for wrong expressed +itself in the jurisdiction of the Chancellor. This +great officer of State, who had perhaps originally +acted only as President of the Council when +discharging its judicial functions, acquired at a + +<span class="pagenum"><a name="Vol2-Page-2-113"></a>2-113]</span> + +very early date an independent judicial position +of the same nature. It is by remembering this +origin of the Court of Chancery that we understand +the nature of the powers it gradually +acquired. All grievances of the subject, especially +those which sprang from the misconduct of +government officials or of powerful oppressors, fell +within its cognizance as they fell within that of +the Royal Council, and to these were added +disputes respecting the wardship of infants, dower, +rent-charges, or tithes. Its equitable jurisdiction +sprang from the defective nature and the technical +and unbending rules of the common law. As the +Council had given redress in cases where law +became injustice, so the Court of Chancery +interfered without regard to the rules of procedure +adopted by the common law courts on the petition +of a party for whose grievance the common law +provided no adequate remedy. An analogous +extension of his powers enabled the Chancellor +to afford relief in cases of fraud, accident, or abuse +of trust, and this side of his jurisdiction was +largely extended at a later time by the results of +legislation on the tenure of land by ecclesiastical +bodies. The separate powers of the Chancellor, +whatever was the original date at which they +were first exercised, seem to have been thoroughly +established under Edward the First. +</p> + +<p> +<span class="sidenote">Law and the +Baronage</span> +</p> + +<p> +What reconciled the nation to the exercise of +powers such as these by the Crown and its council + +<span class="pagenum"><a name="Vol2-Page-2-114"></a>2-114]</span> + +was the need which was still to exist for centuries +of an effective means of bringing the baronage +within the reach of the law. Constitutionally the +position of the English nobles had now become +established. A king could no longer make laws +or levy taxes or even make war without their +assent. The nation reposed in them an unwavering +trust, for they were no longer the brutal +foreigners from whose violence the strong hand +of a Norman ruler had been needed to protect his +subjects; they were as English as the peasant or +the trader. They had won English liberty by +their swords, and the tradition of their order +bound them to look on themselves as its natural +guardians. The close of the Barons' War solved +the problem which had so long troubled the realm, +the problem how to ensure the government of the +realm in accordance with the provisions of the +Great Charter, by the transfer of the business of +administration into the hands of a standing +committee of the greater barons and prelates, +acting as chief officers of state in conjunction with +specially appointed ministers of the Crown. The +body thus composed was known as the Continual +Council; and the quiet government of the kingdom +by this body in the long interval between the +death of Henry the Third and his son's return +shows how effective this rule of the nobles was. +It is significant of the new relation which they +were to strive to establish between themselves and + +<span class="pagenum"><a name="Vol2-Page-2-115"></a>2-115]</span> + +the Crown that in the brief which announced +Edward's accession the Council asserted that the +new monarch mounted his throne "by the will of +the peers." But while the political influence of +the baronage as a leading element in the whole +nation thus steadily mounted, the personal and +purely feudal power of each individual baron on +his own estates as steadily fell. The hold which +the Crown gained on every noble family by its +rights of wardship and marriage, the circuits of +the royal judges, the ever-narrowing bounds +within which baronial justice saw itself circumscribed, +the blow dealt by scutage at their military +power, the prompt intervention of the Council in +their feuds, lowered the nobles more and more to +the common level of their fellow subjects. Much +yet remained to be done; for within the general +body of the baronage there existed side by side +with the nobles whose aims were purely national +nobles who saw in the overthrow of the royal +despotism simply a chance of setting up again +their feudal privileges; and different as the +English baronage, taken as a whole, was from a +feudal <i>noblesse</i> like that of Germany or France +there is in every military class a natural drift +towards violence and lawlessness. Throughout +Edward's reign his strong hand was needed to +enforce order on warring nobles. Great earls, +such as those of Gloucester and Hereford, carried +on private war; in Shropshire the Earl of Arundel + +<span class="pagenum"><a name="Vol2-Page-2-116"></a>2-116]</span> + +waged his feud with Fulk Fitz Warine. To the +lesser and poorer nobles the wealth of the trader, +the long wain of goods as it passed along the +highway, remained a tempting prey. Once, under +cover of a mock tournament of monks against +canons, a band of country gentlemen succeeded in +introducing themselves into the great merchant +fair at Boston; at nightfall every booth was on +fire, the merchants robbed and slaughtered, and +the booty carried off to ships which lay ready +at the quay. Streams of gold and silver, ran +the tale of popular horror, flowed melted down +the gutters to the sea; "all the money in +England could hardly make good the loss." +Even at the close of Edward's reign lawless bands +of "trail-bastons," or club-men, maintained themselves +by general outrage, aided the country nobles +in their feuds, and wrested money and goods +from the great tradesmen. +</p> + +<p> +<span class="sidenote">Edward +and the +Baronage</span> +</p> + +<p> +The king was strong enough to face and +imprison the warring earls, to hang the chiefs of +the Boston marauders, and to suppress the +outlaws by rigorous commissions. But the repression +of baronial outrage was only a part of +Edward's policy in relation to the Baronage. +Here, as elsewhere, he had to carry out the +political policy of his house, a policy defined by +the great measures of Henry the Second, his +institution of scutage, his general assize of arms, +his extension of the itinerant judicature of the + +<span class="pagenum"><a name="Vol2-Page-2-117"></a>2-117]</span> + +royal judges. Forced by the first to an exact +discharge of their military duties to the Crown, +set by the second in the midst of a people trained +equally with the nobles to arms, their judicial +tyranny curbed and subjected to the king's +justice by the third, the barons had been forced +from their old standpoint of an isolated class to +the new and nobler position of a people's leaders. +Edward watched jealously over the ground which +the Crown had gained. Immediately after his +landing he appointed a commission of enquiry into +the judicial franchises then existing, and on its +report (of which the existing "Hundred-Rolls" +are the result) itinerant justices were sent in 1278 +to discover by what right these franchises were +held. The writs of "quo warranto" were roughly +met here and there. Earl Warenne bared a +rusty sword and flung it on the justices' table. +"This, sirs," he said, "is my warrant. By the +sword our fathers won their lands when they +came over with the Conqueror, and by the sword +we will keep them." But the king was far from +limiting himself to the mere carrying out of the plans +of Henry the Second. Henry had aimed simply +at lowering the power of the great feudatories; +Edward aimed rather at neutralizing their power +by raising the whole body of landowners to the +same level. We shall see at a later time the +measures which were the issues of this policy, but +in the very opening of his reign a significant step + +<span class="pagenum"><a name="Vol2-Page-2-118"></a>2-118]</span> + +pointed to the king's drift. In the summer of +1278 a royal writ ordered all freeholders who held +lands to the value of twenty pounds to receive +knighthood at the king's hands. +</p> + +<p> +<span class="sidenote">Edward and +the Church</span> +</p> + +<p> +Acts as significant announced Edward's purpose +of carrying out another side of Henry's policy, +that of limiting in the same way the independent +jurisdiction of the Church. He was resolute to +force it to become thoroughly national by bearing +its due part of the common national burthens, +and to break its growing dependence upon Rome. +But the ecclesiastical body was jealous of its +position as a power distinct from the power of the +Crown, and Edward's policy had hardly declared +itself when in 1279 Archbishop Peckham obtained +a canon from the clergy by which copies of the +Great Charter, with its provisions in favour of the +liberties of the Church, were to be affixed to the +doors of churches. The step was meant as a +defiant protest against all interference, and it was +promptly forbidden. An order issued by the +Primate to the clergy to declare to their flocks the +sentences of excommunication directed against all +who obtained royal writs to obstruct suits in +church courts, or who, whether royal officers or +no, neglected to enforce their sentences, was +answered in a yet more emphatic way. By falling +into the "dead hand" or "mortmain" of the +Church land ceased to render its feudal services; +and in 1279 the Statute "de Religiosis," or as it + + +<span class="pagenum"><a name="Vol2-Page-2-119"></a>2-119]</span> + +is commonly called "of Mortmain," forbade any +further alienation of land to religious bodies in +such wise that it should cease to render its due +service to the king. The restriction was probably +no beneficial one to the country at large, for +Churchmen were the best landlords, and it was +soon evaded by the ingenuity of the clerical +lawyers; but it marked the growing jealousy of +any attempt to set aside what was national from +serving the general need and profit of the nation. +Its immediate effect was to stir the clergy to a +bitter resentment. But Edward remained firm, +and when the bishops proposed to restrict the +royal courts from dealing with cases of patronage +or causes which touched the chattels of Churchmen +he met their proposals by an instant prohibition. +</p> + +<p> +<span class="sidenote">Conquest of +Wales</span> +</p> + +<p> +The resentment of the clergy had soon the +means of showing itself during a new struggle +with Wales. The persuasions of his brother +David, who had deserted him in the previous +war but who deemed his desertion insufficiently +rewarded by an English lordship, roused Llewelyn +to a fresh revolt. A prophecy of Merlin was said +to promise that when English money became +round a Prince of Wales should be crowned in +London; and at this moment a new coinage of +copper money, coupled with a prohibition to +break the silver penny into halves and quarters, +as had been commonly done, was supposed to +fulfil the prediction. In 1282 Edward marched + +<span class="pagenum"><a name="Vol2-Page-2-120"></a>2-120]</span> + +in overpowering strength into the heart of Wales. +But Llewelyn held out in Snowdon with the +stubbornness of despair, and the rout of an English +force which had crossed into Anglesea prolonged +the contest into the winter. The cost of the war +fell on the king's treasury. Edward had called +for but one general grant through the past eight +years of his reign; but he was now forced to +appeal to his people, and by an expedient hitherto +without precedent two provincial Councils were +called for this purpose. That for Southern +England met at Northampton, that for Northern +at York; and clergy and laity were summoned, +though in separate session, to both. Two knights +came from every shire, two burgesses from every +borough, while the bishops brought their archdeacons, +abbots, and the proctors of their cathedral +clergy. The grant of the laity was quick and +liberal. But both at York and Northampton the +clergy showed their grudge at Edward's measures +by long delays in supplying his treasury. Pinched +however as were his resources and terrible as +were the sufferings of his army through the winter +Edward's firmness remained unbroken; and rejecting +all suggestions of retreat he issued orders +for the formation of a new army at Caermarthen +to complete the circle of investment round +Llewelyn. But the war came suddenly to an +end. The Prince sallied from his mountain hold +for a raid upon Radnorshire and fell in a petty + +<span class="pagenum"><a name="Vol2-Page-2-121"></a>2-121]</span> + +skirmish on the banks of the Wye. With him +died the independence of his race. After six +months of flight his brother David was made +prisoner; and a Parliament summoned at Shrewsbury +in the autumn of 1283, to which each county +again sent its two knights and twenty boroughs +their two burgesses, sentenced him to a traitor's +death. The submission of the lesser chieftains +soon followed: and the country was secured by +the building of strong castles at Conway and +Caernarvon, and the settlement of English barons +on the confiscated soil. The Statute of Wales +which Edward promulgated at Rhuddlan in 1284 +proposed to introduce English law and the English +administration of justice and government into +Wales. But little came of the attempt; and it +was not till the time of Henry the Eighth that +the country was actually incorporated with England +and represented in the English Parliament. +What Edward had really done was to break the +Welsh resistance. The policy with which he +followed up his victory (for the "massacre of the +bards" is a mere fable) accomplished its end, and +though two later rebellions and a ceaseless strife +of the natives with the English towns in their +midst showed that the country was still far from +being reconciled to its conquest, it ceased to be +any serious danger to England for a hundred +years. +</p> + +<p> +<span class="sidenote">New Legislation</span> +</p> + +<p> +From the work of conquest Edward again + +<span class="pagenum"><a name="Vol2-Page-2-122"></a>2-122]</span> + +turned to the work of legislation. In the midst +of his struggle with Wales he had shown his care +for the commercial classes by a Statute of Merchants +in 1283, which provided for the registration +of the debts of leaders and for their recovery by +distraint of the debtor's goods and the imprisonment +of his person. The close of the war saw two +measures of even greater importance. The second +Statute of Westminster which appeared in 1285 +is a code of the same sort as the first, amending +the Statutes of Mortmain, of Merton, and of +Gloucester, as well as the laws of dower and +advowson, remodelling the system of justices of +assize, and curbing the abuses of manorial jurisdiction. +In the same year appeared the greatest +of Edward's measures for the enforcement of +public order. The Statute of Winchester revived +and reorganized the old institutions of national +police and national defence. It regulated the +action of the hundred, the duty of watch and +ward, and the gathering of the fyrd or militia of +the realm as Henry the Second had moulded it +into form in his Assize of Arms. Every man was +bound to hold himself in readiness, duly armed, +for the king's service in case of invasion or revolt, +and to pursue felons when hue and cry was made +after them. Every district was held responsible +for crimes committed within its bounds; the gates +of each town were to be shut at nightfall; and all +strangers were required to give an account of + +<span class="pagenum"><a name="Vol2-Page-2-123"></a>2-123]</span> + +themselves to the magistrates of any borough +which they entered. By a provision which illustrates +at once the social and physical condition of +the country at the time all brushwood was ordered +to be destroyed within a space of two hundred +feet on either side of the public highway as a +security for travellers against sudden attacks from +robbers. To enforce the observance of this act +knights were appointed in every shire under the +name of Conservators of the Peace, a name which +as the benefit of these local magistrates was more +sensibly felt and their powers were more largely +extended was changed into that which they still +retain of Justices of the Peace. So orderly however +was the realm that Edward was able in 1286 +to pass over sea to his foreign dominions, and to +spend the next three years in reforming their +government. But the want of his guiding hand +was at last felt; and the Parliament of 1289 +refused a new tax till the king came home again. +</p> + +<p> +<span class="sidenote">"Quia Emptores"</span> +</p> + +<p> +He returned to find the Earls of Gloucester and +Hereford at war, and his judges charged with +violence and corruption. The two Earls were +brought to peace, and Earl Gilbert allied closely to +the royal house by a marriage with the king's +daughter Johanna. After a careful investigation +the judicial abuses were recognized and amended. +Two of the chief justices were banished from the +realm and their colleagues imprisoned and fined. +But these administrative measures were only preludes + +<span class="pagenum"><a name="Vol2-Page-2-124"></a>2-124]</span> + +to a great legislative act which appeared in +1290. The Third Statute of Westminster, or, to +use the name by which it is more commonly +known, the Statute "Quia Emptores," is one of +those legislative efforts which mark the progress +of a wide social revolution in the country at large. +The number of the greater barons was diminishing +every day, while the number of the country gentry +and of the more substantial yeomanry was increasing +with the increase of the national wealth. +The increase showed itself in a growing desire to +become proprietors of land. Tenants of the barons +received under-tenants on condition of their rendering +them similar services to those which they +themselves rendered to their lords; and the baronage, +while duly receiving the services in compensation +for which they had originally granted their +lands in fee, saw with jealousy the feudal profits +of these new under-tenants, the profits of wardships +or of reliefs and the like, in a word the +whole increase in the value of the estate consequent +on its subdivision and higher cultivation, +passing into other hands than their own. The +purpose of the statute "Quia Emptores" was to +check this process by providing that in any case +of alienation the sub-tenant should henceforth +hold, not of the tenant, but directly of the superior +lord. But its result was to promote instead of +hindering the transfer and subdivision of land. +The tenant who was compelled before the passing + +<span class="pagenum"><a name="Vol2-Page-2-125"></a>2-125]</span> + +of the statute to retain in any case so much of +the estate as enabled him to discharge his feudal +services to the overlord of whom he held it, was +now enabled by a process analogous to the modern +sale of "tenant-right," to transfer both land and +services to new holders. However small the +estates thus created might be, the bulk were held +directly of the Crown; and this class of lesser +gentry and freeholders grew steadily from this +time in numbers and importance. +</p> + +<p> +<span class="sidenote">The Crown and the Jews</span> +</p> + +<p> +The year which saw "Quia Emptores" saw a +step which remains the great blot upon Edward's +reign. The work abroad had exhausted the royal +treasury, and he bought a grant from his Parliament +by listening to their wishes in the matter of +the Jews. Jewish traders had followed William +the Conqueror from Normandy, and had been +enabled by his protection to establish themselves +in separate quarters or "Jewries" in all larger +English towns. The Jew had no right or citizenship +in the land. The Jewry in which he lived +was exempt from the common law. He was +simply the king's chattel, and his life and goods +were at the king's mercy. But he was too valuable +a possession to be lightly thrown away. If the +Jewish merchant had no standing-ground in the +local court the king enabled him to sue before +a special justiciary; his bonds were deposited for +safety in a chamber of the royal palace at Westminster; +he was protected against the popular + +<span class="pagenum"><a name="Vol2-Page-2-126"></a>2-126]</span> + +hatred in the free exercise of his religion and +allowed to build synagogues and to manage his +own ecclesiastical affairs by means of a chief rabbi. +The royal protection was dictated by no spirit of +tolerance or mercy. To the kings the Jew was a +mere engine of finance. The wealth which he +accumulated was wrung from him whenever the +crown had need, and torture and imprisonment +were resorted to when milder means failed. It +was the gold of the Jew that filled the royal +treasury at the outbreak of war or of revolt. It +was in the Hebrew coffers that the foreign kings +found strength, to hold their baronage at bay. +</p> + +<p> +<span class="sidenote">Popular Hatred of the Jews</span> +</p> + +<p> +That the presence of the Jew was, at least in the +earlier years of his settlement, beneficial to the +nation at large there can be little doubt. His +arrival was the arrival of a capitalist; and heavy +as was the usury he necessarily exacted in the +general insecurity of the time his loans gave an +impulse to industry. The century which followed +the Conquest witnessed an outburst of architectural +energy which covered the land with castles and +cathedrals; but castle and cathedral alike owed +their erection to the loans of the Jew. His own +example gave a new vigour to domestic architecture. +The buildings which, as at Lincoln and Bury St. +Edmund's, still retain their name of "Jews' +Houses" were almost the first houses of stone +which superseded the mere hovels of the English +burghers. Nor was their influence simply + +<span class="pagenum"><a name="Vol2-Page-2-127"></a>2-127]</span> + +industrial. Through their connexion with the +Jewish schools in Spain and the East they opened +a way for the revival of physical sciences. A +Jewish medical school seems to have existed at +Oxford; Roger Bacon himself studied under +English rabbis. But the general progress of civilization +now drew little help from the Jew, while +the coming of the Cahorsine and Italian bankers +drove him from the field of commercial finance. +He fell back on the petty usury of loans to the +poor, a trade necessarily accompanied with much +of extortion and which roused into fiercer life the +religious hatred against their race. Wild stories +floated about of children carried off to be circumcised +or crucified, and a Lincoln boy who was +found slain in a Jewish house was canonized +by popular reverence as "St. Hugh." The first +work of the Friars was to settle in the Jewish +quarters and attempt their conversion, but the +popular fury rose too fast for these gentler means +of reconciliation. When the Franciscans saved +seventy Jews from hanging by their prayer to +Henry the Third the populace angrily refused the +brethren alms. +</p> + +<p> +<span class="sidenote">The Jewish Defiance</span> +</p> + +<p> +But all this growing hate was met with a bold +defiance. The picture which is commonly drawn +of the Jew as timid, silent, crouching under +oppression, however truly it may represent the +general position of his race throughout mediæval +Europe, is far from being borne out by historical + +<span class="pagenum"><a name="Vol2-Page-2-128"></a>2-128]</span> + +fact on this side the Channel. In England the +attitude of the Jew, almost to the very end, was +an attitude of proud and even insolent defiance. +He knew that the royal policy exempted him from +the common taxation, the common justice, the +common obligations of Englishmen. Usurer, +extortioner as the realm held him to be, the royal +justice would secure him the repayment of his +bonds. A royal commission visited with heavy +penalties any outbreak of violence against the +king's "chattels." The Red King actually forbade +the conversion of a Jew to the Christian +faith; it was a poor exchange, he said, that would +rid him of a valuable property and give him only +a subject. We see in such a case as that of Oxford +the insolence that grew out of this consciousness +of the royal protection. Here as elsewhere the +Jewry was a town within a town, with its own +language, its own religion and law, its peculiar +commerce, its peculiar dress. No city bailiff could +penetrate into the square of little alleys which lay +behind the present Town Hall; the Church itself +was powerless to prevent a synagogue from rising +in haughty rivalry over against the cloister of St. +Frideswide. Prior Philip of St. Frideswide complains +bitterly of a certain Hebrew who stood at +his door as the procession of the saint passed by, +mocking at the miracles which were said to be +wrought at her shrine. Halting and then walking +firmly on his feet, showing his hands clenched as + +<span class="pagenum"><a name="Vol2-Page-2-129"></a>2-129]</span> + +if with palsy and then flinging open his fingers, +the Jew claimed gifts and oblations from the +crowd that flocked to St. Frideswide's shrine on +the ground that such recoveries of life and limb +were quite as real as any that Frideswide ever +wrought. Sickness and death in the prior's story +avenge the saint on her blasphemer, but no earthly +power, ecclesiastical or civil, seems to have +ventured to deal with him. A more daring act of +fanaticism showed the temper of the Jews even at +the close of Henry the Third's reign. As the usual +procession of scholars and citizens returned from +St. Frideswide's on the Ascension Day of 1268 a +Jew suddenly burst from a group of his comrades +in front of the synagogue, and wrenching the +crucifix from its bearer trod it under foot. But +even in presence of such an outrage as this the +terror of the Crown sheltered the Oxford Jews from +any burst of popular vengeance. The sentence of +the king condemned them to set up a cross of marble +on the spot where the crime was committed, but +even this sentence was in part remitted, and a less +offensive place was found for the cross in an open +plot by Merton College. +</p> + +<p> +<span class="sidenote">Expulsion of the Jews</span> +</p> + +<p> +Up to Edward's day indeed the royal protection +had never wavered. Henry the Second granted +the Jews a right of burial outside every city where +they dwelt. Richard punished heavily a massacre +of the Jews at York, and organized a mixed court +of Jews and Christians for the registration of their + +<span class="pagenum"><a name="Vol2-Page-2-130"></a>2-130]</span> + +contracts. John suffered none to plunder them +save himself, though he once wrested from them a +sum equal to a year's revenue of his realm. The +troubles of the next reign brought in a harvest +greater than even the royal greed could reap; the +Jews grew wealthy enough to acquire estates; and +only a burst of popular feeling prevented a legal +decision which would have enabled them to own +freeholds. But the sack of Jewry after Jewry +showed the popular hatred during the Barons' war, +and at its close fell on the Jews the more terrible +persecution of the law. To the cry against usury +and the religious fanaticism which threatened them +was now added the jealousy with which the nation +that had grown up round the Charter regarded all +exceptional jurisdictions or exemptions from the +common law and the common burthens of the +realm. As Edward looked on the privileges of the +Church or the baronage, so his people looked on +the privileges of the Jews. The growing weight +of the Parliament told against them. Statute after +statute hemmed them in. They were forbidden +to hold real property, to employ Christian servants, +to move through the streets without the two white +tablets of wool on their breasts which distinguished +their race. They were prohibited from building +new synagogues or eating with Christians or acting +as physicians to them. Their trade, already +crippled by the rivalry of the bankers of Cahors, +was annihilated by a royal order which bade them + +<span class="pagenum"><a name="Vol2-Page-2-131"></a>2-131]</span> + +renounce usury under pain of death. At last +persecution could do no more, and Edward, eager +at the moment to find supplies for his treasury and +himself swayed by the fanaticism of his subjects, +bought the grant of a fifteenth from clergy and +laity by consenting to drive the Jews from his +realm. No share of the enormities which accompanied +this expulsion can fall upon the king, for +he not only suffered the fugitives to take their +personal wealth with them but punished with the +halter those who plundered them at sea. But the +expulsion was none the less cruel. Of the sixteen +thousand who preferred exile to apostasy few +reached the shores of France. Many were wrecked, +others robbed and flung overboard. One shipmaster +turned out a crew of wealthy merchants on +to a sandbank and bade them call a new Moses to +save them from the sea. +</p> + +<center><a href="images/v2-map-1.jpg"><img src="images/v2-map-1t.jpg" alt="Scotland in 1290"></a></center> + +<p> +<span class="sidenote">Scotland</span> +</p> + +<p> +From the expulsion of the Jews, as from his +nobler schemes of legal and administrative reforms, +Edward was suddenly called away to face complex +questions which awaited him in the North. At +the moment which we have reached the kingdom +of the Scots was still an aggregate of four distinct +countries, each with its different people, its different +tongue, its different history. The old Pictish +kingdom across the Firth of Forth, the original +Scot kingdom in Argyle, the district of Cumbria +or Strathclyde, and the Lowlands which stretched +from the Firth of Forth to the English border, had + +<span class="pagenum"><a name="Vol2-Page-2-132"></a>2-132]</span> + +become united under the kings of the Scots; +Pictland by inheritance, Cumbria by a grant from +the English king Eadmund, the Lowlands by conquest, +confirmed as English tradition alleged by a +grant from Cnut. The shadowy claim of dependence +on the English Crown which dated from the +days when a Scotch king "commended" himself +and his people to Ælfred's son Eadward, a claim +strengthened by the grant of Cumbria to Malcolm +as a "fellow worker" of the English sovereign "by +sea and land," may have been made more real +through this last convention. But whatever change +the acquisition of the Lowlands made in the relation +of the Scot kings to the English sovereigns, it +certainly affected in a very marked way their +relation both to England and to their own realm. +Its first result was the fixing of the royal residence +in their new southern dominion at Edinburgh; and +the English civilization which surrounded them +from the moment of this settlement on what was +purely English ground changed the Scot kings in +all but blood into Englishmen. The marriage of +King Malcolm with Margaret, the sister of Eadgar +Ætheling, not only hastened this change but +opened a way to the English crown. Their children +were regarded by a large party within England as +representatives of the older royal race and as +claimants of the throne, and this danger grew as +William's devastation of the North not only drove +fresh multitudes of Englishmen to settle in the + +<span class="pagenum"><a name="Vol2-Page-2-133"></a>2-133]</span> + +Lowlands but filled the Scotch court with English +nobles who fled thither for refuge. So formidable +indeed became the pretensions of the Scot kings that +they forced the ablest of our Norman sovereigns into +a complete change of policy. The Conqueror and +William the Red had met the threats of the Scot +sovereigns by invasions which ended again and +again in an illusory homage, but the marriage of +Henry the First with the Scottish Matilda robbed +the claims of the Scottish line of much of their +force while it enabled him to draw their kings into +far closer relations with the Norman throne. King +David not only abandoned the ambitious dreams +of his predecessors to place himself at the head of +his niece Matilda's party in her contest with +Stephen, but as Henry's brother-in-law he figured +as the first noble of the English Court and found +English models and English support in the work +of organization which he attempted within his +own dominions. As the marriage with Margaret +had changed Malcolm from a Celtic chieftain into +an English king, so that of Matilda brought about +the conversion of David into a Norman and feudal +sovereign. His court was filled with Norman +nobles from the South, such as the Balliols and +Bruces who were destined to play so great a part +afterwards but who now for the first time obtained +fiefs in the Scottish realm, and a feudal jurisprudence +modelled on that of England was introduced +into the Lowlands. +</p> + + +<span class="pagenum"><a name="Vol2-Page-2-134"></a>2-134]</span> + + +<p> +<span class="sidenote">Scotch and +English +Crowns</span> +</p> + +<p> +A fresh connexion between Scotland and the +English sovereigns began with the grant of lordships +within England itself to the Scot kings or +their sons. The Earldom of Northumberland was +held by David's son Henry, that of Huntingdon +by David, brother of William the Lion. Homage +was sometimes rendered, whether for these lordships, +for the Lowlands, or for the whole Scottish +realm, but it was the capture of William the Lion +during the revolt of the English baronage which first +suggested to the ambition of Henry the Second the +project of a closer dependence of Scotland on the +English Crown. To gain his freedom William consented +to hold his kingdom of Henry and his heirs. +The prelates and lords of Scotland did homage to +Henry as to their direct lord, and a right of appeal +in all Scotch causes was allowed to the superior +court of the English suzerain. From this bondage +however Scotland was freed by the prodigality +of Richard who allowed her to buy back the freedom +she had forfeited. Both sides fell into their +old position, but both were ceasing gradually to +remember the distinctions between the various +relations in which the Scot king stood for his +different provinces to the English Crown. Scotland +had come to be thought of as a single country; +and the court of London transferred to the whole +of it those claims of direct feudal suzerainty which +at most applied only to Strathclyde, while the +court of Edinburgh looked on the English Lowlands + +<span class="pagenum"><a name="Vol2-Page-2-135"></a>2-135]</span> + +as holding no closer relation to England +than the Pictish lands beyond the Forth. Any +difficulties which arose were evaded by a legal +compromise. The Scot kings repeatedly did +homage to the English sovereign but with a +reservation of rights which were prudently left +unspecified. The English king accepted the +homage on the assumption that it was rendered +to him as overlord of the Scottish realm, and this +assumption was neither granted nor denied. For +nearly a hundred years the relations of the two +countries were thus kept peaceful and friendly, +and the death of Alexander the Third seemed +destined to remove even the necessity of protests +by a closer union of the two kingdoms. Alexander +had wedded his only daughter to the King of +Norway, and after long negotiation the Scotch +Parliament proposed the marriage of Margaret, +"The Maid of Norway," the girl who was the +only issue of this marriage and so heiress of the +kingdom, with the son of Edward the First. It +was however carefully provided in the marriage +treaty which was concluded at Brigham in 1290 +that Scotland should remain a separate and free +kingdom, and that its laws and customs should +be preserved inviolate. No military aid was to +be claimed by the English king, no Scotch appeal +to be carried to an English court. But this project +was abruptly frustrated by the child's death +during her voyage to Scotland in the following + +<span class="pagenum"><a name="Vol2-Page-2-136"></a>2-136]</span> + +October, and with the rise of claimant after +claimant of the vacant throne Edward was drawn +into far other relations to the Scottish realm. +</p> + +<p> +<span class="sidenote">The Scotch +Succession</span> +</p> + +<p> +Of the thirteen pretenders to the throne of +Scotland only three could be regarded as serious +claimants. By the extinction of the line of +William the Lion the right of succession passed +to the daughters of his brother David. The claim +of John Balliol, Lord of Galloway, rested on his +descent from the elder of these; that of Robert +Bruce, Lord of Annandale, on his descent from +the second; that of John Hastings, Lord of Abergavenny, +on his descent from the third. It is +clear that at this crisis every one in Scotland or +out of it recognized some sort of overlordship in +Edward, for the Norwegian king, the Primate +of St. Andrews, and seven of the Scotch Earls had +already appealed to him before Margaret's death; +and her death was followed by the consent both +of the claimants and the Council of Regency to +refer the question of the succession to his decision +in a Parliament at Norham. But the overlordship +which the Scots acknowledged was something far +less direct and definite than the superiority which +Edward claimed at the opening of this conference +in May 1291. His claim was supported by excerpts +from monastic chronicles and by the slow +advance of an English army; while the Scotch +lords, taken by surprise, found little help in the +delay which was granted them. At the opening + +<span class="pagenum"><a name="Vol2-Page-2-137"></a>2-137]</span> + +of June therefore in common with nine of the +claimants they formally admitted Edward's direct +suzerainty. To the nobles in fact the concession +must have seemed a small one, for like the principal +claimants they were for the most part +Norman in blood, with estates in both countries, +and looking for honours and pensions from the +English Court. From the Commons who were +gathered with the nobles at Norham no such +admission of Edward's claims could be extorted; +but in Scotland, feudalized as it had been by +David, the Commons were as yet of little weight +and their opposition was quietly passed by. All +the rights of a feudal suzerain were at once +assumed by the English king; he entered into +the possession of the country as into that of a +disputed fief to be held by its overlord till the +dispute was settled, his peace was sworn throughout +the land, its castles delivered into his charge, +while its bishops and nobles swore homage to him +directly as their lord superior. Scotland was thus +reduced to the subjection which she had experienced +under Henry the Second; but the full +discussion which followed over the various claims +to the throne showed that while exacting to the +full what he believed to be his right Edward +desired to do justice to the country itself. The +body of commissioners which the king named to +report on the claims to the throne were mainly +Scotch. A proposal for the partition of the realm + +<span class="pagenum"><a name="Vol2-Page-2-138"></a>2-138]</span> + +among the claimants was rejected as contrary to +Scotch law. On the report of the commissioners +after a twelvemonth's investigation in favour of +Balliol as representative of the elder branch at the +close of the year 1292, his homage was accepted +for the whole kingdom of Scotland with a full +acknowledgement of the services due from him to +its overlord. The castles were at once delivered +to the new monarch, and for a time there was +peace. +</p> + +<p> +<span class="sidenote">Edward and +Scotland</span> +</p> + +<p> +With the accession of Balliol and the rendering +of his homage for the Scottish realm the greatness +of Edward reached its height. He was lord of +Britain as no English king had been before. The +last traces of Welsh independence were trodden +under foot. The shadowy claims of supremacy +over Scotland were changed into a direct overlordship. +Across the one sea Edward was lord of +Guienne, across the other of Ireland, and in +England itself a wise and generous policy had +knit the whole nation round his throne. Firmly +as he still clung to prerogatives which the baronage +were as firm not to own, the main struggle +for the Charter was over. Justice and good +government were secured. The personal despotism +which John had striven to build up, the imperial +autocracy which had haunted the imagination of +Henry the Third, were alike set aside. The rule +of Edward, vigorous and effective as it was, was +a rule of law, and of law enacted not by the royal + +<span class="pagenum"><a name="Vol2-Page-2-139"></a>2-139]</span> + +will, but by the common council of the realm. +Never had English ruler reached a greater height +of power, nor was there any sign to warn the +king of the troubles which awaited him. France, +jealous as it was of his greatness and covetous of +his Gascon possessions, he could hold at bay. +Wales was growing tranquil. Scotland gave few +signs of discontent or restlessness in the first year +that followed the homage of its king. Under +John Balliol it had simply fallen back into the +position of dependence which it held under +William the Lion; and Edward had no purpose +of pushing further his rights as suzerain than +Henry the Second had done. One claim of the +English Crown indeed was soon a subject of dispute +between the lawyers of the Scotch and of +the English Council boards. Edward would have +granted as freely as Balliol himself that though +Scotland was a dependent kingdom it was far +from being an ordinary fief of the English Crown. +By feudal custom a distinction had always been +held to exist between the relations of a dependent +king to a superior lord and those of a vassal noble +to his sovereign. At Balliol's homage indeed +Edward had disclaimed any right to the ordinary +feudal incidents of a fief, those of wardship or +marriage, and in this disclaimer he was only repeating +the reservations of the marriage treaty +of Brigham. There were other customs of the +Scotch realm as incontestable as these. Even after + +<span class="pagenum"><a name="Vol2-Page-2-140"></a>2-140]</span> + +the treaty of Falaise the Scotch king had not +been held bound to attend the council of the +English baronage, to do service in English warfare, +or to contribute on the part of his Scotch realm +to English aids. If no express acknowledgement +of these rights had been made by Edward, for +some time after his acceptance of Balliol's homage +they were practically observed. The claim of +independent justice was more doubtful, as it was +of higher import than these. The judicial independence +of Scotland had been expressly reserved +in the marriage treaty. It was certain that no +appeal from a Scotch King's Court to that of his +overlord had been allowed since the days of +William the Lion. But in the jurisprudence of +the feudal lawyers the right of ultimate appeal +was the test of sovereignty, and Edward regarded +Balliol's homage as having placed him precisely +in the position of William the Lion and subjected +his decisions to those of his overlord. He was +resolute therefore to assert the supremacy of his +court and to receive Scotch appeals. +</p> + +<p> +<span class="sidenote">The French +Attack</span> +</p> + +<p> +Even here however the quarrel seemed likely to +end only in legal bickering. Balliol at first gave +way, and it was not till 1293 that he alleged +himself forced by the resentment both of his +Baronage and his people to take up an attitude of +resistance. While appearing therefore formally at +Westminster he refused to answer an appeal +before the English courts save by advice of his + +<span class="pagenum"><a name="Vol2-Page-2-141"></a>2-141]</span> + +Council. But real as the resentment of his barons +may have been, it was not Scotland which really +spurred Balliol to this defiance. His wounded +pride had made him the tool of a power beyond +the sea. The keenness with which France had +watched every step of Edward's success in +the north sprang not merely from a natural +jealousy of his greatness but from its bearing on a +great object of French ambition. One fragment +of Eleanor's inheritance still remained to her +descendants, Guienne and Gascony, the fair lands +along the Garonne and the territory which +stretched south of that river to the Pyrenees. It +was this territory that now tempted the greed of +Philip the Fair, and it was in feeding the strife +between England and the Scotch king that Philip +saw an opening for winning it. French envoys +therefore brought promises of aid to the Scotch +Court; and no sooner had these intrigues moved +Balliol to resent the claims of his overlord than +Philip found a pretext for open quarrel with +Edward in the frays which went constantly on in +the Channel between the mariners of Normandy +and those of the Cinque Ports. They culminated +at this moment in a great sea-fight which proved +fatal to eight thousand Frenchmen, and for this +Philip haughtily demanded redress. Edward saw +at once the danger of his position. He did his best +to allay the storm by promise of satisfaction to +France, and by addressing threats of punishment + +<span class="pagenum"><a name="Vol2-Page-2-142"></a>2-142]</span> + +to the English seamen. But Philip still clung to +his wrong, while the national passion which was +to prove for a hundred years to come strong +enough to hold down the royal policy of peace +showed itself in a characteristic defiance with +which the seamen of the Cinque Ports met +Edward's menaces. "Be the King's Council well +advised," ran this remonstrance, "that if wrong or +grievance be done them in any fashion against +right, they will sooner forsake wives, children, and +all that they have, and go seek through the seas +where they shall think to make their profit." In +spite therefore of Edward's efforts the contest +continued, and Philip found in it an opportunity +to cite the king before his court at Paris for +wrongs done to him as suzerain. It was hard for +Edward to dispute the summons without weakening +the position which his own sovereign courts +had taken up towards the Scotch king, and in a +final effort to avert the conflict the king submitted +to a legal decision of the question, and to a formal +cession of Guienne into Philip's hands for forty +days in acknowledgement of his supremacy. Bitter +as the sacrifice must have been it failed to win +peace. The forty days had no sooner passed than +Philip refused to restore the fortresses which had +been left in pledge. In February 1294 he declared +the English king contumacious, and in May +declared his fiefs forfeited to the French Crown. +Edward was driven to take up arms, but a revolt + +<span class="pagenum"><a name="Vol2-Page-2-143"></a>2-143]</span> + +in Wales deferred the expedition to the following +year. No sooner however was it again taken in +hand than it became clear that a double danger +had to be met. The summons which Edward +addressed to the Scotch barons to follow him in +arms to Guienne was disregarded. It was in +truth, as we have seen, a breach of customary law, +and was probably meant to force Scotland into +an open declaration of its connexion with France. +A second summons was followed by a more formal +refusal. The greatness of the danger threw +Edward on England itself. For a war in Guienne +and the north he needed supplies; but he needed +yet more the firm support of his people in a +struggle which, little as he foresaw its ultimate +results, would plainly be one of great difficulty +and danger. In 1295 he called a Parliament to +counsel with him on the affairs of the realm, but +with the large statesmanship which distinguished +him he took this occasion of giving the Parliament +a shape and organization which has left its +assembly the most important event in English +history. +</p> + +<p> +<span class="sidenote">The Great +Council</span> +</p> + +<p> +To realize its importance we must briefly +review the changes by which the Great Council +of the Norman kings had been gradually transforming +itself into what was henceforth to be +known as the English Parliament. Neither the +Meeting of the Wise Men before the Conquest +nor the Great Council of the Barons after it had + +<span class="pagenum"><a name="Vol2-Page-2-144"></a>2-144]</span> + +been in any legal or formal way representative +bodies. The first theoretically included all free +holders of land, but it shrank at an early time +into a gathering of earls, higher nobles, and +bishops, with the officers and thegns of the royal +household. Little change was made in the composition +of this assembly by the Conquest, for +the Great Council of the Norman kings was supposed +to include all tenants who held directly +of the Crown, the bishops and greater abbots +(whose character as independent spiritual members +tended more and more to merge in their position +as barons), and the high officers of the Court. +But though its composition remained the same, +the character of the assembly was essentially +altered; from a free gathering of "Wise Men" it +sank to a Royal Court of feudal vassals. Its +functions too seem to have become almost nominal +and its powers to have been restricted to the +sanctioning, without debate or possibility of +refusal, all grants demanded from it by the +Crown. But nominal as such a sanction might +be, the "counsel and consent" of the Great +Council was necessary for the legal validity of +every considerable fiscal or political measure. Its +existence therefore remained an effectual protest +against the imperial theories advanced by the +lawyers of Henry the Second which declared all +legislative power to reside wholly in the sovereign. +It was in fact under Henry that these assemblies + +<span class="pagenum"><a name="Vol2-Page-2-145"></a>2-145]</span> + +became more regular, and their functions more +important. The reforms which marked his reign +were issued in the Great Council, and even +financial matters were suffered to be debated +there. But it was not till the grant of the Great +Charter that the powers of this assembly over +taxation were formally recognized, and the +principle established that no burthen beyond the +customary feudal aids might be imposed "save by +the Common Council of the Realm." +</p> + +<p> +<span class="sidenote">Greater and Lesser Barons</span> +</p> + +<p> +The same document first expressly regulated +its form. In theory, as we have seen, the Great +Council consisted of all who held land directly of +the Crown. But the same causes which restricted +attendance at the Witenagemot to the greater +nobles told on the actual composition of the +Council of Barons. While the attendance of the +ordinary tenants in chief, the Knights or "Lesser +Barons" as they were called, was burthensome +from its expense to themselves, their numbers and +their dependence on the higher nobles made the +assembly of these knights dangerous to the +Crown. As early therefore as the time of Henry +the First we find a distinction recognized between +the "Greater Barons," of whom the Council was +usually composed, and the "Lesser Barons" who +formed the bulk of the tenants of the Crown. +But though the attendance of the latter had +become rare their right of attendance remained +intact. While enacting that the prelates and + +<span class="pagenum"><a name="Vol2-Page-2-146"></a>2-146]</span> + +greater barons should be summoned by special +writs to each gathering of the Council a remarkable +provision of the Great Charter orders a +general summons to be issued through the Sheriff +to all direct tenants of the Crown. The provision +was probably intended to rouse the lesser Baronage +to the exercise of rights which had practically +passed into desuetude, but as the clause is omitted +in later issues of the Charter we may doubt +whether the principle it embodied ever received +more than a very limited application. There are +traces of the attendance of a few of the lesser +knighthood, gentry perhaps of the neighbourhood +where the assembly was held, in some of its +meetings under Henry the Third, but till a late +period in the reign of his successor the Great +Council practically remained a gathering of the +greater barons, the prelates, and the high officers +of the Crown. +</p> + +<p> +<span class="sidenote">Constitutional Influence of Finance</span> +</p> + +<p> +The change which the Great Charter had +failed to accomplish was now however brought +about by the social circumstances of the time. +One of the most remarkable of these was a steady +decrease in the number of the greater nobles. +The bulk of the earldoms had already lapsed to +the Crown through the extinction of the families +of their possessors; of the greater baronies, many +had practically ceased to exist by their division +among female co-heiresses, many through the +constant struggle of the poorer nobles to rid + +<span class="pagenum"><a name="Vol2-Page-2-147"></a>2-147]</span> + +themselves of their rank by a disclaimer so as to +escape the burthen of higher taxation and attendance +in Parliament which it involved. How far +this diminution had gone we may see from the +fact that hardly more than a hundred barons sat +in the earlier Councils of Edward's reign. But +while the number of those who actually exercised +the privilege of assisting in Parliament was rapidly +diminishing, the numbers and wealth of the +"lesser baronage," whose right of attendance had +become a mere constitutional tradition, was as +rapidly increasing. The long peace and prosperity +of the realm, the extension of its commerce and +the increased export of wool, were swelling the +ranks and incomes of the country gentry as well as +of the freeholders and substantial yeomanry. We +have already noticed the effects of the increase of +wealth in begetting a passion for the possession of +land which makes this reign so critical a period in +the history of the English freeholder; but the +same tendency had to some extent existed in the +preceding century, and it was a consciousness of +the growing importance of this class of rural +proprietors which induced the barons at the +moment of the Great Charter to make their +fruitless attempt to induce them to take part in +the deliberations of the Great Council. But +while the barons desired their presence as an aid +against the Crown, the Crown itself desired it as +a means of rendering taxation more efficient. So + +<span class="pagenum"><a name="Vol2-Page-2-148"></a>2-148]</span> + +long as the Great Council remained a mere +assembly of magnates it was necessary for the +King's ministers to treat separately with the +other orders of the state as to the amount and +assessment of their contributions. The grant +made in the Great Council was binding only on +the barons and prelates who made it; but before +the aids of the boroughs, the Church, or the +shires could reach the royal treasury, a separate +negotiation had to be conducted by the officers of +the Exchequer with the reeves of each town, the +sheriff and shire-court of each county, and the +archdeacons of each diocese. Bargains of this +sort would be the more tedious and disappointing +as the necessities of the Crown increased in the +later years of Edward, and it became a matter of +fiscal expediency to obtain the sanction of any +proposed taxation through the presence of these +classes in the Great Council itself. +</p> + +<p> +The effort however to revive the old personal +attendance of the lesser baronage which had broken +down half a century before could hardly be renewed +at a time when the increase of their +numbers made it more impracticable than ever; +but a means of escape from this difficulty was +fortunately suggested by the very nature of the +court through which alone a summons could be +addressed to the landed knighthood. Amidst the +many judicial reforms of Henry or Edward the +Shire Court remained unchanged. The haunted + +<span class="pagenum"><a name="Vol2-Page-2-149"></a>2-149]</span> + +mound or the immemorial oak round which the +assembly gathered (for the court was often held in +the open air) were the relics of a time before the +free kingdom had sunk into a shire and its Meetings +of the Wise into a County Court. But save +that the king's reeve had taken the place of the +king and that the Norman legislation had displaced +the Bishop and set four Coroners by the +Sheriff's side, the gathering of the freeholders remained +much as of old. The local knighthood, the +yeomanry, the husbandmen of the county, were +all represented in the crowd that gathered round +the Sheriff, as guarded by his liveried followers he +published the king's writs, announced his demand +of aids, received the presentment of criminals and +the inquest of the local jurors, assessed the taxation +of each district, or listened solemnly to +appeals for justice, civil and criminal, from all who +held themselves oppressed in the lesser courts of +the hundred or the soke. It was in the County +Court alone that the Sheriff could legally summon +the lesser baronage to attend the Great Council, +and it was in the actual constitution of this +assembly that the Crown found a solution of the +difficulty which we have stated. For the principle +of representation by which it was finally solved +was coeval with the Shire Court itself. In all +cases of civil or criminal justice the twelve sworn +assessors of the Sheriff, as members of a class, +though not formally deputed for that purpose, + +<span class="pagenum"><a name="Vol2-Page-2-150"></a>2-150]</span> + +practically represented the judicial opinion of the +county at large. From every hundred came +groups of twelve sworn deputies, the "jurors" +through whom the presentments of the district +were made to the royal officer and with whom the +assessment of its share in the general taxation was +arranged. The husbandmen on the outskirts of +the crowd, clad in the brown smock frock which +still lingers in the garb of our carters and ploughmen, +were broken up into little knots of five, a +reeve and four assistants, each of which knots +formed the representative of a rural township. +If in fact we regard the Shire Courts as lineally +the descendants of our earliest English Witenagemots, +we may justly claim the principle of parliamentary +representation as among the oldest of our +institutions. +</p> + +<p> +<span class="sidenote">Knights of the Shire</span> +</p> + +<p> +It was easy to give this principle a further +extension by the choice of representatives of the +lesser barons in the shire courts to which they +were summoned; but it was only slowly and +tentatively that this process was applied to the +reconstitution of the Great Council. As early as +the close of John's reign there are indications of +the approaching change in the summons of "four +discreet knights" from every county. Fresh need +of local support was felt by both parties in the +conflict of the succeeding reign, and Henry and +his barons alike summoned knights from each shire +"to meet on the common business of the realm." + +<span class="pagenum"><a name="Vol2-Page-2-151"></a>2-151]</span> + +It was no doubt with the same purpose that the +writs of Earl Simon ordered the choice of knights +in each shire for his famous Parliament of 1265. +Something like a continuous attendance may be +dated from the accession of Edward, but it was +long before the knights were regarded as more +than local deputies for the assessment of taxation +or admitted to a share in the general business of +the Great Council. The statute "Quia Emptores," +for instance, was passed in it before the knights +who had been summoned could attend. Their +participation in the deliberative power of Parliament, +as well as their regular and continuous +attendance, dates only from the Parliament of +1295. But a far greater constitutional change in +their position had already taken place through the +extension of electoral rights to the freeholders at +large. The one class entitled to a seat in the +Great Council was, as we have seen, that of the +lesser baronage; and it was of the lesser baronage +alone that the knights were in theory the representatives. +But the necessity of holding their +election in the County Court rendered any restriction +of the electoral body physically impossible. +The court was composed of the whole body of +freeholders, and no sheriff could distinguish the +"aye, aye" of the yeoman from the "aye, aye" +of the lesser baron. From the first moment therefore +of their attendance we find the knights regarded +not as mere representatives of the baronage + +<span class="pagenum"><a name="Vol2-Page-2-152"></a>2-152]</span> + +but as knights of the shire, and by this silent +revolution the whole body of the rural freeholders +were admitted to a share in the government of the +realm. +</p> + +<p> +<span class="sidenote">Boroughs and the Crown</span> +</p> + +<p> +The financial difficulties of the Crown led to a +far more radical revolution in the admission into +the Great Council of representatives from the +boroughs. The presence of knights from each +shire was the recognition of an older right, but no +right of attendance or share in the national +"counsel and assent" could be pleaded for the +burgesses of the towns. On the other hand the +rapid developement of their wealth made them +every day more important as elements in the +national taxation. From all payment of the dues +or fines exacted by the king as the original lord +of the soil on which they had in most cases grown +up the towns had long since freed themselves by +what was called the purchase of the "farm of the +borough"; in other words, by the commutation of +these uncertain dues for a fixed sum paid annually +to the Crown and apportioned by their own magistrates +among the general body of the burghers. +All that the king legally retained was the right +enjoyed by every great proprietor of levying a +corresponding taxation on his tenants in demesne +under the name of "a free aid" whenever a grant +was made for the national necessities by the barons +of the Great Council. But the temptation of +appropriating the growing wealth of the mercantile + +<span class="pagenum"><a name="Vol2-Page-2-153"></a>2-153]</span> + +class proved stronger than legal restrictions, +and we find both Henry the Third and his son +assuming a right of imposing taxes at pleasure and +without any authority from the Council even over +London itself. The burgesses could refuse indeed +the invitation to contribute to the "free aids" +demanded by the royal officers, but the suspension +of their markets or trading privileges brought +them in the end to submission. Each of these +"free aids" however had to be extorted after a +long wrangle between the borough and the officers +of the Exchequer; and if the towns were driven +to comply with what they considered an extortion +they could generally force the Crown by evasions +and delays to a compromise and abatement of its +original demands. +</p> + +<p> +<span class="sidenote">Burgesses in Parliament</span> +</p> + +<p> +The same financial reasons therefore existed for +desiring the presence of borough representatives +in the Great Council as existed in the case of the +shires; but it was the genius of Earl Simon which +first broke through the older constitutional tradition +and summoned two burgesses from each town +to the Parliament of 1265. Time had indeed to +pass before the large and statesmanlike conception +of the great patriot could meet with full acceptance. +Through the earlier part of Edward's reign we find +a few instances of the presence of representatives +from the towns, but their scanty numbers and the +irregularity of their attendance show that they +were summoned rather to afford financial information + +<span class="pagenum"><a name="Vol2-Page-2-154"></a>2-154]</span> + +to the Great Council than as representatives +in it of an Estate of the Realm. But every year +pleaded stronger and stronger for their inclusion, +and in the Parliament of 1295 that of 1265 found +itself at last reproduced. "It was from me that +he learnt it," Earl Simon had cried, as he recognized +the military skill of Edward's onset at Evesham; +"it was from me that he learnt it," his spirit +might have exclaimed as he saw the king gathering +at last two burgesses "from every city, borough, +and leading town" within his realm to sit side by +side with the knights, nobles, and barons of the +Great Council. To the Crown the change was +from the first an advantageous one. The grants +of subsidies by the burgesses in Parliament proved +more profitable than the previous extortions of +the Exchequer. The proportions of their grant +generally exceeded that of the other estates. +Their representatives too proved far more compliant +with the royal will than the barons or +knights of the shire; only on one occasion during +Edward's reign did the burgesses waver from their +general support of the Crown. +</p> + +<p> +<span class="sidenote">Reluctance to attend</span> +</p> + +<p> +It was easy indeed to control them, for the +selection of boroughs to be represented remained +wholly in the king's hands, and their numbers +could be increased or diminished at the king's +pleasure. The determination was left to the +sheriff, and at a hint from the royal Council a +sheriff of Wilts would cut down the number of + +<span class="pagenum"><a name="Vol2-Page-2-155"></a>2-155]</span> + +represented boroughs in his shire from eleven to +three, or a sheriff of Bucks declare he could find +but a single borough, that of Wycombe, within the +bounds of his county. Nor was this exercise of +the prerogative hampered by any anxiety on the +part of the towns to claim representative privileges. +It was hard to suspect that a power before which +the Crown would have to bow lay in the ranks of +soberly-clad traders, summoned only to assess the +contributions of their boroughs, and whose attendance +was as difficult to secure as it seemed burthensome +to themselves and the towns who sent them. +The mass of citizens took little or no part in their +choice, for they were elected in the county court +by a few of the principal burghers deputed for the +purpose; but the cost of their maintenance, the +two shillings a day paid to the burgess by his town +as four were paid to the knight by his county, was +a burden from which the boroughs made desperate +efforts to escape. Some persisted in making no +return to the sheriff. Some bought charters of +exemption from the troublesome privilege. Of the +165 who were summoned by Edward the First +more than a third ceased to send representatives +after a single compliance with the royal summons. +During the whole time from the reign of Edward +the Third to the reign of Henry the Sixth the +sheriff of Lancashire declined to return the names +of any boroughs at all within that county "on +account of their poverty." Nor were the representatives + +<span class="pagenum"><a name="Vol2-Page-2-156"></a>2-156]</span> + +themselves more anxious to appear than +their boroughs to send them. The busy country +squire and the thrifty trader were equally reluctant +to undergo the trouble and expense of a journey +to Westminster. Legal measures were often +necessary to ensure their presence. Writs still +exist in abundance such as that by which Walter +le Rous is "held to bail in eight oxen and four +cart-horses to come before the King on the day +specified" for attendance in Parliament. But in +spite of obstacles such as these the presence of +representatives from the boroughs may be regarded +as continuous from the Parliament of 1295. As +the representation of the lesser barons had widened +through a silent change into that of the shire, so +that of the boroughs--restricted in theory to those +in the royal demesne--seems practically from +Edward's time to have been extended to all who +were in a condition to pay the cost of their representatives' +support. By a change as silent within +the Parliament itself the burgess, originally summoned +to take part only in matters of taxation, +was at last admitted to a full share in the deliberations +and authority of the other orders of the +State. +</p> + +<p> +<span class="sidenote">Parliament and the Clergy</span> +</p> + +<p> +The admission of the burgesses and knights of +the shire to the assembly of 1295 completed the +fabric of our representative constitution. The +Great Council of the Barons became the Parliament +of the Realm. Every order of the state + +<span class="pagenum"><a name="Vol2-Page-2-157"></a>2-157]</span> + +found itself represented in this assembly, and took +part in the grant of supplies, the work of legislation, +and in the end the control of government. +But though in all essential points the character of +Parliament has remained the same from that time +to this, there were some remarkable particulars +in which the assembly of 1295 differed widely +from the present Parliament at St. Stephen's. +Some of these differences, such as those which +sprang from the increased powers and changed +relations of the different orders among themselves, +we shall have occasion to consider at a later time. +But a difference of a far more startling kind than +these lay in the presence of the clergy. If there +is any part in the parliamentary scheme of Edward +the First which can be regarded as especially his +own, it is his project for the representation of the +ecclesiastical order. The King had twice at least +summoned its "proctors" to Great Councils before +1295, but it was then only that the complete +representation of the Church was definitely +organized by the insertion of a clause in the writ +which summoned a bishop to Parliament requiring +the personal attendance of all archdeacons, deans, +or priors of cathedral churches, of a proctor for +each cathedral chapter, and two for the clergy +within his diocese. The clause is repeated in the +writs of the present day, but its practical effect +was foiled almost from the first by the resolute +opposition of those to whom it was addressed. + +<span class="pagenum"><a name="Vol2-Page-2-158"></a>2-158]</span> + +What the towns failed in doing the clergy actually +did. Even when forced to comply with the royal +summons, as they seem to have been forced during +Edward's reign, they sat jealously by themselves, +and their refusal to vote supplies in any but their +own provincial assemblies, or convocations, of +Canterbury and York left the Crown without a +motive for insisting on their continued attendance. +Their presence indeed, though still at times granted +on some solemn occasions, became so pure a +formality that by the end of the fifteenth century +it had sunk wholly into desuetude. In their +anxiety to preserve their existence as an isolated +and privileged order the clergy flung away a power +which, had they retained it, would have ruinously +hampered the healthy developement of the state. +To take a single instance, it is difficult to see how +the great changes of the Reformation could have +been brought about had a good half of the House +of Commons consisted purely of churchmen, whose +numbers would have been backed by the weight of +their property as possessors of a third of the landed +estates of the realm. +</p> + +<p> +<span class="sidenote">Parliament at Westminster</span> +</p> + +<p> +A hardly less important difference may be found +in the gradual restriction of the meetings of +Parliament to Westminster. The names of +Edward's statutes remind us of its convocation at +the most various quarters, at Winchester, Acton +Burnell, Northampton. It was at a later time that +Parliament became settled in the straggling village + +<span class="pagenum"><a name="Vol2-Page-2-159"></a>2-159]</span> + +which had grown up in the marshy swamp of the +Isle of Thorns beside the palace whose embattled +pile towered over the Thames and the new Westminster +which was still rising in Edward's day on +the site of the older church of the Confessor. It +is possible that, while contributing greatly to its +constitutional importance, this settlement of the +Parliament may have helped to throw into the +background its character as a supreme court of +appeal. The proclamation by which it was called +together invited "all who had any grace to demand +of the King in Parliament, or any plaint to make +of matters which could not be redressed or determined +by ordinary course of law, or who had been +in any way aggrieved by any of the King's +ministers or justices or sheriffs, or their bailiffs, or +any other officer, or have been unduly assessed, +rated, charged, or surcharged to aids, subsidies, +or taxes," to deliver their petitions to receivers +who sat in the Great Hall of the Palace of Westminster. +The petitions were forwarded to the +King's Council, and it was probably the extension +of the jurisdiction of that body and the rise of the +Court of Chancery which reduced this ancient right +of the subject to the formal election of "Triers of +Petitions" at the opening of every new Parliament +by the House of Lords, a usage which is still +continued. But it must have been owing to some +memory of the older custom that the subject +always looked for redress against injuries from the + +<span class="pagenum"><a name="Vol2-Page-2-160"></a>2-160]</span> + +Crown or its ministers to the Parliament of the +realm. +</p> + +<p> +<span class="sidenote">Conquest of Scotland</span> +</p> + +<p> +The subsidies granted by the Parliament of +1295 furnished the king with the means of warfare +with both Scotland and France while they +assured him of the sympathy of his people in the +contest. But from the first the reluctance of +Edward to enter on the double war was strongly +marked. The refusal of the Scotch baronage to +obey his summons had been followed on Balliol's +part by two secret steps which made a struggle +inevitable, by a request to Rome for absolution +from his oath of fealty and by a treaty of alliance +with Philip the Fair. As yet however no open +breach had taken place, and while Edward in 1296 +summoned his knighthood to meet him in the +north he called a Parliament at Newcastle in the +hope of bringing about an accommodation with the +Scot king. But all thought of accommodation +was roughly ended by the refusal of Balliol to +attend the Parliament, by the rout of a small body +of English troops, and by the Scotch investment +of Carlisle. Taken as he was by surprise, Edward +showed at once the vigour and rapidity of his +temper. His army marched upon Berwick. The +town was a rich and well-peopled one, and although +a wooden stockade furnished its only rampart the +serried ranks of citizens behind it gave little hope +of an easy conquest. Their taunts indeed stung +the king to the quick. As his engineers threw + +<span class="pagenum"><a name="Vol2-Page-2-161"></a>2-161]</span> + +up rough entrenchments for the besieging army +the burghers bade him wait till he won the town +before he began digging round it. "Kynge +Edward," they shouted, "waune thou havest +Berwick, pike thee; waune thou havest geten, +dike thee." But the stockade was stormed with +the loss of a single knight, nearly eight thousand +of the citizens were mown down in a ruthless +carnage, and a handful of Flemish traders who +held the town-hall stoutly against all assailants +were burned alive in it. The massacre only ceased +when a procession of priests bore the host to the +king's presence, praying for mercy. Edward with +a sudden and characteristic burst of tears called off +his troops; but the town was ruined for ever, and +the greatest merchant city of northern Britain +sank from that time into a petty seaport. +</p> + +<p> +At Berwick Edward received Balliol's formal +defiance. "Has the fool done this folly?" the +king cried in haughty scorn; "if he will not +come to us, we will come to him." The terrible +slaughter however had done its work, and his +march northward was a triumphal progress. +Edinburgh, Stirling, and Perth opened their gates, +Bruce joined the English army, and Balliol himself +surrendered and passed without a blow from his +throne to an English prison. No further punishment +however was exacted from the prostrate +realm. Edward simply treated it as a fief, and +declared its forfeiture to be the legal consequence + +<span class="pagenum"><a name="Vol2-Page-2-162"></a>2-162]</span> + +of Balliol's treason. It lapsed in fact to its +suzerain; and its earls, barons, and gentry swore +homage in Parliament at Berwick to Edward as +their king. The sacred stone on which its older +sovereigns had been installed, an oblong block +of limestone which legend asserted to have been +the pillow of Jacob as angels ascended and +descended upon him, was removed from Scone and +placed in Westminster by the shrine of the +Confessor. It was enclosed by Edward's order in +a stately seat, which became from that hour the +coronation chair of English kings. To the king +himself the whole business must have seemed +another and easier conquest of Wales, and the +mercy and just government which had followed +his first success followed his second also. The +government of the new dependency was entrusted +to John of Warenne, Earl of Surrey, at the head +of an English Council of Regency. Pardon was +freely extended to all who had resisted the +invasion, and order and public peace were rigidly +enforced. +</p> + +<p> +<span class="sidenote">Confirmation of the Charters</span> +</p> + +<p> +But the triumph, rapid and complete as it was, +had more than exhausted the aids granted by the +Parliament. The treasury was utterly drained. +The struggle indeed widened as every month went +on; the costly fight with the French in Gascony +called for supplies, while Edward was planning a +yet costlier attack on northern France with the aid +of Flanders. Need drove him on his return from + +<span class="pagenum"><a name="Vol2-Page-2-163"></a>2-163]</span> + +Scotland in 1297 to measures of tyrannical extortion +which seemed to recall the times of John. +His first blow fell on the Church. At the close of +1294 he had already demanded half their annual +income from the clergy, and so terrible was his +wrath at their resistance that the Dean of St. +Paul's, who stood forth to remonstrate, dropped +dead of sheer terror at his feet. "If any oppose +the King's demand," said a royal envoy in the +midst of the Convocation, "let him stand up that +he may be noted as an enemy to the King's peace." +The outraged Churchmen fell back on an untenable +plea that their aid was due solely to Rome, and +alleged the bull of "Clericis Laicos," issued by +Boniface the Eighth at this moment, a bull which +forbade the clergy to pay secular taxes from their +ecclesiastical revenues, as a ground for refusing to +comply with further taxation. In 1297 Archbishop +Winchelsey refused on the ground of this +bull to make any grant, and Edward met his +refusal by a general outlawry of the whole order. +The King's Courts were closed, and all justice +denied to those who refused the king aid. By +their actual plea the clergy had put themselves +formally in the wrong, and the outlawry soon +forced them to submission; but their aid did little +to recruit the exhausted treasury. The pressure +of the war steadily increased, and far wider measures +of arbitrary taxation were needful to equip +an expedition which Edward prepared to lead in + +<span class="pagenum"><a name="Vol2-Page-2-164"></a>2-164]</span> + +person to Flanders. The country gentlemen were +compelled to take up knighthood or to compound +for exemption from the burthensome honour, and +forced contributions of cattle and corn were demanded +from the counties. Edward no doubt +purposed to pay honestly for these supplies, but +his exactions from the merchant class rested on +a deliberate theory of his royal rights. He looked +on the customs as levied absolutely at his pleasure, +and the export duty on wool--now the staple +produce of the country--was raised to six times +its former amount. Although he infringed no +positive provision of charter or statute in his +action, it was plain that his course really undid all +that had been gained by the Barons' war. But +the blow had no sooner been struck than Edward +found stout resistance within his realm. The +barons drew together and called a meeting for the +redress of their grievances. The two greatest of +the English nobles, Humfrey de Bohun, Earl of +Hereford, and Roger Bigod, Earl of Norfolk, placed +themselves at the head of the opposition. The +first was Constable, the second Earl Marshal, and +Edward bade them lead a force to Gascony as his +lieutenants while he himself sailed to Flanders. +Their departure would have left the Baronage +without leaders, and the two earls availed themselves +of a plea that they were not bound to foreign +service save in attendance on the king to refuse +obedience to the royal orders. "By God, Sir + +<span class="pagenum"><a name="Vol2-Page-2-165"></a>2-165]</span> + +Earl," swore the king to the Earl Marshal, "you +shall either go or hang!" "By God, Sir King," +was the cool reply, "I will neither go nor hang!" +Both parties separated in bitter anger; the king +to seize fresh wool, to outlaw the clergy, and to +call an army to his aid; the barons to gather in +arms, backed by the excommunication of the +Primate. But the strife went no further than +words. Ere the Parliament he had convened +could meet, Edward had discovered his own powerlessness; +Winchelsey offered his mediation; and +Edward confirmed the Great Charter and the +Charter of Forests as the price of a grant from +the clergy and a subsidy from the Commons. With +one of those sudden revulsions of feeling of which +his nature was capable the king stood before his +people in Westminster Hall and owned with a +burst of tears that he had taken their substance +without due warrant of law. His passionate +appeal to their loyalty wrested a reluctant assent +to the prosecution, of the war, and in August +Edward sailed for Flanders, leaving his son regent +of the realm. But the crisis had taught the need +of further securities against the royal power, and +as Edward was about to embark the barons demanded +his acceptance of additional articles to the +Charter, expressly renouncing his right of taxing +the nation without its own consent. The king +sailed without complying, but Winchelsey joined +the two earls and the citizens of London in forbidding + +<span class="pagenum"><a name="Vol2-Page-2-166"></a>2-166]</span> + +any levy of supplies till the Great Charter +with these clauses was again confirmed, and the +trouble in Scotland as well as the still pending +strife with France left Edward helpless in the +barons' hands. The Great Charter and the Charter +of the Forests were solemnly confirmed by him at +Ghent in November; and formal pardon was issued +to the Earls of Hereford and Norfolk. +</p> + +<p> +<span class="sidenote">Revolt of Scotland</span> +</p> + +<p> +The confirmation of the Charter, the renunciation +of any right to the exactions by which the +people were aggrieved, the pledge that the king +would no more take "such aids, tasks, and prizes +but by common assent of the realm," the promise +not to impose on wool any heavy customs or +"maltôte" without the same assent, was the close +of the great struggle which had begun at Runnymede. +The clauses so soon removed from the +Great Charter were now restored; and, evade them +as they might, the kings were never able to free +themselves from the obligation to seek aid solely +from the general consent of their subjects. It was +Scotland which had won this victory for English +freedom. At the moment when Edward and the +earls stood face to face the king saw his work in +the north suddenly undone. Both the justice and +injustice of the new rule proved fatal to it. The +wrath of the Scots, already kindled by the intrusion +of English priests into Scotch livings and by the +grant of lands across the border to English barons, +was fanned to fury by the strict administration of + +<span class="pagenum"><a name="Vol2-Page-2-167"></a>2-167]</span> + +law and the repression of feuds and cattle-lifting. +The disbanding too of troops, which was caused +by the penury of the royal exchequer, united with +the licence of the soldiery who remained to quicken +the national sense of wrong. The disgraceful submission +of their leaders brought the people themselves +to the front. In spite of a hundred years +of peace the farmer of Fife or the Lowlands and +the artizan of the towns remained stout-hearted +Northumbrian Englishmen. They had never consented +to Edward's supremacy, and their blood +rose against the insolent rule of the stranger. +The genius of an outlaw knight, William Wallace, +saw in their smouldering discontent a hope of freedom +for his country, and his daring raids on outlying +parties of the English soldiery roused the +country at last into revolt. +</p> + +<p> +<span class="sidenote">Wallace</span> +</p> + +<p> +Of Wallace himself, of his life or temper, we +know little or nothing; the very traditions of his +gigantic stature and enormous strength are dim +and unhistorical. But the instinct of the Scotch +people has guided it aright in choosing him for its +national hero. He was the first to assert freedom +as a national birthright, and amidst the despair +of nobles and priests to call the people itself to +arms. At the head of an army drawn principally +from the coast districts north of the Tay, which +were inhabited by a population of the same blood +as that of the Lowlands, Wallace in September +1297 encamped near Stirling, the pass between the + +<span class="pagenum"><a name="Vol2-Page-2-168"></a>2-168]</span> + +north and the south, and awaited the English +advance. It was here that he was found by the +English army. The offers of John of Warenne +were scornfully rejected: "We have come," said +the Scottish leader, "not to make peace, but to +free our country." The position of Wallace behind +a loop of Forth was in fact chosen with consummate +skill. The one bridge which crossed the river was +only broad enough to admit two horsemen abreast; +and though the English army had been passing +from daybreak but half its force was across at noon +when Wallace closed on it and cut it after a short +combat to pieces in sight of its comrades. The +retreat of the Earl of Surrey over the border left +Wallace head of the country he had freed, and for +a few months he acted as "Guardian of the Realm" +in Balliol's name, and headed a wild foray into +Northumberland in which the barbarous cruelties +of his men left a bitter hatred behind them which +was to wreak its vengeance in the later bloodshed +of the war. His reduction of Stirling Castle at +last called Edward to the field. In the spring of +1298 the king's diplomacy had at last wrung a +truce for two years from Philip the Fair; and he +at once returned to England to face the troubles +in Scotland. Marching northward with a larger +host than had ever followed his banner, he was +enabled by treachery to surprise Wallace as he fell +back to avoid an engagement, and to force him on +the twenty-second of July to battle near Falkirk. + +<span class="pagenum"><a name="Vol2-Page-2-169"></a>2-169]</span> + +The Scotch force consisted almost wholly of foot, +and Wallace drew up his spearmen in four great +hollow circles or squares, the outer ranks kneeling +and the whole supported by bowmen within, while +a small force of horse were drawn up as a reserve +in the rear. It was the formation of Waterloo, +the first appearance in our history since the day of +Senlac of "that unconquerable British infantry" +before which chivalry was destined to go down. +For a moment it had all Waterloo's success. "I +have brought you to the ring, hop (dance) if you +can," are words of rough humour that reveal the +very soul of the patriot leader, and the serried +ranks answered well to his appeal. The Bishop of +Durham who led the English van shrank wisely +from the look of the squares. "Back to your mass, +Bishop," shouted the reckless knights behind him, +but the body of horse dashed itself vainly on the +wall of spears. Terror spread through the English +army, and its Welsh auxiliaries drew off in a body +from the field. But the generalship of Wallace +was met by that of the king. Drawing his bowmen +to the front, Edward riddled the Scottish +ranks with arrows and then hurled his cavalry +afresh on the wavering line. In a moment all +was over, the maddened knights rode in and out +of the broken ranks, slaying without mercy. +Thousands fell on the field, and Wallace himself +escaped with difficulty, followed by a handful of +men. +</p> + + + +<span class="pagenum"><a name="Vol2-Page-2-170"></a>2-170]</span> + + +<p> +<span class="sidenote">Second Conquest of Scotland</span> +</p> + +<p> +But ruined as the cause of freedom seemed, his +work was done. He had roused Scotland into life, +and even a defeat like Falkirk left her unconquered. +Edward remained master only of the ground he +stood on: want of supplies forced him at last to +retreat; and in the summer of the following year, +1299, when Balliol, released from his English +prison, withdrew into France, a regency of the +Scotch nobles under Robert Bruce and John +Comyn continued the struggle for independence. +Troubles at home and danger from abroad stayed +Edward's hand. The barons still distrusted his +sincerity, and though at their demand he renewed +the Confirmation in the spring of 1299, his attempt +to add an evasive clause saving the right of the +Crown proved the justice of their distrust. In +spite of a fresh and unconditional renewal of it a +strife over the Forest Charter went on till the +opening of 1301 when a new gathering of the +barons in arms with the support of Archbishop +Winchelsey wrested from him its full execution. +What aided freedom within was as of old the peril +without. France was still menacing, and a claim +advanced by Pope Boniface the Eighth at its +suggestion to the feudal superiority over Scotland +arrested a new advance of the king across the +border. A quarrel however which broke out +between Philip le Bel and the Papacy removed all +obstacles. It enabled Edward to defy Boniface +and to wring from France a treaty in which + +<span class="pagenum"><a name="Vol2-Page-2-171"></a>2-171]</span> + +Scotland was abandoned. In 1304 he resumed +the work of invasion, and again the nobles flung +down their arms as he marched to the North. +Comyn, at the head of the Regency, acknowledged +his sovereignty, and the surrender of Stirling +completed the conquest of Scotland. But the +triumph of Edward was only the prelude to the +carrying out of his designs for knitting the two +countries together by a generosity and wisdom +which reveal the greatness of his statesmanship. +A general amnesty was extended to all who had +shared in the resistance. Wallace, who refused to +avail himself of Edward's mercy, was captured +and condemned to death at Westminster on charges +of treason, sacrilege, and robbery. The head of +the great patriot, crowned in mockery with a +circlet of laurel, was placed upon London Bridge. +But the execution of Wallace was the one blot on +Edward's clemency. With a masterly boldness he +entrusted the government of the country to a +council of Scotch nobles, many of whom were +freshly pardoned for their share in the war, and +anticipated the policy of Cromwell by allotting +ten representatives to Scotland in the Common +Parliament of his realm. A Convocation was +summoned at Perth for the election of these +representatives, and a great judicial scheme which +was promulgated in this assembly adopted the +amended laws of King David as the base of a new +legislation, and divided the country for judicial + +<span class="pagenum"><a name="Vol2-Page-2-172"></a>2-172]</span> + +purposes into four districts, Lothian, Galloway, +the Highlands, and the land between the Highlands +and the Forth, at the head of each of which were +placed two justiciaries, the one English and the +other Scotch. +</p> + +<p> +<span class="sidenote">Rising of Bruce</span> +</p> + +<p> +With the conquest and settlement of Scotland +the glory of Edward seemed again complete. The +bitterness of his humiliation at home indeed still +preyed upon him, and in measure after measure +we see his purpose of renewing the strife with the +baronage. In 1303 he found a means of evading +his pledge to levy no new taxes on merchandise +save by assent of the realm in a consent of the +foreign merchants, whether procured by royal +pressure or no, to purchase by stated payments +certain privileges of trading. In this "New +Custom" lay the origin of our import duties. A +formal absolution from his promises which he +obtained from Pope Clement the Fifth in 1305 +showed that he looked on his triumph in the North +as enabling him to reopen the questions which he +had yielded. But again Scotland stayed his hand. +Only four months had passed since its submission, +and he was preparing for a joint Parliament of +the two nations at Carlisle, when the conquered +country suddenly sprang again to arms. Its new +leader was Robert Bruce, a grandson of one of +the original claimants of the crown. The Norman +house of Bruce formed a part of the Yorkshire +baronage, but it had acquired through intermarriages + +<span class="pagenum"><a name="Vol2-Page-2-173"></a>2-173]</span> + +the Earldom of Carrick and the Lordship +of Annandale. Both the claimant and his son had +been pretty steadily on the English side in the +contest with Balliol and Wallace, and Robert had +himself been trained in the English court and stood +high in the king's favour. But the withdrawal +of Balliol gave a new force to his claims upon the +crown, and the discovery of an intrigue which he +had set on foot with the Bishop of St. Andrews so +roused Edward's jealousy that Bruce fled for his +life across the border. Early in 1306 he met +Comyn, the Lord of Badenoch, to whose treachery +he attributed the disclosure of his plans, in the +church of the Grey Friars at Dumfries, and after +the interchange of a few hot words struck him +with his dagger to the ground. It was an outrage +that admitted of no forgiveness, and Bruce for +very safety was forced to assume the crown six +weeks after in the Abbey of Scone. The news +roused Scotland again to arms, and summoned +Edward to a fresh contest with his unconquerable +foe. But the murder of Comyn had changed the +king's mood to a terrible pitilessness. He threatened +death against all concerned in the outrage, +and exposed the Countess of Buchan, who had set +the crown on Bruce's head, in a cage or open +chamber built for the purpose in one of the towers +of Berwick. At the solemn feast which celebrated +his son's knighthood Edward vowed on the swan +which formed the chief dish at the banquet to + +<span class="pagenum"><a name="Vol2-Page-2-174"></a>2-174]</span> + +devote the rest of his days to exact vengeance +from the murderer himself. But even at the +moment of the vow Bruce was already flying for +his life to the western islands. "Henceforth" he +said to his wife at their coronation "thou art +Queen of Scotland and I King." "I fear" replied +Mary Bruce "we are only playing at royalty like +children in their games." The play was soon +turned into bitter earnest. A small English force +under Aymer de Valence sufficed to rout the +disorderly levies which gathered round the new +monarch, and the flight of Bruce left his followers +at Edward's mercy. Noble after noble was sent +to the block. The Earl of Athole pleaded kindred +with royalty. "His only privilege," burst forth +the king, "shall be that of being hanged on a +higher gallows than the rest." Knights and priests +were strung up side by side by the English +justiciaries; while the wife and daughters of +Robert Bruce were flung into Edward's prisons. +Bruce himself had offered to capitulate to Prince +Edward. But the offer only roused the old king +to fury. "Who is so bold," he cried, "as to treat +with our traitors without our knowledge?" and +rising from his sick-bed he led his army northwards +in the summer of 1307 to complete the conquest. +But the hand of death was upon him, and in the +very sight of Scotland the old man breathed his +last at Burgh-upon-Sands. +</p> + +</div> +</div> + +<span class="pagenum"><a name="Vol2-Page-2-175"></a>2-175]</span> + +<div class="book"> +<div class="head"> +<hr> +<a name="Bk4"></a><ul> + +<li> +<a name="id4542669"></a>BOOK IV</li> +<li> +<a name="id4542674"></a>THE PARLIAMENT</li> +<li> +<a name="id4542680"></a>1307-1461</li> + +</ul> +</div> + + + + + +<span class="pagenum"><a name="Vol2-Page-2-177"></a>2-177]</span> + + +<div class="chapter"> +<div class="head"> +<hr> +<a name="Bk4-Auth"></a><ul> + +<li> +<a name="id4542747"></a> </li> +<li> +<a name="id4542752"></a>AUTHORITIES FOR BOOK IV</li> + +</ul> +</div> + + + +<p> +For Edward the Second we have three important contemporaries: +Thomas de la More, Trokelowe's Annals, and the +life by a monk of Malmesbury printed by Hearne. The +sympathies of the first are with the King, those of the last +two with the Barons. Murimuth's short Chronicle is also +contemporary. John Barbour's "Bruce," the great legendary +storehouse for his hero's adventures, is historically +worthless. +</p> + +<p> +Important as it is, the reign of Edward the Third is by +no means fortunate in its annalists. The concluding part +of the Chronicle of Walter of Hemingford or Heminburgh +seems to have been jotted down as news of the passing +events reached its author: it ends at the battle of Crécy. +Hearne has published another contemporary account, that +of Robert of Avesbury, which closes in 1356. A third +account by Knyghton, a canon of Leicester, will be found +in the collection of Twysden. At the end of this century +and the beginning of the next the annals which had been +carried on in the Abbey of St. Albans were thrown together +by Walsingham in the "Historia Anglicana" which bears +his name, a compilation whose history may be found in the +prefaces to the "Chronica Monasterii S. Albani" issued in +the Rolls Series. An anonymous chronicler whose work is +printed in the 22nd volume of the "Archæologia" has given +us the story of the Good Parliament, another account is +preserved in the "Chronica Angliæ from 1328 to 1388," +published in the Rolls Series, and fresh light has been + +<span class="pagenum"><a name="Vol2-Page-2-178"></a>2-178]</span> + +recently thrown on the time by the publication of a +Chronicle by Adam of Usk which extends from 1377 to +1404. Fortunately the scantiness of historical narrative is +compensated by the growing fulness and abundance of our +State papers. Rymer's Foedera is rich in diplomatic and +other documents for this period, and from this time we have +a storehouse of political and social information in the Parliamentary +Rolls. +</p> + +<p> +For the French war itself our primary authority is the +Chronicle of Jehan le Bel, a canon of the church of St. +Lambert of Liége, who himself served in Edward's campaign +against the Scots and spent the rest of his life at the court +of John of Hainault. Up to the Treaty of Brétigny, where +it closes, Froissart has done little more than copy this work, +making however large additions from his own enquiries, +especially in the Flemish and Breton campaigns and in the +account of Crécy. Froissart was himself a Hainaulter of +Valenciennes; he held a post in Queen Philippa's household +from 1361 to 1369, and under this influence produced in +1373 the first edition of his well-known Chronicle. A later +edition is far less English in tone, and a third version, begun +by him in his old age after long absence from England, is +distinctly French in its sympathies. Froissart's vivacity +and picturesqueness blind us to the inaccuracy of his +details; as an historical authority he is of little value. The +"Fasciculi Zizaniorum" in the Rolls Series with the documents +appended to it is a work of primary authority for +the history of Wyclif and his followers: a selection from +his English tracts has been made by Mr. T. Arnold for the +University of Oxford, which has also published his "Trias." +The version of the Bible that bears his name has been edited +with a valuable preface by the Rev. J. Forshall and Sir F. +Madden. William Langland's poem, "The Complaint of +Piers the Ploughman" (edited by Mr. Skeat for the Early +English Text Society), throws a flood of light on the social +state of England after the Treaty of Brétigny. +</p> + +<p> +The "Annals of Richard the Second and Henry the +Fourth," now published by the Master of the Rolls, are our +main authority for the period which follows Edward's death. + +<span class="pagenum"><a name="Vol2-Page-2-179"></a>2-179]</span> + +They serve as the basis of the St. Albans compilation which +bears the name of Walsingham, and from which the "Life +of Richard" by a monk of Evesham is for the most part +derived. The same violent Lancastrian sympathy runs +through Walsingham and the fifth book of Knyghton's +Chronicle. The French authorities on the other hand are +vehemently on Richard's side. Froissart, who ends at this +time, is supplemented by the metrical history of Creton +("Archæologia," vol. xx.), and by the "Chronique de la +Traison et Mort de Richart" (English Historical Society), +both works of French authors and published in France in +the time of Henry the Fourth, probably with the aim of +arousing French feeling against the House of Lancaster and +the war-policy which it had revived. The popular feeling +in England may be seen in "Political Songs from Edward +III. to Richard III." (Rolls Series). A poem on "The Deposition +of Richard II." which has been published by the +Camden Society is now ascribed to William Langland. +</p> + +<p> +With Henry the Fifth our historic materials become +more abundant. We have the "Gesta Henrici Quinti" by +Titus Livius, a chaplain in the royal army; a life by Elmham, +prior of Lenton, simpler in style but identical in +arrangement and facts with the former work; a biography +by Robert Redman; a metrical chronicle by Elmham (published +in Rolls Series in "Memorials of Henry the Fifth"); +and the meagre chronicles of Hardyng and Otterbourne. +The King's Norman campaigns may be studied in M. +Puiseux's "Siége de Rouen" (Caen, 1867). The "Wars of +the English in France" and Blondel's work "De Reductione +Normanniæ" (both in Rolls Series) give ample information +on the military side of this and the next reign. But with +the accession of Henry the Sixth we again enter on a period +of singular dearth in its historical authorities. The "Procès +de Jeanne d'Arc" (published by the Société de l'Histoire de +France) is the only real authority for her history. For +English affairs we are reduced to the meagre accounts of +William of Worcester, of the Continuator of the Crowland +Chronicle, and of Fabyan. Fabyan is a London alderman +with a strong bias in favour of the House of Lancaster, and + +<span class="pagenum"><a name="Vol2-Page-2-180"></a>2-180]</span> + +his work is useful for London only. The Continuator is +one of the best of his class; and though connected with the +house of York, the date of his work, which appeared soon +after Bosworth Field, makes him fairly impartial; but he is +sketchy and deficient in information. The more copious +narrative of Polydore Vergil is far superior to these in +literary ability, but of later date, and strongly Lancastrian +in tone. For the struggle between Edward and Warwick, +the valuable narrative of "The Arrival of Edward the +Fourth" (Camden Society) may be taken as the official +account on the royal side. The Paston Letters are the first +instance in English history of a family correspondence, and +throw great light on the social condition of the time. +</p> + +</div> + + +<span class="pagenum"><a name="Vol2-Page-2-181"></a>2-181]</span> + +<div class="chapter"> +<div class="head"> +<hr> +<a name="Bk4-Ch1"></a><ul> + +<li> +<a name="id4543058"></a>CHAPTER I</li> +<li> +<a name="id4543064"></a>EDWARD II</li> +<li> +<a name="id4543070"></a>1307-1327</li> + +</ul> +</div> + + + +<p> +<span class="sidenote">Parliament and the Kings</span> +</p> + +<p> +In his calling together the estates of the realm +Edward the First determined the course of English +history. From the first moment of its appearance +the Parliament became the centre of English +affairs. The hundred years indeed which follow +its assembly at Westminster saw its rise into a +power which checked and overawed the Crown. +</p> + +<p> +Of the kings in whose reigns the Parliament +gathered this mighty strength not one was likely +to look with indifference on the growth of a rival +authority, and the bulk of them were men who in +other times would have roughly checked it. What +held their hand was the need of the Crown. The +century and a half that followed the gathering of +the estates at Westminster was a time of almost +continual war, and of the financial pressure that +springs from war. It was indeed war that had +gathered them. In calling his Parliament Edward + +<span class="pagenum"><a name="Vol2-Page-2-182"></a>2-182]</span> + +the First sought mainly an effective means of +procuring supplies for that policy of national +consolidation which had triumphed in Wales and +which seemed to be triumphing in Scotland. But +the triumph in Scotland soon proved a delusive +one, and the strife brought wider strifes in its +train. When Edward wrung from Balliol an +acknowledgement of his suzerainty he foresaw +little of the war with France, the war with Spain, +the quarrel with the Papacy, the upgrowth of +social, of political, of religious revolution within +England itself, of which that acknowledgement +was to be the prelude. But the thicker troubles +gathered round England the more the royal +treasury was drained, and now that arbitrary +taxation was impossible the one means of filling it +lay in a summons of the Houses. The Crown was +chained to the Parliament by a tie of absolute +need. From the first moment of parliamentary +existence the life and power of the estates +assembled at Westminster hung on the question +of supplies. So long as war went on no ruler +could dispense with the grants which fed the war +and which Parliament alone could afford. But it +was impossible to procure supplies save by redressing +the grievances of which Parliament complained +and by granting the powers which Parliament +demanded. It was in vain that king after king, +conscious that war bound them to the Parliament, +strove to rid themselves of the war. So far was + +<span class="pagenum"><a name="Vol2-Page-2-183"></a>2-183]</span> + +the ambition of our rulers from being the cause of +the long struggle that, save in the one case of +Henry the Fifth, the desperate effort of every +ruler was to arrive at peace. Forced as they were +to fight, their restless diplomacy strove to draw +from victory as from defeat a means of escape +from the strife that was enslaving the Crown. +The royal Council, the royal favourites, were +always on the side of peace. But fortunately for +English freedom peace was impossible. The pride +of the English people, the greed of France, foiled +every attempt at accommodation. The wisest +ministers sacrificed themselves in vain. King +after king patched up truces which never grew +into treaties, and concluded marriages which +brought fresh discord instead of peace. War went +ceaselessly on, and with the march of war went on +the ceaseless growth of the Parliament. +</p> + +<p> +<span class="sidenote">Robert Bruce</span> +</p> + +<p> +The death of Edward the First arrested only +for a moment the advance of his army to the +north. The Earl of Pembroke led it across the +border, and found himself master of the country +without a blow. Bruce's career became that of a +desperate adventurer, for even the Highland chiefs +in whose fastnesses he found shelter were bitterly +hostile to one who claimed to be king of their +foes in the Lowlands. It was this adversity that +transformed the murderer of Comyn into the noble +leader of a nation's cause. Strong and of commanding +presence, brave and genial in temper, + +<span class="pagenum"><a name="Vol2-Page-2-184"></a>2-184]</span> + +Bruce bore the hardships of his career with a +courage and hopefulness that never failed. In the +legends that clustered round his name we see him +listening in Highland glens to the bay of the +bloodhounds on his track, or holding a pass single-handed +against a crowd of savage clansmen. +Sometimes the small band which clung to him +were forced to support themselves by hunting and +fishing, sometimes to break up for safety as their +enemies tracked them to their lair. Bruce himself +had more than once to fling off his coat-of-mail +and scramble barefoot for very life up the crags. +Little by little, however, the dark sky cleared. +The English pressure relaxed. James Douglas, +the darling of Scottish story, was the first of the +Lowland Barons to rally to the Bruce, and his +daring gave heart to the king's cause. Once he +surprised his own house, which had been given to +an Englishman, ate the dinner which was prepared +for its new owner, slew his captives, and tossed +their bodies on to a pile of wood at the castle gate. +Then he staved in the wine-vats that the wine +might mingle with their blood, and set house and +wood-pile on fire. +</p> + +<p> +<span class="sidenote">Edward the Second</span> +</p> + +<p> +A ferocity like this degraded everywhere the +work of freedom; but the revival of the country +went steadily on. Pembroke and the English +forces were in fact paralyzed by a strife which had +broken out in England between the new king and +his baronage. The moral purpose which had + +<span class="pagenum"><a name="Vol2-Page-2-185"></a>2-185]</span> + +raised his father to grandeur was wholly wanting +in Edward the Second; he was showy, idle, and +stubborn in temper; but he was far from being +destitute of the intellectual quickness which +seemed inborn in the Plantagenets. He had no +love for his father, but he had seen him in the +later years of his reign struggling against the +pressure of the baronage, evading his pledges as +to taxation, and procuring absolution from his +promise to observe the clauses added to the +Charter. The son's purpose was the same, that of +throwing off what he looked on as the yoke of the +baronage; but the means by which he designed to +bring about his purpose was the choice of a +minister wholly dependent on the Crown. We +have already noticed the change by which the +"clerks of the King's chapel," who had been the +ministers of arbitrary government under the +Norman and Angevin sovereigns, had been quietly +superseded by the prelates and lords of the Continual +Council. At the close of the late reign a +direct demand on the part of the barons to nominate +the great officers of state had been curtly +rejected, but the royal choice had been practically +limited in the selection of its ministers to the +class of prelates and nobles, and however closely +connected with royalty they might be such officers +always to a great extent shared the feelings and +opinions of their order. The aim of the young +king seems to have been to undo the change + +<span class="pagenum"><a name="Vol2-Page-2-186"></a>2-186]</span> + +which had been silently brought about, and to +imitate the policy of the contemporary sovereigns +of France by choosing as his ministers men of an +inferior position, wholly dependent on the Crown +for their power, and representatives of nothing but +the policy and interests of their master. Piers +Gaveston, a foreigner sprung from a family of +Guienne, had been his friend and companion +during his father's reign, at the close of which he +had been banished from the realm for his share in +intrigues which divided Edward from his son. At +the accession of the new king he was at once +recalled, created Earl of Cornwall, and placed at +the head of the administration. When Edward +crossed the sea to wed Isabella of France, the +daughter of Philip the Fair, a marriage planned +by his father to provide against any further intervention +of France in his difficulties with Scotland, +the new minister was left as Regent in his room. +The offence given by this rapid promotion was +embittered by his personal temper. Gay, genial, +thriftless, Gaveston showed in his first acts the +quickness and audacity of Southern Gaul. The +older ministers were dismissed, all claims of precedence +or inheritance were set aside in the +distribution of offices at the coronation, while +taunts and defiances goaded the proud baronage +to fury. The favourite was a fine soldier, and his +lance unhorsed his opponents in tourney after +tourney. His reckless wit flung nicknames about + +<span class="pagenum"><a name="Vol2-Page-2-187"></a>2-187]</span> + +the Court, the Earl of Lancaster was "the Actor," +Pembroke "the Jew," Warwick "the Black Dog." +But taunt and defiance broke helplessly against +the iron mass of the baronage. After a few +months of power the formal demand of the +Parliament for his dismissal could not be resisted, +and in May 1308 Gaveston was formally banished +from the realm. +</p> + +<p> +<span class="sidenote">Thomas of Lancaster</span> +</p> + +<p> +But Edward was far from abandoning his +favourite. In Ireland he was unfettered by the +baronage, and here Gaveston found a refuge as +the King's Lieutenant while Edward sought to +obtain his recall by the intervention of France and +the Papacy. But the financial pressure of the +Scotch war again brought the king and his +Parliament together in the spring of 1309. It +was only by conceding the rights which his father +had sought to establish of imposing import duties +on the merchants by their own assent that he +procured a subsidy. The firmness of the baronage +sprang from their having found a head. In no +point had the policy of Henry the Third more +utterly broken down than in his attempt to +weaken the power of the nobles by filling the +great earldoms with kinsmen of the royal house. +He had made Simon of Montfort his brother-in-law +only to furnish a leader to the nation in the +Barons' war. In loading his second son, Edmund +Crouchback, with honours and estates he raised a +family to greatness which overawed the Crown. + +<span class="pagenum"><a name="Vol2-Page-2-188"></a>2-188]</span> + +Edmund had been created Earl of Lancaster; +after Evesham he had received the forfeited +Earldom of Leicester; he had been made Earl of +Derby on the extinction of the house of Ferrers. +His son, Thomas of Lancaster, was the son-in-law +of Henry de Lacy, and was soon to add to these +lordships the Earldom of Lincoln. And to the +weight of these great baronies was added his +royal blood. The father of Thomas had been a +titular king of Sicily. His mother was dowager +queen of Navarre. His half-sister by the mother's +side was wife of the French king Philip le Bel +and mother of the English queen Isabella. He was +himself a grandson of Henry the Third and not +far from the succession to the throne. Had Earl +Thomas been a wiser and a nobler man, his adhesion +to the cause of the baronage might have guided +the king into a really national policy. As it was +his weight proved irresistible. When Edward at +the close of the Parliament recalled Gaveston the +Earl of Lancaster withdrew from the royal +Council, and a Parliament which met in the +spring of 1310 resolved that the affairs of the +realm should be entrusted for a year to a body of +twenty-one "Ordainers" with Archbishop Winchelsey +at their head. +</p> + +<p> +<span class="sidenote">Edward and the Ordainers</span> +</p> + +<p> +Edward with Gaveston withdrew sullenly to +the North. A triumph in Scotland would have +given him strength to baffle the Ordainers, but he +had little of his father's military skill, the wasted + +<span class="pagenum"><a name="Vol2-Page-2-189"></a>2-189]</span> + +country made it hard to keep an army together, +and after a fruitless campaign he fell back to his +southern realm to meet the Parliament of 1311 +and the "Ordinances" which the twenty-one laid +before it. By this long and important statute +Gaveston was banished, other advisers were driven +from the Council, and the Florentine bankers whose +loans had enabled Edward to hold the baronage at +bay sent out of the realm. The customs duties +imposed by Edward the First were declared to be +illegal. Its administrative provisions showed the +relations which the barons sought to establish between +the new Parliament and the Crown. Parliaments +were to be called every year, and in these +assemblies the king's servants were to be brought, +if need were, to justice. The great officers of state +were to be appointed with the counsel and consent +of the baronage, and to be sworn in Parliament. +The same consent of the barons in Parliament was +to be needful ere the king could declare war or +absent himself from the realm. As the Ordinances +show, the baronage still looked on Parliament +rather as a political organization of the nobles than +as a gathering of the three Estates of the realm. +The lower clergy pass unnoticed; the Commons +are regarded as mere taxpayers whose part was +still confined to the presentation of petitions of +grievances and the grant of money. But even in +this imperfect fashion the Parliament was a real +representation of the country. The barons no + +<span class="pagenum"><a name="Vol2-Page-2-190"></a>2-190]</span> + +longer depended for their force on the rise of some +active leader, or gathered in exceptional assemblies +to wrest reforms from the Crown by threat of war. +Their action was made regular and legal. Even if +the Commons took little part in forming decisions, +their force when formed hung on the assent of the +knights and burgesses to them; and the grant +which alone could purchase from the Crown the +concessions which the Baronage demanded lay +absolutely within the control of the Third Estate. +It was this which made the king's struggles so +fruitless. He assented to the Ordinances, and then +withdrawing to the North recalled Gaveston and +annulled them. But Winchelsey excommunicated +the favourite, and the barons, gathering in arms, +besieged him in Scarborough. His surrender in +May 1312 ended the strife. The "Black Dog" of +Warwick had sworn that the favourite should feel +his teeth; and Gaveston flung himself in vain at +the feet of the Earl of Lancaster, praying for pity +"from his gentle lord." In defiance of the terms +of his capitulation he was beheaded on Blacklow +Hill. +</p> + +<p> +<span class="sidenote">Bannockburn</span> +</p> + +<p> +The king's burst of grief was as fruitless as his +threats of vengeance; a feigned submission of the +conquerors completed the royal humiliation, and +the barons knelt before Edward in Westminster +Hall to receive a pardon which seemed the deathblow +of the royal power. But if Edward was +powerless to conquer the baronage he could still + +<span class="pagenum"><a name="Vol2-Page-2-191"></a>2-191]</span> + +by evading the observance of the Ordinances +throw the whole realm into confusion. The two +years that follow Gaveston's death are among the +darkest in our history. A terrible succession of +famines intensified the suffering which sprang from +the utter absence of all rule as dissension raged +between the barons and the king. At last a +common peril drew both parties together. The +Scots had profited by the English troubles, and +Bruce's "harrying of Buchan" after his defeat of +its Earl, who had joined the English army, fairly +turned the tide of success in his favour. Edinburgh, +Roxburgh, Perth, and most of the Scotch fortresses +fell one by one into King Robert's hands. The +clergy met in council and owned him as their lawful +lord. Gradually the Scotch barons who still +held to the English cause were coerced into submission, +and Bruce found himself strong enough +to invest Stirling, the last and the most important +of the Scotch fortresses which held out for Edward. +Stirling was in fact the key of Scotland, and its +danger roused England out of its civil strife to an +effort for the recovery of its prey. At the close +of 1313 Edward recognized the Ordinances, and a +liberal grant from the Parliament enabled him to +take the field. Lancaster indeed still held aloof +on the ground that the king had not sought the +assent of Parliament to the war, but thirty thousand +men followed Edward to the North, and a host of +wild marauders were summoned from Ireland and + +<span class="pagenum"><a name="Vol2-Page-2-192"></a>2-192]</span> + +Wales. The army which Bruce gathered to oppose +this inroad was formed almost wholly of footmen, +and was stationed to the south of Stirling on a +rising ground flanked by a little brook, the Bannockburn, +which gave its name to the engagement. +The battle took place on the twenty-fourth of June +1314. Again two systems of warfare were brought +face to face as they had been brought at Falkirk, +for Robert like Wallace drew up his forces in +hollow squares or circles of spearmen. The English +were dispirited at the very outset by the failure of +an attempt to relieve Stirling and by the issue of +a single combat between Bruce and Henry de +Bohun, a knight who bore down upon him as he +was riding peacefully along the front of his army. +Robert was mounted on a small hackney and held +only a light battle-axe in his hand, but warding off +his opponent's spear he cleft his skull with so +terrible a blow that the handle of his axe was +shattered in his grasp. At the opening of the +battle the English archers were thrown forward to +rake the Scottish squares, but they were without +support and were easily dispersed by a handful of +horse whom Bruce held in reserve for the purpose. +The body of men-at-arms next flung themselves on +the Scottish front, but their charge was embarrassed +by the narrow space along which the line was +forced to move, and the steady resistance of the +squares soon threw the knighthood into disorder. +"The horses that were stickit," says an exulting + +<span class="pagenum"><a name="Vol2-Page-2-193"></a>2-193]</span> + +Scotch writer, "rushed and reeled right rudely." +In the moment of failure the sight of a body of +camp-followers, whom they mistook for reinforcements +to the enemy, spread panic through the +English host. It broke in a headlong rout. Its +thousands of brilliant horsemen were soon floundering +in pits which guarded the level ground to +Bruce's left, or riding in wild haste for the border. +Few however were fortunate enough to reach it. +Edward himself, with a body of five hundred +knights, succeeded in escaping to Dunbar and the +sea. But the flower of his knighthood fell into +the hands of the victors, while the Irishry and the +footmen were ruthlessly cut down by the country +folk as they fled. For centuries to come the rich +plunder of the English camp left its traces on the +treasure-rolls and the vestment-rolls of castle and +abbey throughout the Lowlands. +</p> + +<p> +<span class="sidenote">Fall of Lancaster</span> +</p> + +<p> +Bannockburn left Bruce the master of Scotland: +but terrible as the blow was England could not +humble herself to relinquish her claim on the +Scottish crown. Edward was eager indeed for a +truce, but with equal firmness Bruce refused all +negotiation while the royal title was withheld from +him and steadily pushed on the recovery of his +southern dominions. His progress was unhindered. +Bannockburn left Edward powerless, and Lancaster +at the head of the Ordainers became supreme. +But it was still impossible to trust the king or to +act with him, and in the dead-lock of both parties + +<span class="pagenum"><a name="Vol2-Page-2-194"></a>2-194]</span> + +the Scots plundered as they would. Their ravages +in the North brought shame on England such as it +had never known. At last Bruce's capture of +Berwick in the spring of 1318 forced the king to +give way. The Ordinances were formally accepted, +an amnesty granted, and a small number of peers +belonging to the barons' party added to the great +officers of state. Had a statesman been at the +head of the baronage the weakness of Edward +might have now been turned to good purpose. +But the character of the Earl of Lancaster seems +to have fallen far beneath the greatness of his +position. Distrustful of his cousin, yet himself incapable +of governing, he stood sullenly aloof from +the royal Council and the royal armies, and Edward +was able to lay his failure in recovering Berwick +during the campaign of 1319 to the Earl's charge. +His influence over the country was sensibly +weakened; and in this weakness the new advisers +on whom the king was leaning saw a hope of +destroying his power. These were a younger and +elder Hugh Le Despenser, son and grandson of the +Justiciar who had fallen beside Earl Simon at +Evesham. Greedy and ambitious as they may +have been, they were able men, and their policy +was of a higher stamp than the wilful defiance of +Gaveston. It lay, if we may gather it from the +faint indications which remain, in a frank recognition +of the power of the three Estates as opposed +to the separate action of the baronage. The rise + +<span class="pagenum"><a name="Vol2-Page-2-195"></a>2-195]</span> + +of the younger Hugh, on whom the king bestowed +the county of Glamorgan with the hand of one of +its coheiresses, a daughter of Earl Gilbert of Gloucester, +was rapid enough to excite general jealousy; +and in 1321 Lancaster found little difficulty in +extorting by force of arms his exile from the kingdom. +But the tide of popular sympathy was already +wavering, and it was turned to the royal +cause by an insult offered to the queen, against +whom Lady Badlesmere closed the doors of Ledes +Castle. The unexpected energy shown by Edward +in avenging this insult gave fresh strength to his +cause. At the opening of 1322 he found himself +strong enough to recall Despenser, and when Lancaster +convoked the baronage to force him again +into exile, the weakness of their party was shown +by some negotiations into which the Earl entered +with the Scots and by his precipitate retreat to +the north on the advance of the royal army. At +Boroughbridge his forces were arrested and dispersed, +and Thomas himself, brought captive before +Edward at Pontefract, was tried and condemned +to death as a traitor. "Have mercy on me, King +of Heaven," cried Lancaster, as, mounted on a grey +pony without a bridle, he was hurried to execution, +"for my earthly king has forsaken me." His +death was followed by that of a number of his +adherents and by the captivity of others; while a +Parliament at York annulled the proceedings +against the Despensers and repealed the Ordinances. +</p> + + + +<span class="pagenum"><a name="Vol2-Page-2-196"></a>2-196]</span> + + +<p> +<span class="sidenote">The +Despensers</span> +</p> + +<p> +It is to this Parliament however, and perhaps to +the victorious confidence of the royalists, that we +owe the famous provision which reveals the policy +of the Despensers, the provision that all laws concerning +"the estate of our Lord the King and his +heirs or for the estate of the realm and the people +shall be treated, accorded, and established in Parliaments +by our Lord the King and by the consent +of the prelates, earls, barons, and commonalty of +the realm according as hath been hitherto accustomed." +It would seem from the tenor of this +remarkable enactment that much of the sudden +revulsion of popular feeling had been owing to the +assumption of all legislative action by the baronage +alone. The same policy was seen in a reissue in +the form of a royal Ordinance of some of the most +beneficial provisions of the Ordinances which had +been formally repealed. But the arrogance of the +Despensers gave new offence; and the utter failure +of a fresh campaign against Scotland again weakened +the Crown. The barbarous forays in which the +borderers under Earl Douglas were wasting Northumberland +woke a general indignation; and a +grant from the Parliament at York enabled Edward +to march with a great army to the North. But +Bruce as of old declined an engagement till the +wasted Lowlands starved the invaders into a +ruinous retreat. The failure forced England in the +spring of 1323 to stoop to a truce for thirteen +years, in the negotiation of which Bruce was suffered + +<span class="pagenum"><a name="Vol2-Page-2-197"></a>2-197]</span> + +to take the royal title. We see in this act +of the Despensers the first of a series of such +attempts by which minister after minister strove +to free the Crown from the bondage under which +the war-pressure laid it to the growing power of +Parliament; but it ended, as these after attempts +ended, only in the ruin of the counsellors who +planned it. The pride of the country had been +roused by the struggle, and the humiliation of such +a truce robbed the Crown of its temporary popularity. +It led the way to the sudden catastrophe +which closed this disastrous reign. +</p> + +<p> +<span class="sidenote">Isabella</span> +</p> + +<p> +In his struggle with the Scots Edward, like his +father, had been hampered not only by internal +divisions but by the harassing intervention of +France. The rising under Bruce had been backed +by French aid as well as by a revival of the old +quarrel over Guienne, and on the accession of +Charles the Fourth in 1322 a demand of homage +for Ponthieu and Gascony called Edward over sea. +But the Despensers dared not let him quit the +realm, and a fresh dispute as to the right of possession +in the Agénois brought about the seizure of the +bulk of Gascony by a sudden attack on the part of +the French. The quarrel verged upon open war, +and to close it Edward's queen, Isabella, a sister of +the French king, undertook in 1325 to revisit her +home and bring about a treaty of peace between +the two countries. Isabella hated the Despensers; +she was alienated from her husband; but hatred + +<span class="pagenum"><a name="Vol2-Page-2-198"></a>2-198]</span> + +and alienation were as yet jealously concealed. At +the close of the year the terms of peace seemed to +be arranged; and though declining to cross the sea, +Edward evaded the difficulty created by the demand +for personal homage by investing his son with the +Duchies of Aquitaine and Gascony, and despatching +him to join his mother at Paris. The boy did +homage to King Charles for the two Duchies, the +question of the Agénois being reserved for legal +decision, and Edward at once recalled his wife and +son to England. Neither threats nor prayers however +could induce either wife or child to return to +his court. Roger Mortimer, the most powerful of +the Marcher barons and a deadly foe to the Despensers, +had taken refuge in France; and his influence +over the queen made her the centre of a +vast conspiracy. With the young Edward in her +hands she was able to procure soldiers from the +Count of Hainault by promising her son's hand to +his daughter; the Italian bankers supplied funds; +and after a year's preparation the Queen set sail in +the autumn of 1326. A secret conspiracy of the +baronage was revealed when the primate and nobles +hurried to her standard on her landing at Orwell. +Deserted by all and repulsed by the citizens of +London whose aid he implored, the king fled +hastily to the west and embarked with the Despensers +for Lundy Island, which Despenser had +fortified as a possible refuge; but contrary winds +flung him again on the Welsh coast, where he fell + +<span class="pagenum"><a name="Vol2-Page-2-199"></a>2-199]</span> + +into the hands of Earl Henry of Lancaster, the +brother of the Earl whom they had slain. The +younger Despenser, who accompanied him, was at +once hung on a gibbet fifty feet high, and the +king placed in ward at Kenilworth till his fate +could be decided by a Parliament summoned for +that purpose at Westminster in January 1327. +</p> + +<p> +<span class="sidenote">Deposition +of Edward</span> +</p> + +<p> +The peers who assembled fearlessly revived the +constitutional usage of the earlier English freedom, +and asserted their right to depose a king who had +proved himself unworthy to rule. Not a voice +was raised in Edward's behalf, and only four prelates +protested when the young Prince was proclaimed +king by acclamation and presented as +their sovereign to the multitudes without. The +revolution took legal form in a bill which charged +the captive monarch with indolence, incapacity, the +loss of Scotland, the violation of his coronation +oath and oppression of the Church and baronage; +and on the approval of this it was resolved that +the reign of Edward of Caernarvon had ceased and +that the crown had passed to his son, Edward of +Windsor. A deputation of the Parliament proceeded +to Kenilworth to procure the assent of the +discrowned king to his own deposition, and Edward +"clad in a plain black gown" bowed quietly to his +fate. Sir William Trussel at once addressed him +in words which better than any other mark the +nature of the step which the Parliament had +taken. "I, William Trussel, proctor of the earls, + +<span class="pagenum"><a name="Vol2-Page-2-200"></a>2-200]</span> + +barons, and others, having for this full and sufficient +power, do render and give back to you, +Edward, once King of England, the homage and +fealty of the persons named in my procuracy; and +acquit and discharge them thereof in the best +manner that law and custom will give. And I +now make protestation in their name that they +will no longer be in your fealty and allegiance, nor +claim to hold anything of you as king, but will +account you hereafter as a private person, without +any manner of royal dignity." A significant act followed +these emphatic words. Sir Thomas Blount, +the steward of the household, broke his staff of +office, a ceremony used only at a king's death, +and declared that all persons engaged in the royal +service were discharged. The act of Blount was +only an omen of the fate which awaited the miserable +king. In the following September he was +murdered in Berkeley Castle. +</p> + +</div> + +<span class="pagenum"><a name="Vol2-Page-2-201"></a>2-201]</span> + +<div class="chapter"> +<div class="head"> +<hr> +<a name="Bk4-Ch2"></a><ul> + +<li> +<a name="id4544333"></a>CHAPTER II</li> +<li> +<a name="id4544338"></a>EDWARD THE THIRD</li> +<li> +<a name="id4544344"></a>1327-1347</li> + +</ul> +</div> + + + +<p> +<span class="sidenote">Estate of the Commons</span> +</p> + +<p> +The deposition of Edward the Second proclaimed +to the world the power which the English Parliament +had gained. In thirty years from their first +assembly at Westminster the Estates had wrested +from the Crown the last relic of arbitrary taxation, +had forced on it new ministers and a new system +of government, had claimed a right of confirming +the choice of its councillors and of punishing their +misconduct, and had established the principle that +redress of grievances precedes a grant of supply. +Nor had the time been less important in the internal +growth of Parliament. Step by step the practical +sense of the Houses themselves completed the +work of Edward by bringing about change after +change in its composition. The very division +into a House of Lords and a House of Commons +formed no part of the original plan of Edward the +First; in the earlier Parliaments each of the four + +<span class="pagenum"><a name="Vol2-Page-2-202"></a>2-202]</span> + +orders of clergy, barons, knights, and burgesses +met, deliberated, and made their grants apart from +each other. This isolation however of the Estates +soon showed signs of breaking down. Though the +clergy held steadily aloof from any real union with +its fellow-orders, the knights of the shire were +drawn by the similarity of their social position into +a close connexion with the lords. They seem in +fact to have been soon admitted by the baronage +to an almost equal position with themselves, +whether as legislators or counsellors of the Crown. +The burgesses on the other hand took little part +at first in Parliamentary proceedings, save in those +which related to the taxation of their class. But +their position was raised by the strifes of the reign +of Edward the Second when their aid was needed +by the baronage in its struggle with the Crown; +and their right to share fully in all legislative +action was asserted in the statute of 1322. From +this moment no proceedings can have been considered +as formally legislative save those conducted +in full Parliament of all the estates. In subjects +of public policy however the barons were still regarded +as the sole advisers of the Crown, though the +knights of the shire were sometimes consulted with +them. But the barons and knighthood were not +fated to be drawn into a single body whose weight +would have given an aristocratic impress to the +constitution. Gradually, through causes with +which we are imperfectly acquainted, the knights + +<span class="pagenum"><a name="Vol2-Page-2-203"></a>2-203]</span> + +of the shire drifted from their older connexion with +the baronage into so close and intimate a union +with the representatives of the towns that at the +opening of the reign of Edward the Third the two +orders are found grouped formally together, under +the name of "The Commons." It is difficult to +overestimate the importance of this change. Had +Parliament remained broken up into its four orders +of clergy, barons, knights, and citizens, its power +would have been neutralized at every great crisis by +the jealousies and difficulty of co-operation among +its component parts. A permanent union of the +knighthood and the baronage on the other hand +would have converted Parliament into the mere +representative of an aristocratic caste, and would +have robbed it of the strength which it has drawn +from its connexion with the great body of the +commercial classes. The new attitude of the +knighthood, their social connexion as landed gentry +with the baronage, their political union with the +burgesses, really welded the three orders into one, +and gave that unity of feeling and action to our +Parliament on which its power has ever since +mainly depended. +</p> + +<p> +<span class="sidenote">Scotch War</span> +</p> + +<p> +The weight of the two Houses was seen in +their settlement of the new government by the +nomination of a Council with Earl Henry of +Lancaster at its head. The Council had at once +to meet fresh difficulties in the North. The truce +so recently made ceased legally with Edward's + +<span class="pagenum"><a name="Vol2-Page-2-204"></a>2-204]</span> + +deposition; and the withdrawal of his royal title +in further offers of peace warned Bruce of the +new temper of the English rulers. Troops +gathered on either side, and the English Council +sought to pave the way for an attack by dividing +Scotland against itself. Edward Balliol, a son of +the former king John, was solemnly received as +a vassal-king of Scotland at the English court. +Robert was disabled by leprosy from taking the +field in person, but the insult roused him to hurl +his marauders again over the border under Douglas +and Sir Thomas Randolph. The Scotch army has +been painted for us by an eye-witness whose +description is embodied in the work of Jehan le +Bel. "It consisted of four thousand men-at-arms, +knights, and esquires, well mounted, besides +twenty thousand men bold and hardy, armed after +the manner of their country, and mounted upon +little hackneys that are never tied up or dressed, +but turned immediately after the day's march to +pasture on the heath or in the fields.... They +bring no carriages with them on account of the +mountains they have to pass in Northumberland, +neither do they carry with them any provisions of +bread or wine, for their habits of sobriety are such +in time of war that they will live for a long time +on flesh half-sodden without bread, and drink the +river water without wine. They have therefore +no occasion for pots or pans, for they dress the +flesh of the cattle in their skins after they have + +<span class="pagenum"><a name="Vol2-Page-2-205"></a>2-205]</span> + +flayed them, and being sure to find plenty of them +in the country which they invade they carry none +with them. Under the flaps of his saddle each +man carries a broad piece of metal, behind him a +little bag of oatmeal: when they have eaten too +much of the sodden flesh and their stomach appears +weak and empty, they set this plate over the fire, +knead the meal with water, and when the plate is +hot put a little of the paste upon it in a thin cake +like a biscuit, which they eat to warm their +stomachs. It is therefore no wonder that they +perform a longer day's march than other soldiers." +Though twenty thousand horsemen and forty +thousand foot marched under their boy-king to +protect the border, the English troops were utterly +helpless against such a foe as this. At one time +the whole army lost its way in the border wastes: +at another all traces of the enemy disappeared, +and an offer of knighthood and a hundred marks +was made to any who could tell where the +Scots were encamped. But when they were +found their position behind the Wear proved +unassailable, and after a bold sally on the English +camp Douglas foiled an attempt at intercepting +him by a clever retreat. The English levies broke +hopelessly up, and a fresh foray into Northumberland +forced the English Court in 1328 to submit +to peace. By the treaty of Northampton which +was solemnly confirmed by Parliament in September +the independence of Scotland was recognized, + +<span class="pagenum"><a name="Vol2-Page-2-206"></a>2-206]</span> + +and Robert Bruce owned as its king. +Edward formally abandoned his claim of feudal +superiority over Scotland; while Bruce promised +to make compensation for the damage done in the +North, to marry his son David to Edward's sister +Joan, and to restore their forfeited estates to +those nobles who had sided with the English +king. +</p> + +<p> +<span class="sidenote">Fall of +Mortimer</span> +</p> + +<p> +But the pride of England had been too much +roused by the struggle with the Scots to bear this +defeat easily, and the first result of the treaty of +Northampton was the overthrow of the government +which concluded it. This result was hastened by +the pride of Roger Mortimer, who was now +created Earl of March, and who had made himself +supreme through his influence over Isabella and +his exclusion of the rest of the nobles from all +practical share in the administration of the realm. +The first efforts to shake Roger's power were +unsuccessful. The Earl of Lancaster stood, like +his brother, at the head of the baronage; the +parliamentary settlement at Edward's accession +had placed him first in the royal Council; and it +was to him that the task of defying Mortimer +naturally fell. At the close of 1328 therefore +Earl Henry formed a league with the Archbishop +of Canterbury and with the young king's uncles, +the Earls of Norfolk and Kent, to bring Mortimer +to account for the peace with Scotland and the +usurpation of the government as well as for the + +<span class="pagenum"><a name="Vol2-Page-2-207"></a>2-207]</span> + +late king's murder, a murder which had been the +work of his private partizans and which had +profoundly shocked the general conscience. But +the young king clave firmly to his mother, the +Earls of Norfolk and Kent deserted to Mortimer, +and powerful as it seemed the league broke up +without result. A feeling of insecurity however +spurred the Earl of March to a bold stroke at his +opponents. The Earl of Kent, who was persuaded +that his brother, Edward the Second, still lived a +prisoner in Corfe Castle, was arrested on a charge +of conspiracy to restore him to the throne, tried +before a Parliament filled with Mortimer's adherents, +and sent to the block. But the death of a +prince of the royal blood roused the young king +to resentment at the greed and arrogance of a +minister who treated Edward himself as little +more than a state-prisoner. A few months after +his uncle's execution the king entered the Council +chamber in Nottingham Castle with a force which +he had introduced through a secret passage in the +rock on which it stands, and arrested Mortimer +with his own hands. A Parliament which was at +once summoned condemned the Earl of March to +a traitor's death, and in November 1330 he was +beheaded at Tyburn, while the queen-mother was +sent for the rest of her life into confinement at +Castle Rising. +</p> + +<p> +<span class="sidenote">Edward and +France</span> +</p> + +<p> +Young as he was, and he had only reached his +eighteenth year, Edward at once assumed the + +<span class="pagenum"><a name="Vol2-Page-2-208"></a>2-208]</span> + +control of affairs. His first care was to restore +good order throughout the country, which under +the late government had fallen into ruin, and to +free his hands by a peace with France for further +enterprises in the North. A formal peace had +been concluded by Isabella after her husband's +fall; but the death of Charles the Fourth soon +brought about new jealousies between the two +courts. The three sons of Philip the Fair had +followed him on the throne in succession, but all +had now died without male issue, and Isabella, as +Philip's daughter, claimed the crown for her son. +The claim in any case was a hard one to make +out. Though her brothers had left no sons, they +had left daughters, and if female succession were +admitted these daughters of Philip's sons would +precede a son of Philip's daughter. Isabella met +this difficulty by a contention that though females +could transmit the right of succession they could +not themselves possess it, and that her son, as the +nearest living male descendant of Philip the Fair, +and born in the lifetime of the king from whom +he claimed, could claim in preference to females +who were related to Philip in as near a degree. +But the bulk of French jurists asserted that only +male succession gave right to the French throne. +On such a theory the right inheritable from Philip +the Fair was exhausted; and the crown passed to +the son of Philip's younger brother, Charles of +Valois, who in fact peacefully mounted the throne + +<span class="pagenum"><a name="Vol2-Page-2-209"></a>2-209]</span> + +as Philip the Sixth. Purely formal as the claim +which Isabella advanced seems to have been, it +revived the irritation between the two courts, and +though Edward's obedience to a summons which +Philip addressed to him to do homage for Aquitaine +brought about an agreement that both +parties should restore the gains they had made +since the last treaty the agreement was never +carried out. Fresh threats of war ended in the +conclusion of a new treaty of peace, but the +question whether liege or simple homage was due +for the duchies remained unsettled when the fall +of Mortimer gave the young king full mastery of +affairs. His action was rapid and decisive. Clad +as a merchant, and with but fifteen horsemen at +his back, Edward suddenly made his appearance +in 1331 at the French court and did homage as +fully as Philip required. The question of the +Agénois remained unsettled, though the English +Parliament insisted that its decision should rest +with negotiation and not with war, but on all +other points a complete peace was made; and the +young king rode back with his hands free for an +attack which he was planning on the North. +</p> + +<p> +<span class="sidenote">New Scotch +War</span> +</p> + +<p> +The provisions of the Treaty of Northampton +for the restitution of estates had never been fully +carried out. Till this was done the English court +held that the rights of feudal superiority over +Scotland which it had yielded in the treaty +remained in force; and at this moment an opening + +<span class="pagenum"><a name="Vol2-Page-2-210"></a>2-210]</span> + +seemed to present itself for again asserting these +rights with success. Fortune seemed at last to +have veered to the English side. The death of +Robert Bruce only a year after the Treaty of +Northampton left the Scottish throne to his son +David, a child of but eight years old. The death +of the king was followed by the loss of Randolph +and Douglas; and the internal difficulties of the +realm broke out in civil strife. To the great +barons on either side the border the late peace +involved serious losses, for many of the Scotch +houses held large estates in England as many of +the English lords held large estates in Scotland, +and although the treaty had provided for their +claims they had in each case been practically set +aside. It is this discontent of the barons at the +new settlement which explains the sudden success +of Edward Balliol in a snatch which he made at +the Scottish throne. Balliol's design was known +at the English court, where he had found shelter for +some years; and Edward, whether sincerely or +no, forbade his barons from joining him and posted +troops on the border to hinder his crossing it. +But Balliol found little difficulty in making his +attack by sea. He sailed from England at the +head of a body of nobles who claimed estates in +the North, landed in August 1332 on the shores of +Fife, and after repulsing with immense loss an +army which attacked him near Perth was crowned +at Scone two months after his landing, while + +<span class="pagenum"><a name="Vol2-Page-2-211"></a>2-211]</span> + +David Bruce fled helplessly to France. Edward +had given no open aid to this enterprise, but the +crisis tempted his ambition, and he demanded and +obtained from Balliol an acknowledgement of the +English suzerainty. The acknowledgement however +was fatal to Balliol himself. Surprised at +Annan by a party of Scottish nobles, their sudden +attack drove him in December over the border +after a reign of but five months; and Berwick, +which he had agreed to surrender to Edward, was +strongly garrisoned against an English attack. +The sudden breakdown of his vassal-king left +Edward face to face with a new Scotch war. The +Parliament which he summoned to advise on the +enforcement of his claim showed no wish to plunge +again into the contest and met him only with +evasions and delays. But Edward had gone too +far to withdraw. In March 1333 he appeared +before Berwick, and besieged the town. A Scotch +army under the regent, Sir Archibald Douglas, +brother to the famous Sir James, advanced to its +relief in July and attacked a covering force which +was encamped on the strong position of Halidon +Hill. The English bowmen however vindicated +the fame they had first won at Falkirk and were +soon to crown in the victory of Crécy. The +Scotch only struggled through the marsh which +covered the English front to be riddled with a +storm of arrows and to break in utter rout. The +battle decided the fate of Berwick. From that + +<span class="pagenum"><a name="Vol2-Page-2-212"></a>2-212]</span> + +time the town has remained English territory. It +was in fact the one part of Edward's conquests +which was preserved in the end by the English +crown. But fragment as it was, it was always +viewed legally as representing the realm of which it +once formed a part. As Scotland, it had its +chancellor, chamberlain, and other officers of State: +and the peculiar heading of Acts of Parliament +enacted for England "and the town of Berwick-upon-Tweed" +still preserves the memory of its +peculiar position. But the victory did more than +give Berwick to England. The defeat of Douglas +was followed by the submission of a large part of +the Scotch nobles, by the flight of the boy-king +David, and by the return of Balliol unopposed to +the throne. Edward exacted a heavy price for +his aid. All Scotland south of the Firth of Forth +was ceded to England, and Balliol did homage as +vassal-king for the rest. +</p> + +<p> +<span class="sidenote">Scotland +freed</span> +</p> + +<p> +It was at the moment of this submission that +the young king reached the climax of his success. +A king at fourteen, a father at seventeen, he had +carried out at eighteen a political revolution in +the overthrow of Mortimer, and restored at +twenty-two the ruined work of his grandfather. +The northern frontier was carried to its old line +under the Northumbrian kings. His kingdom +within was peaceful and orderly; and the strife +with France seemed at an end. During the next +three years Edward persisted in the line of policy + +<span class="pagenum"><a name="Vol2-Page-2-213"></a>2-213]</span> + +he had adopted, retaining his hold over Southern +Scotland, aiding his sub-king Balliol in campaign +after campaign against the despairing efforts of +the nobles who still adhered to the house of +Bruce, a party who were now headed by Robert +the Steward of Scotland and by Earl Randolph +of Moray. His perseverance was all but crowned +with success, when Scotland was again saved by +the intervention of France. The successes of +Edward roused anew the jealousy of the French +court. David Bruce found a refuge with Philip; +French ships appeared off the Scotch coast and +brought aid to the patriot nobles; and the old +legal questions about the Agénois and Aquitaine +were mooted afresh by the French council. For +a time Edward staved off the contest by repeated +embassies; but his refusal to accept Philip as a +mediator between England and the Scots stirred +France to threats of war. In 1335 fleets gathered +on its coast; descents were made on the English +shores; and troops and galleys were hired in +Italy and the north for an invasion of England. +The mere threat of war saved Scotland. Edward's +forces there were drawn to the south to meet the +looked-for attack from across the Channel; and +the patriot party freed from their pressure at +once drew together again. The actual declaration +of war against France at the close of 1337 was +the knell of Balliol's greatness; he found himself +without an adherent and withdrew two years + +<span class="pagenum"><a name="Vol2-Page-2-214"></a>2-214]</span> + +later to the court of Edward, while David returned +to his kingdom in 1342 and won back the +chief fastnesses of the Lowlands. From that +moment the freedom of Scotland was secured. +From a war of conquest and patriotic resistance +the struggle died into a petty strife between two +angry neighbours, which became a mere episode +in the larger contest which it had stirred between +England and France. +</p> + +<p> +<span class="sidenote">The +Hundred +Years War</span> +</p> + +<p> +Whether in its national or in its European +bearings it is difficult to overestimate the importance +of the contest which was now to open +between these two nations. To England it +brought a social, a religious, and in the end +a political revolution. The Peasant Revolt, +Lollardry, and the New Monarchy were direct +issues of the Hundred Years War. With it +began the military renown of England; with it +opened her struggle for the mastery of the seas. +The pride begotten by great victories and a +sudden revelation of warlike prowess roused the +country not only to a new ambition, a new +resolve to assert itself as a European power, but +to a repudiation of the claims of the Papacy and +an assertion of the ecclesiastical independence both +of Church and Crown which paved the way for +and gave its ultimate form to the English Reformation. +The peculiar shape which English +warfare assumed, the triumph of the yeoman and +archer over noble and knight, gave new force to + +<span class="pagenum"><a name="Vol2-Page-2-215"></a>2-215]</span> + +the political advance of the Commons. On the +other hand the misery of the war produced the +first great open feud between labour and capital. +The glory of Crécy or Poitiers was dearly bought +by the upgrowth of English pauperism. The warlike +temper nursed on foreign fields begot at +home a new turbulence and scorn of law, woke +a new feudal spirit in the baronage, and sowed in +the revolution which placed a new house on the +throne the seeds of that fatal strife over the +succession which troubled England to the days +of Elizabeth. Nor was the contest of less import +in the history of France. If it struck her for +the moment from her height of pride, it raised +her in the end to the front rank among the states +of Europe. It carried her boundaries to the +Rhone and the Pyrenees. It wrecked alike the +feudal power of her <i>noblesse</i> and the hopes of +constitutional liberty which might have sprung +from the emancipation of the peasant or the +action of the burgher. It founded a royal +despotism which reached its height in Richelieu +and finally plunged France into the gulf of the +Revolution. +</p> + +<p> +<span class="sidenote">The Imperial +Alliance</span> +</p> + +<p> +Of these mighty issues little could be foreseen +at the moment when Philip and Edward declared +war. But from the very first the war took +European dimensions. The young king saw +clearly the greater strength of France. The +weakness of the Empire, the captivity of the + +<span class="pagenum"><a name="Vol2-Page-2-216"></a>2-216]</span> + +Papacy at Avignon, left her without a rival +among European powers. The French chivalry +was the envy of the world, and its military fame +had just been heightened by a victory over the +Flemish communes at Cassel. In numbers, in +wealth, the French people far surpassed their +neighbours over the Channel. England can +hardly have counted more than four millions of +inhabitants, France boasted of twenty. The +clinging of our kings to their foreign dominions +is explained by the fact that their subjects in +Gascony, Aquitaine, and Poitou must have +equalled in number their subjects in England. +There was the same disproportion in the wealth +of the two countries and, as men held then, in +their military resources. Edward could bring +only eight thousand men-at-arms to the field. +Philip, while a third of his force was busy elsewhere, +could appear at the head of forty thousand. +Of the revolution in warfare which was to reverse +this superiority, to make the footman rather than +the horseman the strength of an army, the world +and even the English king, in spite of Falkirk +and Halidon, as yet recked little. Edward's +whole energy was bent on meeting the strength +of France by a coalition of powers against her, +and his plans were helped by the dread which +the great feudatories of the empire who lay +nearest to him, the Duke of Brabant, the Counts +of Hainault and Gelders, the Markgrave of + +<span class="pagenum"><a name="Vol2-Page-2-217"></a>2-217]</span> + +Juliers, felt of French annexation. They listened +willingly enough to his offers. Sixty thousand +crowns purchased the alliance of Brabant. Lesser +subsidies bought that of the two counts and the +Markgrave. The king's work was helped indeed +by his domestic relations. The Count of Hainault +was Edward's father-in-law; he was also the +father-in-law of the Count of Gelders. But the +marriage of a third of the Count's daughters +brought the English king a more important +ally. She was wedded to the Emperor, Lewis of +Bavaria, and the connexion that thus existed +between the English and Imperial Courts facilitated +the negotiations which ended in a formal +alliance. +</p> + +<p> +<span class="sidenote">Its Relation +to the +Papacy</span> +</p> + +<p> +But the league had a more solid ground. The +Emperor, like Edward, had his strife with France. +His strife sprang from the new position of the +Papacy. The removal of the Popes to Avignon +which followed on the quarrel of Boniface the +Eighth with Philip le Bel and the subjection to +the French court which resulted from it affected +the whole state of European politics. In the +ever-recurring contest between the Papacy and +the Empire France had of old been the lieutenant +of the Roman See. But with the settlement at +Avignon the relation changed, and the Pope +became the lieutenant of France. Instead of the +Papacy using the French kings in its war of ideas +against the Empire the French kings used the + +<span class="pagenum"><a name="Vol2-Page-2-218"></a>2-218]</span> + +Papacy as an instrument in their political rivalry +with the Emperors. But if the position of the +Pope drew Lewis to the side of England, it had +much to do with drawing Edward to the side of +Lewis. It was this that made the alliance, fruitless +as it proved in a military sense, so memorable +in its religious results. Hitherto England had +been mainly on the side of the Popes in their +strife against the Emperors. Now that the Pope +had become a tool in the hands of a power which +was to be its great enemy, the country was driven +to close alliances with the Empire and to an evergrowing +alienation from the Roman See. In +Scotch affairs the hostility of the Popes had been +steady and vexatious ever since Edward the +First's time, and from the moment that this fresh +struggle commenced they again showed their +French partizanship. When Lewis made a last +appeal for peace, Philip of Valois made Benedict +XII. lay down as a condition that the Emperor +should form no alliance with an enemy of France. +The quarrel of both England and Germany with +the Papacy at once grew ripe. The German Diet +met to declare that the Imperial power came from +God alone, and that the choice of an Emperor +needed no Papal confirmation, while Benedict +replied by a formal excommunication of Lewis. +England on the other hand entered on a religious +revolution when she stood hand in hand with an +excommunicated power. It was significant that + +<span class="pagenum"><a name="Vol2-Page-2-219"></a>2-219]</span> + +though worship ceased in Flanders on the Pope's +interdict, the English priests who were brought +over set the interdict at nought. +</p> + +<p> +<span class="sidenote">Failure of +the Alliance</span> +</p> + +<p> +The negotiation of this alliance occupied the +whole of 1337; it ended in a promise of the +Emperor on payment of 3000 gold florins to +furnish two thousand men-at-arms. In the opening +of 1338 an attack of Philip on the Agénois +forced Edward into open war. His profuse expenditure +however brought little fruit. Though +Edward crossed to Antwerp in the summer, the +year was spent in negotiations with the princes of +the Lower Rhine and in an interview with the +Emperor at Coblentz, where Lewis appointed him +Vicar-General of the Emperor for all territories +on the left bank of the Rhine. The occupation +of Cambray, an Imperial fief, by the French king +gave a formal ground for calling the princes of +this district to Edward's standard. But already +the great alliance showed signs of yielding. +Edward, uneasy at his connexion with an +Emperor under the ban of the Church and +harassed by vehement remonstrances from the +Pope, entered again into negotiations with France +in the winter of 1338; and Lewis, alarmed in +his turn, listened to fresh overtures from Benedict, +who held out vague hopes of reconciliation while +he threatened a renewed excommunication if +Lewis persisted in invading France. The non-arrival +of the English subsidy decided the + +<span class="pagenum"><a name="Vol2-Page-2-220"></a>2-220]</span> + +Emperor to take no personal part in the war, and +the attitude of Lewis told on the temper of +Edward's German allies. Though all joined him +in the summer of 1339 on his formal summons of +them as Vicar-General of the Empire, and his +army when it appeared before Cambray numbered +forty thousand men, their ardour cooled as the +town held out. Philip approached it from the +south, and on Edward's announcing his resolve +to cross the river and attack him he was at once +deserted by the two border princes who had most +to lose from a contest with France, the Counts of +Hainault and Namur. But the king was still +full of hope. He pushed forward to the country +round St. Quentin between the head waters of the +Somme and the Oise with the purpose of forcing +a decisive engagement. But he found Philip +strongly encamped, and declaring their supplies +exhausted his allies at once called for a retreat. +It was in vain that Edward moved slowly for a +week along the French border. Philip's position +was too strongly guarded by marshes and entrenchments +to be attacked, and at last the allies would +stay no longer. At the news that the French +king had withdrawn to the south the whole army +in turn fell back upon Brussels. +</p> + +<p> +<span class="sidenote">England and +the Papacy</span> +</p> + +<p> +The failure of the campaign dispelled the hopes +which Edward had drawn from his alliance with +the Empire. With the exhaustion of his subsidies +the princes of the Low Countries became inactive. + +<span class="pagenum"><a name="Vol2-Page-2-221"></a>2-221]</span> + +The Duke of Brabant became cooler in his friendship. +The Emperor himself, still looking to an +accommodation with the Pope and justly jealous +of Edward's own intrigues at Avignon, wavered +and at last fell away. But though the alliance +ended in disappointment it had given a new impulse +to the grudge against the Papacy which +began with its extortions in the reign of Henry +the Third. The hold of Rome on the loyalty of +England was sensibly weakening. Their transfer +from the Eternal City to Avignon robbed the +Popes of half the awe which they had inspired +among Englishmen. Not only did it bring them +nearer and more into the light of common day, +but it dwarfed them into mere agents of French +policy. The old bitterness at their exactions was +revived by the greed to which they were driven +through their costly efforts to impose a French +and Papal Emperor on Germany as well as to +secure themselves in their new capital on the +Rhone. The mighty building, half fortress, half +palace, which still awes the traveller at Avignon +has played its part in our history. Its erection +was to the rise of Lollardry what the erection of +St. Peter's was to the rise of Lutheranism. Its +massive walls, its stately chapel, its chambers +glowing with the frescoes of Simone Memmi, the +garden which covered its roof with a strange +verdure, called year by year for fresh supplies of +gold; and for this as for the wider and costlier + +<span class="pagenum"><a name="Vol2-Page-2-222"></a>2-222]</span> + +schemes of Papal policy gold could be got only +by pressing harder and harder on the national +churches the worst claims of the Papal court, by +demands of first-fruits and annates from rectory +and bishoprick, by pretensions to the right of +bestowing all benefices which were in ecclesiastical +patronage and by the sale of these presentations, +by the direct taxation of the clergy, by the intrusion +of foreign priests into English livings, by +opening a mart for the disposal of pardons, dispensations, +and indulgences, and by encouraging +appeals from every ecclesiastical jurisdiction to +the Papal court. No grievance was more bitterly +felt than this grievance of appeals. Cases of the +most trifling importance were called for decision +out of the realm to a tribunal whose delays were +proverbial and whose fees were enormous. The +envoy of an Oxford College which sought only a +formal licence to turn a vicarage into a rectory +had not only to bear the expense and toil of a +journey which then occupied some eighteen days +but was kept dangling at Avignon for three-and-twenty +weeks. Humiliating and vexatious however +as these appeals were, they were but one +among the means of extortion which the Papal +court multiplied as its needs grew greater. The +protest of a later Parliament, exaggerated as its +statements no doubt are, shows the extent of the +national irritation, if not of the grievances which +produced it. It asserted that the taxes levied by + +<span class="pagenum"><a name="Vol2-Page-2-223"></a>2-223]</span> + +the Pope amounted to five times the amount of +those levied by the king; that by reservations +during the life of actual holders the Pope disposed +of the same bishoprick four or five times over, +receiving each time the first-fruits. "The brokers +of the sinful city of Rome promote for money +unlearned and unworthy caitiffs to benefices to +the value of a thousand marks, while the poor +and learned hardly obtain one of twenty. So +decays sound learning. They present aliens who +neither see nor care to see their parishioners, +despise God's services, convey away the treasure +of the realm, and are worse than Jews or Saracens. +The Pope's revenue from England alone +is larger than that of any prince in Christendom. +God gave his sheep to be pastured, not to be +shaven and shorn." At the close of this reign +indeed the deaneries of Lichfield, Salisbury, and +York, the archdeaconry of Canterbury, which +was reputed the wealthiest English benefice, together +with a host of prebends and preferments, +were held by Italian cardinals and priests, while +the Pope's collector from his office in London +sent twenty thousand marks a year to the Papal +treasury. +</p> + +<p> +<span class="sidenote">Protest +of the +Parliament</span> +</p> + +<p> +But the greed of the Popes was no new +grievance, though the increase of these exactions +since the removal to Avignon gave it a new force. +What alienated England most was their connexion +with and dependence on France. From the + +<span class="pagenum"><a name="Vol2-Page-2-224"></a>2-224]</span> + +first outset of the troubles in the North their +attitude had been one of hostility to the English +projects. France was too useful a supporter of +the Papal court to find much difficulty in inducing +it to aid in hampering the growth of English +greatness. Boniface the Eighth released Balliol +from his oath of fealty, and forbade Edward to +attack Scotland on the ground that it was a fief +of the Roman See. His intervention was met +by a solemn and emphatic protest from the English +Parliament; but it none the less formed a +terrible obstacle in Edward's way. The obstacle +was at last removed by the quarrel of Boniface +with Philip the Fair; but the end of this quarrel +only threw the Papacy more completely into the +hands of France. Though Avignon remained imperial +soil, the removal of the Popes to this city +on the verge of their dominions made them mere +tools of the French kings. Much no doubt of +the endless negotiation which the Papal court +carried on with Edward the Third in his strife +with Philip of Valois was an honest struggle for +peace. But to England it seemed the mere interference +of a dependant on behalf of "our enemy +of France." The people scorned a "French +Pope," and threatened Papal legates with stoning +when they landed on English shores. The alliance +of Edward with an excommunicated Emperor, +the bold defiance with which English priests said +mass in Flanders when an interdict reduced the + +<span class="pagenum"><a name="Vol2-Page-2-225"></a>2-225]</span> + +Flemish priests to silence, were significant tokens +of the new attitude which England was taking up +in the face of Popes who were leagued with its +enemy. The old quarrel over ecclesiastical wrongs +was renewed in a formal and decisive way. In +1343 the Commons petitioned for the redress of +the grievance of Papal appointments to vacant +livings in despite of the rights of patrons or the +Crown; and Edward formally complained to the +Pope of his appointing "foreigners, most of them +suspicious persons, who do not reside on their +benefices, who do not know the faces of the flocks +entrusted to them, who do not understand their +language, but, neglecting the cure of souls, seek +as hirelings only their worldly hire." In yet +sharper words the king rebuked the Papal greed. +"The successor of the Apostles was set over the +Lord's sheep to feed and not to shear them." +The Parliament declared "that they neither could +nor would tolerate such things any longer"; and +the general irritation moved slowly towards those +statutes of Provisors and Praemunire which +heralded the policy of Henry the Eighth. +</p> + +<p> +<span class="sidenote">Flanders</span> +</p> + +<p> +But for the moment the strife with the Papacy +was set aside in the efforts which were needed for +a new struggle with France. The campaign of +1339 had not only ended in failure, it had dispelled +the trust of Edward in an Imperial alliance. +But as this hope faded away a fresh hope +dawned on the king from another quarter. + +<span class="pagenum"><a name="Vol2-Page-2-226"></a>2-226]</span> + +Flanders, still bleeding from the defeat of its +burghers by the French knighthood, was his +natural ally. England was the great wool-producing +country of the west, but few woollen +fabrics were woven in England. The number of +weavers' gilds shows that the trade was gradually +extending, and at the very outset of his reign +Edward had taken steps for its encouragement. +He invited Flemish weavers to settle in his +country, and took the new immigrants, who +chose the eastern counties for the seat of their +trade, under his royal protection. But English +manufactures were still in their infancy and nine-tenths +of the English wool went to the looms of +Bruges or of Ghent. We may see the rapid +growth of this export trade in the fact that the +king received in a single year more than £30,000 +from duties levied on wool alone. The woolsack +which forms the Chancellor's seat in the House of +Lords is said to witness to the importance which +the government attached to this new source of +wealth. A stoppage of this export threw half +the population of the great Flemish towns out of +work, and the irritation caused in Flanders by the +interruption which this trade sustained through +the piracies that Philip's ships were carrying on +in the Channel showed how effective the threat +of such a stoppage would be in securing their +alliance. Nor was this the only ground for +hoping for aid from the Flemish towns. Their + +<span class="pagenum"><a name="Vol2-Page-2-227"></a>2-227]</span> + +democratic spirit jostled roughly with the feudalism +of France. If their counts clung to the +French monarchy, the towns themselves, proud +of their immense population, their thriving industry, +their vast wealth, drew more and more +to independence. Jacques van Arteveldt, a great +brewer of Ghent, wielded the chief influence in +their councils, and his aim was to build up a confederacy +which might hold France in check along +her northern border. +</p> + +<p> +<span class="sidenote">The Flemish +Alliance</span> +</p> + +<p> +His plans had as yet brought no help from the +Flemish towns, but at the close of 1339 they set +aside their neutrality for open aid. The great +plan of Federation which Van Arteveldt had been +devising as a check on the aggression of France +was carried out in a treaty concluded between +Edward, the Duke of Brabant, the cities of +Brussels, Antwerp, Louvain, Ghent, Bruges, Ypres, +and seven others. By this remarkable treaty it +was provided that war should be begun and ended +only by mutual consent, free commerce be encouraged +between Flanders and Brabant, and no +change made in their commercial arrangements +save with the consent of the whole league. By +a subsequent treaty the Flemish towns owned +Edward as King of France, and declared war +against Philip of Valois. But their voice was +decisive on the course of the campaign which +opened in 1340. As Philip held the Upper +Scheldt by the occupation of Cambray, so he held + +<span class="pagenum"><a name="Vol2-Page-2-228"></a>2-228]</span> + +the Lower Scheldt by that of Tournay, a fortress +which broke the line of commerce between +Flanders and Brabant. It was a condition of the +Flemish alliance therefore that the war should +open with the capture of Tournay. It was only +at the cost of a fight however that Edward could +now cross the Channel to undertake the siege. +France was as superior in force at sea as on land; +and a fleet of two hundred vessels gathered at +Sluys to intercept him. But the fine seamanship +of the English sailors justified the courage of their +king in attacking this fleet with far smaller +forces; the French ships were utterly destroyed +and twenty thousand Frenchmen slain in the encounter. +It was with the lustre of this great +victory about him that Edward marched upon +Tournay. Its siege however proved as fruitless as +that of Cambray in the preceding year, and after +two months of investment his vast army of one +hundred thousand men broke up without either +capturing the town or bringing Philip when he +approached it to an engagement. Want of money +forced Edward to a truce for a year, and he +returned beggared and embittered to England. +</p> + +<p> +<span class="sidenote">Edward's +distress</span> +</p> + +<p> +He had been worsted in war as in diplomacy. +One naval victory alone redeemed years of failure +and expense. Guienne was all but lost, England +was suffering from the terrible taxation, from the +ruin of commerce, from the ravages of her coast. +Five years of constant reverses were hard blows + +<span class="pagenum"><a name="Vol2-Page-2-229"></a>2-229]</span> + +for a king of twenty-eight who had been glorious +and successful at twenty-three. His financial +difficulties indeed were enormous. It was in vain +that, availing himself of an Act which forbade the +exportation of wool "till by the King and his +Council it is otherwise provided," he turned for +the time the wool-trade into a royal monopoly +and became the sole wool exporter, buying at £3 +and selling at £20 the sack. The campaign of +1339 brought with it a crushing debt: that of +1340 proved yet more costly. Edward attributed +his failure to the slackness of his ministers in +sending money and supplies, and this to their +silent opposition to the war. But wroth as he +was on his return, a short struggle between the +ministers and the king ended in a reconciliation, +and preparations for renewed hostilities went on. +Abroad indeed nothing could be done. The +Emperor finally withdrew from Edward's friendship. +A new Pope, Clement the Sixth, proved +even more French in sentiment than his predecessor. +Flanders alone held true of all England's +foreign allies. Edward was powerless to attack +Philip in the realm he claimed for his own; what +strength he could gather was needed to prevent +the utter ruin of the English cause in Scotland on +the return of David Bruce. Edward's soldiers +had been driven from the open country and confined +to the fortresses of the Lowlands. Even +these were at last reft away. Perth was taken by + +<span class="pagenum"><a name="Vol2-Page-2-230"></a>2-230]</span> + +siege, and the king was too late to prevent the +surrender of Stirling. Edinburgh was captured +by a stratagem. Only Roxburgh and Berwick +were saved by a truce which Edward was driven +to conclude with the Scots. +</p> + +<p> +<span class="sidenote">Progress of +Parliament</span> +</p> + +<p> +But with the difficulties of the Crown the +weight of the two Houses made itself more and +more sensibly felt. The almost incessant warfare +which had gone on since the accession of Edward +the Third consolidated and developed the power +which they had gained from the dissensions of +his father's reign. The need of continual grants +brought about an assembly of Parliament year by +year, and the subsidies that were accorded to the +king showed the potency of the financial engine +which the Crown could now bring into play. In +a single year the Parliament granted twenty +thousand sacks, or half the wool of the realm. +Two years later the Commons voted an aid of +thirty thousand sacks. In 1339 the barons +granted the tenth sheep and fleece and lamb. +The clergy granted two tenths in one year, and a +tenth for three years in the next. But with each +supply some step was made to greater political +influence. In his earlier years Edward showed no +jealousy of the Parliament. His policy was to +make the struggle with France a national one by +winning for it the sympathy of the people at +large; and with this view he not only published +in the County Courts the efforts he had made for + +<span class="pagenum"><a name="Vol2-Page-2-231"></a>2-231]</span> + +peace, but appealed again and again for the sanction +and advice of Parliament in his enterprise. +In 1331 he asked the Estates whether they would +prefer negotiation or war: in 1338 he declared +that his expedition to Flanders was made by the +assent of the Lords and at the prayer of the +Commons. The part of the last in public affairs +grew greater in spite of their own efforts to +remain obscure. From the opening of the reign a +crowd of enactments for the regulation of trade, +whether wise or unwise, shows the influence of +the burgesses. But the final division of Parliament +into two Houses, a change which was completed +by 1341, necessarily increased the weight +of the Commons. The humble trader who shrank +from counselling the Crown in great matters of +policy gathered courage as he found himself +sitting side by side with the knights of the shire. +It was at the moment when this great change was +being brought about that the disasters of the war +spurred the Parliament to greater activity. The +enormous grants of 1340 were bought by the +king's assent to statutes which provided remedies +for grievances of which the Commons complained. +The most important of these put an end to the +attempts which Edward had made like his grandfather +to deal with the merchant class apart from +the Houses. No charge or aid was henceforth +to be made save by the common assent of the +Estates assembled in Parliament. The progress + +<span class="pagenum"><a name="Vol2-Page-2-232"></a>2-232]</span> + +of the next year was yet more important. The +strife of the king with his ministers, the foremost +of whom was Archbishop Stratford, ended in the +Primate's refusal to make answer to the royal +charges save in full Parliament, and in the assent +of the king to a resolution of the Lords that none +of their number, whether ministers of the Crown +or no, should be brought to trial elsewhere than +before his peers. The Commons demanded and +obtained the appointment of commissioners elected +in Parliament to audit the grants already made. +Finally it was enacted that at each Parliament the +ministers should hold themselves accountable for +all grievances; that on any vacancy the king +should take counsel with his lords as to the choice +of the new minister; and that, when chosen, each +minister should be sworn in Parliament. +</p> + +<p> +<span class="sidenote">Close of the +truce</span> +</p> + +<p> +At the moment which we have reached therefore +the position of the Parliament had become +far more important than at Edward's accession. +Its form was settled. The third estate had gained +a fuller parliamentary power. The principle of +ministerial responsibility to the Houses had been +established by formal statute. But the jealousy +of Edward was at last completely roused, and +from this moment he looked on the new power as +a rival to his own. The Parliament of 1341 had +no sooner broken up than he revoked by Letters +Patent the statutes it had passed as done in prejudice +of his prerogative and only assented to for + +<span class="pagenum"><a name="Vol2-Page-2-233"></a>2-233]</span> + +the time to prevent worse confusion. The regular +assembly of the estates was suddenly interrupted, +and two years passed without a Parliament. It +was only the continual presence of war which +from this time drove Edward to summon the +Houses at all. Though the truce still held good +between England and France a quarrel of succession +to the Duchy of Britanny which broke out in +1341 and called Philip to the support of one +claimant, his cousin Charles of Blois, and Edward +to the support of a rival claimant, John of Montfort, +dragged on year after year. In Flanders +things went ill for the English cause. The dissensions +between the great and the smaller towns, +and in the greater towns themselves between the +weavers and fullers, dissensions which had taxed +the genius of Van Arteveldt through the nine +years of his wonderful rule, broke out in 1345 +into a revolt at Ghent in which the great statesman +was slain. With him fell a design for the +deposition of the Count of Flanders and the reception +of the Prince of Wales in his stead which he +was ardently pressing, and whose political results +might have been immense. Deputies were at +once sent to England to excuse Van Arteveldt's +murder and to promise loyalty to Edward; but +the king's difficulties had now reached their +height. His loans from the Florentine bankers +amounted to half a million. His claim on the +French crown found not a single adherent save + +<span class="pagenum"><a name="Vol2-Page-2-234"></a>2-234]</span> + +among the burghers of the Flemish towns. The +overtures which he made for peace were contemptuously +rejected, and the expiration of the +truce in 1345 found him again face to face with +France. +</p> + +<p> +<span class="sidenote">Edward marches on Paris</span> +</p> + +<p> +But it was perhaps this breakdown of all +foreign hope that contributed to Edward's success +in the fresh outbreak of war. The war opened in +Guienne, and Henry of Lancaster, who was now +known as the Earl of Derby, and who with the +Hainaulter Sir Walter Maunay took the command +in that quarter, at once showed the abilities of a +great general. The course of the Garonne was +cleared by his capture of La Réole and Aiguillon, +that of the Dordogne by the reduction of Bergerac, +and a way opened for the reconquest of Poitou by +the capture of Angoulême. These unexpected +successes roused Philip to strenuous efforts, and a +hundred thousand men gathered under his son, +John, Duke of Normandy, for the subjugation +of the South. Angoulême was won back, and +Aiguillon besieged when Edward sailed to the aid +of his hard-pressed lieutenant. It was with an +army of thirty thousand men, half English, half +Irish and Welsh, that he commenced a march +which was to change the whole face of the war. +His aim was simple. Flanders was still true to +Edward's cause, and while Derby was pressing on +in the south a Flemish army besieged Bouvines +and threatened France from the north. The king + +<span class="pagenum"><a name="Vol2-Page-2-235"></a>2-235]</span> + +had at first proposed to land in Guienne and +relieve the forces in the south; but suddenly +changing his design he disembarked at La Hogue +and advanced through Normandy. By this skilful +movement Edward not only relieved Derby +but threatened Paris, and left himself able to +co-operate with either his own army in the south +or the Flemings in the north. Normandy was +totally without defence, and after the sack of +Caen, which was then one of the wealthiest towns +in France, Edward marched upon the Seine. His +march threatened Rouen and Paris, and its strategical +value was seen by the sudden panic of the +French king. Philip was wholly taken by surprise. +He attempted to arrest Edward's march +by an offer to restore the Duchy of Aquitaine as +Edward the Second had held it, but the offer was +fruitless. Philip was forced to call his son to the +rescue. John at once raised the siege of Aiguillon, +and the French army moved rapidly to the north, +its withdrawal enabling Derby to capture Poitiers +and make himself thorough master of the south. +But John was too distant from Paris for his forces +to avail Philip in his emergency, for Edward, +finding the bridges on the Lower Seine broken, +pushed straight on Paris, rebuilt the bridge of +Poissy, and threatened the capital. +</p> + +<p> +<span class="sidenote">Crécy</span> +</p> + +<p> +At this crisis however France found an unexpected +help in a body of German knights. The +long strife between Lewis of Bavaria and the + +<span class="pagenum"><a name="Vol2-Page-2-236"></a>2-236]</span> + +Papacy had ended at last in Clement's carrying +out his sentence of deposition by the nomination +and coronation as emperor of Charles of Luxemburg, +a son of King John of Bohemia, the well-known +Charles IV. of the Golden Bull. But against this +Papal assumption of a right to bestow the German +Crown Germany rose as one man. Not a town +opened its gates to the Papal claimant, and driven +to seek help and refuge from Philip of Valois he +found himself at this moment on the eastern +frontier of France with his father and 500 knights. +Hurrying to Paris this German force formed the +nucleus of an army which assembled at St. Denys; +and which was soon reinforced by 15,000 Genoese +cross-bowmen who had been hired from among the +soldiers of the Lord of Monaco on the sunny Riviera +and arrived at this hour of need. With this host +rapidly gathering in his front Edward abandoned +his march on Paris, which had already served its +purpose in relieving Derby, and threw himself +across the Seine to carry out the second part of his +programme by a junction with the Flemings at +Gravelines and a campaign in the north. But the +rivers in his path were carefully guarded, and it +was only by surprising the ford of Blanche-Taque +on the Somme that the king escaped the necessity +of surrendering to the vast host which was now +hastening in pursuit. His communications however +were no sooner secured than he halted on the +twenty-sixth of August at the little village of + +<span class="pagenum"><a name="Vol2-Page-2-237"></a>2-237]</span> + +Crécy in Ponthieu and resolved to give battle. +Half of his army, which had been greatly reduced +in strength by his rapid marches, consisted of light-armed +footmen from Ireland and Wales; the bulk +of the remainder was composed of English bowmen. +The king ordered his men-at-arms to dismount, +and drew up his forces on a low rise sloping gently +to the south-east, with a deep ditch covering its +front, and its flanks protected by woods and a little +brook. From a windmill on the summit of this +rise Edward could overlook the whole field of battle. +Immediately beneath him lay his reserve, while at +the base of the slope was placed the main body of +the army in two divisions, that to the right commanded +by the young Prince of Wales, Edward +"the Black Prince," as he was called, that to the +left by the Earl of Northampton. A small ditch +protected the English front, and behind it the +bowmen were drawn up "in the form of a harrow" +with small bombards between them "which with +fire threw little iron balls to frighten the horses," +the first instance known of the use of artillery in +field-warfare. +</p> + +<p> +The halt of the English army took Philip by +surprise, and he attempted for a time to check the +advance of his army. But the attempt was fruitless +and the disorderly host rolled on to the English +front. The sight of his enemies indeed stirred +Philip's own blood to fury, "for he hated them." +The fight began at vespers. The Genoese cross-bowmen + +<span class="pagenum"><a name="Vol2-Page-2-238"></a>2-238]</span> + +were ordered to open the attack, but the +men were weary with their march, a sudden storm +wetted and rendered useless their bowstrings, and +the loud shouts with which they leapt forward to +the encounter were met with dogged silence in the +English ranks. Their first arrow-flight however +brought a terrible reply. So rapid was the English +shot "that it seemed as if it snowed." "Kill me +these scoundrels," shouted Philip, as the Genoese +fell back; and his men-at-arms plunged butchering +into their broken ranks while the Counts of Aleniçon +and Flanders at the head of the French knighthood +fell hotly on the Prince's line. For an instant his +small force seemed lost, and he called his father to +support him. But Edward refused to send him aid. +"Is he dead, or unhorsed, or so wounded that he +cannot help himself?" he asked the envoy. "No, +sir," was the reply, "but he is in a hard passage of +arms, and sorely needs your help." "Return to +those that sent you," said the king, "and bid them +not send to me again so long as my son lives! Let +the boy win his spurs, for, if God so order it, I will +that the day may be his and that the honour may +be with him and them to whom I have given it in +charge." Edward could see in fact from his higher +ground that all went well. The English bowmen +and men-at-arms held their ground stoutly while +the Welshmen stabbed the French horses in the +melly and brought knight after knight to the +ground. Soon the French host was wavering in + +<span class="pagenum"><a name="Vol2-Page-2-239"></a>2-239]</span> + +a fatal confusion. "You are my vassals, my +friends," cried the blind John of Bohemia to the +German nobles around him, "I pray and beseech +you to lead me so far into the fight that I may +strike one good blow with this sword of mine!" +Linking their bridles together, the little company +plunged into the thick of the combat to fall as +their fellows were falling. The battle went steadily +against the French. At last Philip himself hurried +from the field, and the defeat became a rout. +Twelve hundred knights and thirty thousand foot-men--a +number equal to the whole English force--lay +dead upon the ground. +</p> + +<p> +<span class="sidenote">The Yeoman</span> +</p> + +<p> +"God has punished us for our sins," cries the +chronicler of St. Denys in a passion of bewildered +grief as he tells the rout of the great host which he +had seen mustering beneath his abbey walls. But +the fall of France was hardly so sudden or so incomprehensible +as the ruin at a single blow of a +system of warfare, and with it of the political and +social fabric which had risen out of that system. +Feudalism rested on the superiority of the horseman +to the footman, of the mounted noble to the +unmounted churl. The real fighting power of a +feudal army lay in its knighthood, in the baronage +and landowners who took the field, each with his +group of esquires and mounted men-at-arms. A host +of footmen followed them, but they were ill armed, +ill disciplined, and seldom called on to play any +decisive part on the actual battle-field. In France, + +<span class="pagenum"><a name="Vol2-Page-2-240"></a>2-240]</span> + +and especially at the moment we have reached, +the contrast between the efficiency of these two +elements of warfare was more striking than elsewhere. +Nowhere was the chivalry so splendid, +nowhere was the general misery and oppression of +the poor more terribly expressed in the worthlessness +of the mob of footmen who were driven by +their lords to the camp. In England, on the other +hand, the failure of feudalism to win a complete +hold on the country was seen in the persistence of +the older national institutions which based its +defence on the general levy of its freemen. If the +foreign kings added to this a system of warlike +organization grounded on the service due from its +military tenants to the Crown, they were far from +regarding this as superseding the national "fyrd." +The Assize of Arms, the Statute of Winchester, +show with what care the fyrd was held in a state +of efficiency. Its force indeed as an engine of war +was fast rising between the age of Henry the Second +and that of Edward the Third. The social changes +on which we have already dwelt, the facilities given +to alienation and the subdivision of lands, the +transition of the serf into a copyholder and of the +copyholder by redemption of his services into a +freeholder, the rise of a new class of "farmers" as +the lords ceased to till their demesne by means of +bailiffs and adopted the practice of leasing it at a +rent or "farm" to one of the customary tenants, +the general increase of wealth which was telling + +<span class="pagenum"><a name="Vol2-Page-2-241"></a>2-241]</span> + +on the social position even of those who still remained +in villenage, undid more and more the +earlier process which had degraded the free ceorl +of the English Conquest into the villein of the +Norman Conquest, and covered the land with a +population of yeomen, some freeholders, some with +services that every day became less weighty and +already left them virtually free. +</p> + +<p> +<span class="sidenote">The Bow</span> +</p> + +<p> +Such men, proud of their right to justice and +an equal law, called by attendance in the county +court to a share in the judicial, the financial, and +the political life of the realm, were of a temper +to make soldiers of a different sort from the +wretched serfs who followed the feudal lords of +the Continent; and they were equipped with a +weapon which as they wielded it was enough of +itself to make a revolution in the art of war. The +bow, identified as it became with English warfare, +was the weapon not of Englishmen but of their +Norman conquerors. It was the Norman arrow-flight +that decided the day of Senlac. But in the +organization of the national army it had been +assigned as the weapon of the poorer freeholders +who were liable to serve at the king's summons; +and we see how closely it had become associated with +them in the picture of Chaucer's yeoman. "In +his hand he bore a mighty bow." Its might lay +not only in the range of the heavy war-shaft, a +range we are told of four hundred yards, but in +its force. The English archer, taught from very + +<span class="pagenum"><a name="Vol2-Page-2-242"></a>2-242]</span> + +childhood "how to draw, how to lay his body to +the bow," his skill quickened by incessant practice +and constant rivalry with his fellows, raised the +bow into a terrible engine of war. Thrown out +along the front in a loose order that alone showed +their vigour and self-dependence, the bowmen +faced and riddled the splendid line of knighthood +as it charged upon them. The galled horses +"reeled right rudely." Their riders found even +the steel of Milan a poor defence against the grey-goose +shaft. Gradually the bow dictated the very +tactics of an English battle. If the mass of cavalry +still plunged forward, the screen of archers broke +to right and left and the men-at-arms who lay in +reserve behind them made short work of the +broken and disordered horsemen, while the light +troops from Wales and Ireland flinging themselves +into the melly with their long knives and darts +brought steed after steed to the ground. It was +this new military engine that Edward the Third +carried to the fields of France. His armies were +practically bodies of hired soldiery, for the short +period of feudal service was insufficient for foreign +campaigns, and yeoman and baron were alike +drawn by a high rate of pay. An archer's daily +wages equalled some five shillings of our present +money. Such payment when coupled with the +hope of plunder was enough to draw yeomen from +thorpe and farm; and though the royal treasury +was drained as it had never been drained before + +<span class="pagenum"><a name="Vol2-Page-2-243"></a>2-243]</span> + +the English king saw himself after the day of +Crécy the master of a force without rival in the +stress of war. +</p> + +<p> +<span class="sidenote">Siege of +Calais</span> +</p> + +<p> +To England her success was the beginning of a +career of military glory, which fatal as it was +destined to prove to the higher sentiments and +interests of the nation gave it a warlike energy +such as it had never known before. Victory followed +victory. A few months after Crécy a Scotch +army marched over the border and faced on the +seventeenth of October an English force at Neville's +Cross. But it was soon broken by the arrow-flight +of the English archers, and the Scotch king David +Bruce was taken prisoner. The withdrawal of the +French from the Garonne enabled Henry of Derby +to recover Poitou. Edward meanwhile with a +decision which marks his military capacity marched +from the field of Crécy to form the siege of Calais. +No measure could have been more popular with +the English merchant class, for Calais was a great +pirate-haven and in a single year twenty-two +privateers from its port had swept the Channel. +But Edward was guided by weightier considerations +than this. In spite of his victory at Sluys +the superiority of France at sea had been a constant +embarrassment. From this difficulty the +capture of Calais would do much to deliver him, +for Dover and Calais together bridled the Channel. +Nor was this all. Not only would the possession +of the town give Edward a base of operations + +<span class="pagenum"><a name="Vol2-Page-2-244"></a>2-244]</span> + +against France, but it afforded an easy means of +communication with the only sure allies of England, +the towns of Flanders. Flanders seemed at this +moment to be wavering. Its Count had fallen at +Crécy, but his son Lewis le Mâle, though his +sympathies were as French as his father's, was +received in November by his subjects with the +invariable loyalty which they showed to their +rulers; and his own efforts to detach them from +England were seconded by the influence of the +Duke of Brabant. But with Edward close at hand +beneath the walls of Calais the Flemish towns +stood true. They prayed the young Count to +marry Edward's daughter, imprisoned him on his +refusal, and on his escape to the French Court in +the spring of 1347 they threw themselves heartily +into the English cause. A hundred thousand +Flemings advanced to Cassel and ravaged the +French frontier. +</p> + +<p> +The danger of Calais roused Philip from the +panic which had followed his defeat, and with a +vast army he advanced to the north. But Edward's +lines were impregnable. The French king failed +in another attempt to dislodge the Flemings, and +was at last driven to retreat without a blow. +Hopeless of further succour, the town after a year's +siege was starved into surrender in August 1347. +Mercy was granted to the garrison and the people +on condition that six of the citizens gave themselves +into the English king's hands. "On them," said + +<span class="pagenum"><a name="Vol2-Page-2-245"></a>2-245]</span> + +Edward with a burst of bitter hatred, "I will do +my will." At the sound of the town bell, Jehan +le Bel tells us, the folk of Calais gathered round +the bearer of these terms, "desiring to hear their +good news, for they were all mad with hunger. +When the said knight told them his news, then +began they to weep and cry so loudly that it was +great pity. Then stood up the wealthiest burgess +of the town, Master Eustache de St. Pierre by +name, and spake thus before all: 'My masters, +great grief and mishap it were for all to leave such +a people as this is to die by famine or otherwise; +and great charity and grace would he win from +our Lord who could defend them from dying. +For me, I have great hope in the Lord that if I +can save this people by my death I shall have +pardon for my faults, wherefore will I be the first +of the six, and of my own will put myself barefoot +in my shirt and with a halter round my neck +in the mercy of King Edward.'" The list of devoted +men was soon made up, and the victims were led +before the king. "All the host assembled together; +there was great press, and many bade +hang them openly, and many wept for pity. The +noble King came with his train of counts and +barons to the place, and the Queen followed him, +though great with child, to see what there would +be. The six citizens knelt down at once before the +King, and Master Eustache spake thus:--'Gentle +King, here we be six who have been of the old + +<span class="pagenum"><a name="Vol2-Page-2-246"></a>2-246]</span> + +bourgeoisie of Calais and great merchants; we +bring you the keys of the town and castle of +Calais, and render them to you at your pleasure. +We set ourselves in such wise as you see purely at +your will, to save the remnant of the people that +has suffered much pain. So may you have pity +and mercy on us for your high nobleness' sake.' +Certes there was then in that place neither lord +nor knight that wept not for pity, nor who could +speak for pity; but the King had his heart so +hardened by wrath that for a long while he could +not reply; than he commanded to cut off their +heads. All the knights and lords prayed him with +tears, as much as they could, to have pity on them, +but he would not hear. Then spoke the gentle +knight, Master Walter de Maunay, and said, 'Ha, +gentle sire! bridle your wrath; you have the +renown and good fame of all gentleness; do not a +thing whereby men can speak any villany of you! +If you have no pity, all men will say that you have +a heart full of all cruelty to put these good citizens +to death that of their own will are come to render +themselves to you to save the remnant of the +people.' At this point the King changed countenance +with wrath, and said 'Hold your peace, +Master Walter! it shall be none otherwise. Call +the headsman. They of Calais have made so many of +my men die, that they must die themselves!' Then +did the noble Queen of England a deed of noble +lowliness, seeing she was great with child, and + +<span class="pagenum"><a name="Vol2-Page-2-247"></a>2-247]</span> + +wept so tenderly for pity that she could no longer +stand upright; therefore she cast herself on her +knees before her lord the King and spake on this +wise: 'Ah, gentle sire, from the day that I passed +over sea in great peril, as you know, I have asked +for nothing: now pray I and beseech you, with +folded hands, for the love of our Lady's Son to +have mercy upon them.' The gentle King waited a +while before speaking, and looked on the Queen +as she knelt before him bitterly weeping. Then +began his heart to soften a little, and he said, +'Lady, I would rather you had been otherwhere; +you pray so tenderly that I dare not refuse you; +and though I do it against my will, nevertheless +take them, I give them to you.' Then took he +the six citizens by the halters and delivered them +to the Queen, and released from death all those of +Calais for the love of her; and the good lady bade +them clothe the six burgesses and make them good +cheer." +</p> + +</div> + +<span class="pagenum"><a name="Vol2-Page-2-248"></a>2-248]</span> + +<div class="chapter"> +<div class="head"> +<hr> +<a name="Bk4-Ch3"></a><ul> + +<li> +<a name="id4547268"></a>CHAPTER III</li> +<li> +<a name="id4547274"></a>THE PEASANT REVOLT</li> +<li> +<a name="id4547280"></a>1347-1381</li> + +</ul> +</div> + + + +<p> +<span class="sidenote">Edward the +Third</span> +</p> + +<p> +Still in the vigour of manhood, for he was but +thirty-five, Edward the Third stood at the height +of his renown. He had won the greatest victory +of his age. France, till now the first of European +states, was broken and dashed from her pride of +place at a single blow. The kingdom seemed to +lie at Edward's mercy, for Guienne was recovered, +Flanders was wholly on his side, and Britanny, +where the capture of Charles of Blois secured the +success of his rival and the English party which +supported him, opened the road to Paris. At +home his government was popular, and Scotland, +the one enemy he had to dread, was bridled by +the capture of her king. How great his renown +was in Europe was seen in 1347, when on the +death of Lewis of Bavaria the electors offered him +the Imperial Crown. Edward was in truth a +general of a high order, and he had shown himself + +<span class="pagenum"><a name="Vol2-Page-2-249"></a>2-249]</span> + +as consummate a strategist in the campaign as a +tactician in the field. But to the world about him +he was even more illustrious as the foremost +representative of the showy chivalry of his day. +He loved the pomp of tournaments; he revived +the Round Table of the fabled Arthur; he celebrated +his victories by the creation of a new order +of knighthood. He had varied the sterner operations +of the siege of Calais by a hand-to-hand +combat with one of the bravest of the French +knights. A naval picture of Froissart sketches +Edward for us as he sailed to meet a Spanish fleet +which was sweeping the narrow seas. We see the +king sitting on deck in his jacket of black velvet, +his head covered by a black beaver hat "which +became him well," and calling on Sir John Chandos +to troll out the songs he had brought with him +from Germany, till the Spanish ships heave in +sight and a furious fight begins which ends in a +victory that leaves Edward "King of the Seas." +</p> + +<p> +But beneath all this glitter of chivalry lay the +subtle, busy diplomatist. None of our kings was +so restless a negotiator. From the first hour of +Edward's rule the threads of his diplomacy ran +over Europe in almost inextricable confusion. And +to all who dealt with him he was equally false and +tricky. Emperor was played off against Pope and +Pope against Emperor, the friendship of the +Flemish towns was adroitly used to put a pressure +on their counts, the national wrath against the + +<span class="pagenum"><a name="Vol2-Page-2-250"></a>2-250]</span> + +exactions of the Roman See was employed to bridle +the French sympathies of the court of Avignon, and +when the statutes which it produced had served their +purpose they were set aside for a bargain in which +King and Pope shared the plunder of the Church between +them. His temper was as false in his dealings +with his people as in his dealings with the European +powers. Edward aired to country and parliament +his English patriotism. "Above all other lands and +realms," he made his chancellor say, "the King +had most tenderly at heart his land of England, a +land more full of delight and honour and profit to +him than any other." His manners were popular; +he donned on occasion the livery of a city gild; he +dined with a London merchant. His perpetual +parliaments, his appeals to them and to the country +at large for counsel and aid, seemed to promise a +ruler who was absolutely one at heart with the +people he ruled. But when once Edward passed +from sheer carelessness and gratification at the +new source of wealth which the Parliament opened +to a sense of what its power really was becoming, +he showed himself as jealous of freedom as any +king that had gone before him. He sold his assent +to its demands for heavy subsidies, and when he +had pocketed the money coolly declared the +statutes he had sanctioned null and void. The +constitutional progress which was made during his +reign was due to his absorption in showy schemes +of foreign ambition, to his preference for war and + +<span class="pagenum"><a name="Vol2-Page-2-251"></a>2-251]</span> + +diplomatic intrigue over the sober business of civil +administration. The same shallowness of temper, +the same showiness and falsehood, ran through his +personal character. The king who was a model +of chivalry in his dealings with knight and noble +showed himself a brutal savage to the burgesses of +Calais. Even the courtesy to his Queen which +throws its halo over the story of their deliverance +went hand in hand with a constant disloyalty to +her. When once Philippa was dead his profligacy +threw all shame aside. He paraded a mistress as +Queen of Beauty through the streets of London, +and set her in pomp over tournaments as the +Lady of the Sun. The nobles were quick to follow +their lord's example. "In those days," writes a +chronicler of the time, "arose a rumour and +clamour among the people that wherever there +was a tournament there came a great concourse of +ladies, of the most costly and beautiful but not +of the best in the kingdom, sometimes forty and +fifty in number, as if they were a part of the +tournament, ladies clad in diverse and wonderful +male apparel, in parti-coloured tunics, with short caps +and bands wound cord-wise round their heads, and +girdles bound with gold and silver, and daggers in +pouches across their body. And thus they rode +on choice coursers to the place of tourney; and so +spent and wasted their goods and vexed their bodies +with scurrilous wantonness that the murmurs of +the people sounded everywhere. But they neither + +<span class="pagenum"><a name="Vol2-Page-2-252"></a>2-252]</span> + +feared God nor blushed at the chaste voice of the +people." +</p> + +<p> +<span class="sidenote">The Black +Death</span> +</p> + +<p> +The "chaste voice of the people" was soon to +grow into the stern moral protest of the Lollards, +but for the moment all murmurs were hushed by +the king's success. The truce which followed +the capture of Calais seemed a mere rest in the +career of victories which opened before Edward. +England was drunk with her glory and with the +hope of plunder. The cloths of Caen had been +brought after the sack of that town to London. +"There was no woman," says Walsingham, "who +had not got garments, furs, feather-beds, and +utensils from the spoils of Calais and other foreign +cities." The court revelled in gorgeous tournaments +and luxury of dress; and the establishment +in 1346 of the Order of the Garter which found +its home in the new castle that Edward was +raising at Windsor marked the highest reach of +the spurious "Chivalry" of the day. But it was +at this moment of triumph that the whole colour +of Edward's reign suddenly changed. The most +terrible plague the world has ever witnessed +advanced from the East, and after devastating +Europe from the shores of the Mediterranean to +the Baltic swooped at the close of 1348 upon +Britain. The traditions of its destructiveness and +the panic-struck words of the statutes passed after +its visitation have been amply justified by modern +research. Of the three or four millions who then + +<span class="pagenum"><a name="Vol2-Page-2-253"></a>2-253]</span> + +formed the population of England more than one-half +were swept away in its repeated visitations. +Its ravages were fiercest in the greater towns +where filthy and undrained streets afforded a +constant haunt to leprosy and fever. In the +burial-ground which the piety of Sir Walter +Maunay purchased for the citizens of London, +a spot whose site was afterwards marked by the +Charter House, more than fifty thousand corpses +are said to have been interred. Thousands of +people perished at Norwich, while in Bristol the +living were hardly able to bury the dead. But +the Black Death fell on the villages almost as +fiercely as on the towns. More than one-half +of the priests of Yorkshire are known to have +perished; in the diocese of Norwich two-thirds +of the parishes changed their incumbents. The +whole organization of labour was thrown out of +gear. The scarcity of hands produced by the +terrible mortality made it difficult for villeins to +perform the services due for their lands, and only +a temporary abandonment of half the rent by the +landowners induced the farmers of their demesnes +to refrain from the abandonment of their farms. +For a time cultivation became impossible. "The +sheep and cattle strayed through the fields and +corn," says a contemporary, "and there were none +left who could drive them." Even when the first +burst of panic was over, the sudden rise of wages +consequent on the enormous diminution in the + +<span class="pagenum"><a name="Vol2-Page-2-254"></a>2-254]</span> + +supply of labour, though accompanied by a corresponding +rise in the price of food, rudely disturbed +the course of industrial employments. Harvests +rotted on the ground and fields were left untilled +not merely from scarcity of hands but from the +strife which now for the first time revealed itself +between capital and labour. +</p> + +<p> +<span class="sidenote">Its Social +Results</span> +</p> + +<p> +Nowhere was the effect of the Black Death so +keenly felt as in its bearing on the social revolution +which had been steadily going on for a century +past throughout the country. At the moment we +have reached the lord of a manor had been reduced +over a large part of England to the position of a +modern landlord, receiving a rental in money +from his tenants and supplying their place in the +cultivation of his demesne lands by paid labourers. +He was driven by the progress of enfranchisement +to rely for the purposes of cultivation on the +supply of hired labour, and hitherto this supply +had been abundant and cheap. But with the +ravages of the Black Death and the decrease of +population labour at once became scarce and dear. +There was a general rise of wages, and the farmers +of the country as well as the wealthier craftsmen +of the town saw themselves threatened with ruin +by what seemed to their age the extravagant +demands of the labour class. Meanwhile the +country was torn with riot and disorder. An +outbreak of lawless self-indulgence which followed +everywhere in the wake of the plague told especially + +<span class="pagenum"><a name="Vol2-Page-2-255"></a>2-255]</span> + +upon the "landless men," workers wandering +in search of work who found themselves for the +first time masters of the labour market; and the +wandering labourer or artizan turned easily into +the "sturdy beggar," or the bandit of the woods. +A summary redress for these evils was at once +provided by the Crown in a royal proclamation. +"Because a great part of the people," runs this +ordinance, "and principally of labourers and +servants, is dead of the plague, some, seeing the +need of their lords and the scarcity of servants, +are unwilling to serve unless they receive excessive +wages, and others are rather begging in idleness +than supporting themselves by labour, we have +ordained that any able-bodied man or woman, of +whatsoever condition, free or serf, under sixty +years of age, not living of merchandise nor following +a trade nor having of his own wherewithal to +live, either his own land with the culture of which +he could occupy himself, and not serving another, +shall if so required serve another for such wages +as was the custom in the twentieth year of our +reign or five or six years before." +</p> + +<p> +<span class="sidenote">Statute of +Labourers</span> +</p> + +<p> +It was the failure of this ordinance to effect +its ends which brought about at the close of 1349 +the passing of the Statute of Labourers. "Every +man or woman," runs this famous provision, "of +whatsoever condition, free or bond, able in body, +and within the age of threescore years, ... and +not having of his own whereof he may live, nor + +<span class="pagenum"><a name="Vol2-Page-2-256"></a>2-256]</span> + +land of his own about the tillage of which he +may occupy himself, and not serving any other, +shall be bound to serve the employer who shall +require him to do so, and shall take only the +wages which were accustomed to be taken in the +neighbourhood where he is bound to serve" two +years before the plague began. A refusal to obey +was punished by imprisonment. But sterner +measures were soon found to be necessary. Not +only was the price of labour fixed by the Parliament +of 1351 but the labour class was once more +tied to the soil. The labourer was forbidden to +quit the parish where he lived in search of better +paid employment; if he disobeyed he became a +"fugitive," and subject to imprisonment at the +hands of justices of the peace. To enforce such +a law literally must have been impossible, for corn +rose to so high a price that a day's labour at the +old wages would not have purchased wheat enough +for a man's support. But the landowners did not +flinch from the attempt. The repeated re-enactment +of the law shows the difficulty of applying +it and the stubbornness of the struggle which it +brought about. The fines and forfeitures which +were levied for infractions of its provisions formed +a large source of royal revenue, but so ineffectual +were the original penalties that the runaway +labourer was at last ordered to be branded with +a hot iron on the forehead, while the harbouring +of serfs in towns was rigorously put down. Nor + +<span class="pagenum"><a name="Vol2-Page-2-257"></a>2-257]</span> + +was it merely the existing class of free labourers +which was attacked by this reactionary movement. +The increase of their numbers by a commutation +of labour services for money payments was +suddenly checked, and the ingenuity of the +lawyers who were employed as stewards of each +manor was exercised in striving to restore to the +landowners that customary labour whose loss was +now severely felt. Manumissions and exemptions +which had passed without question were cancelled +on grounds of informality, and labour services +from which they held themselves freed by redemption +were again demanded from the villeins. +The attempt was the more galling that the cause +had to be pleaded in the manor-court itself, and +to be decided by the very officer whose interest +it was to give judgement in favour of his lord. +We can see the growth of a fierce spirit of resistance +through the statutes which strove in vain +to repress it. In the towns, where the system +of forced labour was applied with even more +rigour than in the country, strikes and combinations +became frequent among the lower craftsmen. +In the country the free labourers found allies in +the villeins whose freedom from manorial service +was questioned. These were often men of position +and substance, and throughout the eastern counties +the gatherings of "fugitive serfs" were supported by +an organized resistance and by large contributions +of money on the part of the wealthier tenantry. +</p> + + + +<span class="pagenum"><a name="Vol2-Page-2-258"></a>2-258]</span> + + +<p> +<span class="sidenote">Renewal of +the War</span> +</p> + +<p> +With plague, famine, and social strife in the +land, it was no time for reaping the fruits even +of such a victory as Crécy. Luckily for England +the pestilence had fallen as heavily on her foe as +on herself. A common suffering and exhaustion +forced both countries to a truce, and though +desultory fighting went on along the Breton and +Aquitanian borders, the peace which was thus +secured lasted with brief intervals of fighting for +seven years. It was not till 1355 that the +failure of a last effort to turn the truce into a final +peace again drove Edward into war. The campaign +opened with a brilliant prospect of success. +Charles the Bad, King of Navarre, held as a +prince of descent from the house of Valois large +fiefs in Normandy; and a quarrel springing suddenly +up between him and John, who had now +succeeded his father Philip on the throne of +France, Charles offered to put his fortresses +into Edward's hands. Master of Cherbourg, +Avranches, Pontaudemer, Evreux and Meulan, +Mantes, Mortain, Pontoise, Charles held in his +hands the keys of France; and Edward grasped +at the opportunity of delivering a crushing blow. +Three armies were prepared to act in Normandy, +Britanny, and Guienne. But the first two, with +Edward and Henry of Derby, who had been raised +to the dukedom of Lancaster, at their head, were +detained by contrary winds, and Charles, despairing +of their arrival, made peace with John. + +<span class="pagenum"><a name="Vol2-Page-2-259"></a>2-259]</span> + +Edward made his way to Calais to meet the +tidings of this desertion and to be called back +to England by news of a recapture of Berwick +by the Scots. But his hopes of Norman co-operation +were revived in 1356. The treachery of +John, his seizure of the King of Navarre, and +his execution of the Count of Harcourt who was +looked upon as the adviser of Charles in his policy +of intrigue, stirred a general rising throughout +Normandy. Edward at once despatched troops +under the Duke of Lancaster to its support. +But the insurgents were soon forced to fall back. +Conscious of the danger to which an English +occupation of Normandy would expose him, +John hastened with a large army to the west, +drove Lancaster to Cherbourg, took Evreux, and +besieged Breteuil. +</p> + +<p> +<span class="sidenote">The Black +Prince</span> +</p> + +<p> +Here however his progress was suddenly +checked by news from the south. The Black +Prince, as the hero of Crécy was called, had +landed in Guienne during the preceding year and +won a disgraceful success. Unable to pay his +troops, he staved off their demands by a campaign +of sheer pillage. While plague and war +and the anarchy which sprang up under the weak +government of John were bringing ruin on the +northern and central provinces of France, the +south remained prosperous and at peace. The +young prince led his army of freebooters up the +Garonne into "what was before one of the fat + +<span class="pagenum"><a name="Vol2-Page-2-260"></a>2-260]</span> + +countries of the world, the people good and +simple, who did not know what war was; indeed +no war had been waged against them till +the Prince came. The English and Gascons +found the country full and gay, the rooms +adorned with carpets and draperies, the caskets +and chests full of fair jewels. But nothing was +safe from these robbers. They, and especially +the Gascons, who are very greedy, carried off +everything." Glutted by the sack of Carcassonne +and Narbonne the plunderers fell back to Bordeaux, +"their horses so laden with spoil that they could +hardly move." Worthier work awaited the Black +Prince in the following year. In the plan of +campaign for 1356 it had been arranged that he +should march upon the Loire, and there unite +with a force under the Duke of Lancaster which +was to land in Britanny and push rapidly into +the heart of France. Delays however hindered +the Prince from starting from Bordeaux till July, +and when his march brought him to the Loire the +plan of campaign had already broken down. The +outbreak in Normandy had tempted the English +Council to divert the force under Lancaster from +Britanny to that province; and the Duke was +now at Cherbourg, hard pressed by the French +army under John. But if its original purpose +was foiled, the march of the Black Prince on +the Loire served still more effectively the English +cause. His advance pointed straight upon Paris, + +<span class="pagenum"><a name="Vol2-Page-2-261"></a>2-261]</span> + +and again as in the Crécy campaign John was +forced to leave all for the protection of the capital. +Hasty marches brought the king to the Loire +while Prince Edward still lay at Vierzon on the +Cher. Unconscious of John's designs, he wasted +some days in the capture of Romorantin while +the French troops were crossing the Loire along +its course from Orleans to Tours and John with +the advance was hurrying through Loches upon +Poitiers in pursuit, as he supposed, of the retreating +Englishmen. But the movement of the +French army, near as it was, was unknown in the +English camp; and when the news of it forced +the Black Prince to order a retreat the enemy +was already far ahead of him. Edward reached +the fields north of Poitiers to find his line of +retreat cut off and a French army of sixty +thousand men interposed between his forces and +Bordeaux. +</p> + +<p> +If the Prince had shown little ability in his +management of the campaign, he showed tactical +skill in the fight which was now forced on him. +On the nineteenth of September he took a strong +position in the fields of Maupertuis, where his +front was covered by thick hedges and approachable +only by a deep and narrow lane which ran +between vineyards. The vineyards and hedges +he lined with bowmen, and drew up his small +body of men-at-arms at the point where the lane +opened upon the higher plain on which he was + +<span class="pagenum"><a name="Vol2-Page-2-262"></a>2-262]</span> + +himself encamped. Edward's force numbered +only eight thousand men, and the danger was +great enough to force him to offer in exchange +for a free retreat the surrender of his prisoners +and of the places he had taken, with an oath not +to fight against France for seven years to come. +His offers however were rejected, and the battle +opened with a charge of three hundred French +knights up the narrow lane. But the lane was +soon choked with men and horses, while the front +ranks of the advancing army fell back before a +galling fire of arrows from the hedgerows. In +this moment of confusion a body of English horsemen, +posted unseen by their opponents on a hill +to the right, charged suddenly on the French +flank, and the Prince watching the disorder which +was caused by the repulse and surprise fell boldly +on their front. The steady shot of the English +archers completed the panic produced by this +sudden attack. The first French line was driven +in, and on its rout the second, a force of sixteen +thousand men, at once broke in wild terror and +fled from the field. John still held his ground +with the knights of the reserve, whom he had +unwisely ordered to dismount from their horses, +till a charge of the Black Prince with two thousand +lances threw this last body into confusion. The +French king was taken, desperately fighting; and +when his army poured back at noon in utter rout +to the gates of Poitiers eight thousand of their + +<span class="pagenum"><a name="Vol2-Page-2-263"></a>2-263]</span> + +number had fallen on the field, three thousand in +the flight, and two thousand men-at-arms, with a +crowd of nobles, were taken prisoners. The royal +captive entered London in triumph, mounted on a +big white charger, while the Prince rode by his +side on a little black hackney to the palace of the +Savoy, which was chosen as John's dwelling, and +a truce for two years seemed to give healing-time +to France. +</p> + +<p> +<span class="sidenote">Edward and +the Scots</span> +</p> + +<p> +With the Scots Edward the Third had less +good fortune. Recalled from Calais by their +seizure of Berwick, the king induced Balliol to +resign into his hands his shadowy sovereignty, +and in the spring of 1356 marched upon Edinburgh +with an overpowering army, harrying and +burning as he marched. But the Scots refused +an engagement, a fleet sent with provisions was +beaten off by a storm, and the famine-stricken +army was forced to fall rapidly back on the +border in a disastrous retreat. The trial convinced +Edward that the conquest of Scotland was +impossible, and by a rapid change of policy which +marks the man he resolved to seek the friendship +of the country he had wasted so long. David +Bruce was released on promise of ransom, a truce +concluded for ten years, and the prohibition of +trade between the two kingdoms put an end to. +But the fulness of this reconciliation screened +a dexterous intrigue. David was childless, and +Edward availed himself of the difficulty which the + +<span class="pagenum"><a name="Vol2-Page-2-264"></a>2-264]</span> + +young king experienced in finding means of providing +the sum demanded for his ransom to bring +him over to a proposal which would have united +the two countries for ever. The scheme however +was carefully concealed; and it was not till +1363 that David proposed to his Parliament to +set aside on his death the claims of the Steward +of Scotland to his crown, and to choose Edward's +third son, Lionel, Duke of Clarence, as his successor. +Though the proposal was scornfully +rejected, negotiations were still carried on between +the two kings for the realization of this +project, and were probably only put an end to by +the calamities of Edward's later years. +</p> + +<center><a href="images/v2-map-2.jpg"><img src="images/v2-map-2t.jpg" alt="France at the Treaty of Bretigny"></a></center> + +<p> +<span class="sidenote">Peace of +Brétigny</span> +</p> + +<p> +In France misery and misgovernment seemed +to be doing Edward's work more effectively than +arms. The miserable country found no rest in +itself. Its routed soldiery turned into free companies +of bandits, while the lords captured at +Crécy or Poitiers procured the sums needed for +their ransom by extortion from the peasantry. +The reforms demanded by the States-General +which met in this agony of France were frustrated +by the treachery of the Regent, John's +eldest son Charles, Duke of Normandy, till Paris, +impatient of his weakness and misrule, rose in +arms against the Crown. The peasants too, +driven mad by oppression and famine, rose in +wild insurrection, butchering their lords and firing +their castles over the whole face of France. + +<span class="pagenum"><a name="Vol2-Page-2-265"></a>2-265]</span> + +Paris and the Jacquerie, as this peasant rising +was called, were at last crushed by treachery and +the sword: and, exhausted as it was, France still +backed the Regent in rejecting a treaty of peace +by which John in 1359 proposed to buy his release. +By this treaty Maine, Touraine, and Poitou +in the south, Normandy, Guisnes, Ponthieu, and +Calais in the west were ceded to the English king. +On its rejection Edward in 1360 poured ravaging +over the wasted land. Famine however proved +its best defence. "I could not believe," said +Petrarch of this time, "that this was the same +France which I had seen so rich and flourishing. +Nothing presented itself to my eyes but a +fearful solitude, an utter poverty, land uncultivated, +houses in ruins. Even the neighbourhood +of Paris showed everywhere marks of desolation +and conflagration. The streets are deserted, the +roads overgrown with weeds, the whole is a vast +solitude." The utter desolation forced Edward to +carry with him an immense train of provisions, +and thousands of baggage waggons with mills, +ovens, forges, and fishing-boats, formed a long +train which streamed for six miles behind his +army. After a fruitless attempt upon Reims +he forced the Duke of Burgundy to conclude a +treaty with him by pushing forward to Tonnerre, +and then descending the Seine appeared with his +army before Paris. But the wasted country forbade +a siege, and Edward after summoning the + +<span class="pagenum"><a name="Vol2-Page-2-266"></a>2-266]</span> + +town in vain was forced to fall back for subsistence +on the Loire. It was during this march that +the Duke of Normandy's envoys overtook him +with proposals of peace. The misery of the land +had at last bent Charles to submission, and in May +a treaty was concluded at Brétigny, a small place +to the eastward of Chartres. By this treaty the +English king waived his claims on the crown of +France and on the Duchy of Normandy. On +the other hand, his Duchy of Aquitaine, which +included Gascony, Guienne, Poitou, and Saintonge, +the Limousin and the Angoumois, Périgord and +the counties of Bigorre and Rouergue, was not +only restored but freed from its obligations as a +French fief and granted in full sovereignty with +Ponthieu, Edward's heritage from the second wife +of Edward the First, as well as with Guisnes and +his new conquest of Calais. +</p> + +<p> +<span class="sidenote">Misery of +England</span> +</p> + +<p> +The Peace of Brétigny set its seal upon Edward's +glory. But within England itself the misery of the +people was deepening every hour. Men believed +the world to be ending, and the judgement day to +be near. A few months after the Peace came a +fresh swoop of the Black Death, carrying off the +Duke of Lancaster. The repressive measures of +Parliament and the landowners only widened the +social chasm which parted employer from employed. +We can see the growth of a fierce spirit +of resistance both to the reactionary efforts which +were being made to bring back labour services + +<span class="pagenum"><a name="Vol2-Page-2-267"></a>2-267]</span> + +and to the enactments which again bound labour +to the soil in statutes which strove in vain to +repress the strikes and combinations which became +frequent in the towns and the more formidable +gatherings of villeins and "fugitive +serfs" in the country at large. A statute of +later date throws light on the nature of the resistance +of the last. It tells us that "villeins +and holders of land in villeinage withdrew their +customs and services from their lords, having +attached themselves to other persons who maintained +and abetted them, and who under colour +of exemplifications from Domesday of the manors +and villages where they dwelt claimed to be quit +of all manner of services either of their body or +of their lands, and would suffer no distress or +other course of justice to be taken against them; +the villeins aiding their maintainers by threatening +the officers of their lords with peril to life and +limb as well by open assemblies as by confederacies +to support each other." It would seem not only as +if the villein was striving to resist the reactionary +tendency of the lords of manors to regain his labour +service but that in the general overturning of +social institutions the copyholder was struggling +to make himself a freeholder, and the farmer to +be recognized as proprietor of the demesne he held +on lease. +</p> + +<p> +<span class="sidenote">John Ball</span> +</p> + +<p> +A more terrible outcome of the general suffering +was seen in a new revolt against the whole + +<span class="pagenum"><a name="Vol2-Page-2-268"></a>2-268]</span> + +system of social inequality which had till then +passed unquestioned as the divine order of the +world. The Peace was hardly signed when the +cry of the poor found a terrible utterance in the +words of "a mad priest of Kent" as the courtly +Froissart calls him, who for twenty years to come +found audience for his sermons in spite of interdict +and imprisonment in the stout yeomen who +gathered round him in the churchyards of Kent. +"Mad" as the landowners held him to be, it was +in the preaching of John Ball that England first +listened to a declaration of the natural equality +and rights of man. "Good people," cried the +preacher, "things will never be well in England +so long as goods be not in common, and so long +as there be villeins and gentlemen. By what +right are they whom we call lords greater folk +than we? On what grounds have they deserved +it? Why do they hold us in serfage? If we all +came of the same father and mother, of Adam +and Eve, how can they say or prove that they are +better than we, if it be not that they make us +gain for them by our toil what they spend in +their pride? They are clothed in velvet and +warm in their furs and their ermines, while we +are covered with rags. They have wine and +spices and fair bread; and we oat-cake and straw, +and water to drink. They have leisure and fine +houses; we have pain and labour, the rain and +the wind in the fields. And yet it is of us and of + +<span class="pagenum"><a name="Vol2-Page-2-269"></a>2-269]</span> + +our toil that these men hold their state." It was +the tyranny of property that then as ever roused +the defiance of socialism. A spirit fatal to the +whole system of the Middle Ages breathed in the +popular rime which condensed the levelling doctrine +of John Ball: +</p> + +<table summary="poetry" class="lg"> + +<tr><td align="left">"When Adam delved and Eve span,</td></tr> +<tr><td align="left">Who was then the gentleman?"</td></tr> + +</table> + +<p> +<span class="sidenote">William +Langland</span> +</p> + +<p> +More impressive, because of the very restraint +and moderation of its tone, is the poem in which +William Langland began at the same moment to +embody with a terrible fidelity all the darker and +sterner aspects of the time, its social revolt, its +moral and religious awakening, the misery of the +poor, the selfishness and corruption of the rich. +Nothing brings more vividly home to us the social +chasm which in the fourteenth century severed +the rich from the poor than the contrast between +his "Complaint of Piers the Ploughman" and the +"Canterbury Tales." The world of wealth and +ease and laughter through which the courtly +Chaucer moves with, eyes downcast as in a pleasant +dream is a far-off world of wrong and of +ungodliness to the gaunt poet of the poor. Born +probably in Shropshire, where he had been put to +school and received minor orders as a clerk, "Long +Will," as Langland was nicknamed from his tall +stature, found his way at an early age to London, +and earned a miserable livelihood there by singing +"placebos" and "diriges" in the stately funerals + +<span class="pagenum"><a name="Vol2-Page-2-270"></a>2-270]</span> + +of his day. Men took the moody clerk for a +madman; his bitter poverty quickened the defiant +pride that made him loth, as he tells us, to bow +to the gay lords and dames who rode decked in +silver and minivere along the Cheap or to exchange +a "God save you" with the law sergeants +as he passed their new house in the Temple. His +world is the world of the poor; he dwells on the +poor man's life, on his hunger and toil, his rough +revelry and his despair, with the narrow intensity +of a man who has no outlook beyond it. The +narrowness, the misery, the monotony of the life +he paints reflect themselves in his verse. It is +only here and there that a love of nature or a +grim earnestness of wrath quickens his rime into +poetry; there is not a gleam of the bright human +sympathy of Chaucer, of his fresh delight in the +gaiety, the tenderness, the daring of the world +about him, of his picturesque sense of even its +coarsest contrasts, of his delicate irony, of his +courtly wit. The cumbrous allegory, the tedious +platitudes, the rimed texts from Scripture which +form the staple of Langland's work, are only +broken here and there by phrases of a shrewd +common sense, by bitter outbursts, by pictures of +a broad Hogarthian humour. What chains one +to the poem is its deep undertone of sadness: the +world is out of joint, and the gaunt rimer who +stalks silently along the Strand has no faith in his +power to put it right. +</p> + + + +<span class="pagenum"><a name="Vol2-Page-2-271"></a>2-271]</span> + + +<p> +<span class="sidenote">Piers +Ploughman</span> +</p> + +<p> +Londoner as he is, Will's fancy flies far from +the sin and suffering of the great city to a May-morning +in the Malvern Hills. "I was weary forwandered +and went me to rest under a broad +bank by a burn side, and as I lay and leaned and +looked in the water I slumbered in a sleeping, it +sweyved (sounded) so merry." Just as Chaucer +gathers the typical figures of the world he saw +into his pilgrim train, so the dreamer gathers +into a wide field his army of traders and chafferers, +of hermits and solitaries, of minstrels, "japers +and jinglers," bidders and beggars, ploughmen +that "in setting and in sowing swonken (toil) +full hard," pilgrims "with their wenches after," +weavers and labourers, burgess and bondman, +lawyer and scrivener, court-haunting bishops, +friars, and pardoners "parting the silver" with +the parish priest. Their pilgrimage is not to +Canterbury but to Truth; their guide to Truth +neither clerk nor priest but Peterkin the Ploughman, +whom they find ploughing in his field. He +it is who bids the knight no more wrest gifts from +his tenant nor misdo with the poor. "Though he +be thine underling here, well may hap in heaven +that he be worthier set and with more bliss than +thou.... For in charnel at church churles be +evil to know, or a knight from a knave there." +The gospel of equality is backed by the gospel of +labour. The aim of the Ploughman is to work, +and to make the world work with him. He + +<span class="pagenum"><a name="Vol2-Page-2-272"></a>2-272]</span> + +warns the labourer as he warns the knight. +Hunger is God's instrument in bringing the idlest +to toil, and Hunger waits to work her will on the +idler and the waster. On the eve of the great +struggle between wealth and labour, Langland +stands alone in his fairness to both, in his shrewd +political and religious common sense. In the +face of the popular hatred which was to gather +round John of Gaunt, he paints the Duke in a +famous apologue as the cat who, greedy as she +might be, at any rate keeps the noble rats from +utterly devouring the mice of the people. Though +the poet is loyal to the Church, he proclaims a +righteous life to be better than a host of indulgences, +and God sends His pardon to Piers when +priests dispute it. But he sings as a man conscious +of his loneliness and without hope. It is +only in a dream that he sees Corruption, "Lady +Mede," brought to trial, and the world repenting +at the preaching of Reason. In the waking life +reason finds no listeners. The poet himself is +looked upon--he tells us bitterly--as a madman. +There is a terrible despair in the close of his later +poem, where the triumph of Christ is only +followed by the reign of Antichrist; where Contrition +slumbers amidst the revel of Death and +Sin; and Conscience, hard beset by Pride and +Sloth, rouses himself with a last effort, and seizing +his pilgrim staff, wanders over the world to +find Piers Ploughman. +</p> + + + +<span class="pagenum"><a name="Vol2-Page-2-273"></a>2-273]</span> + + +<p> +<span class="sidenote">Præmunire</span> +</p> + +<p> +The strife indeed which Langland would have +averted raged only the fiercer as the dark years +went by. If the Statutes of Labourers were +powerless for their immediate ends, either in reducing +the actual rate of wages or in restricting +the mass of floating labour to definite areas of +employment, they proved effective in sowing +hatred between employer and employed, between +rich and poor. But this social rift was not the +only rift which was opening amidst the distress and +misery of the time. The close of William Langland's +poem is the prophecy of a religious revolution; +and the way for such a revolution was +being paved by the growing bitterness of strife +between England and the Papacy. In spite of +the sharp protests from king and parliament the +need for money at Avignon was too great to +allow any relaxation in the Papal claims. Almost +on the eve of Crécy Edward took the decisive +step of forbidding the entry into England of any +Papal bulls or documents interfering with the +rights of presentation belonging to private patrons. +But the tenacity of Rome was far from loosening +its grasp on this source of revenue for all Edward's +protests. Crécy however gave a new boldness to +the action of the State, and a Statute of Provisors +was passed by the Parliament in 1351 which +again asserted the rights of the English Church +and enacted that all who infringed them by the +introduction of Papal "provisors" should suffer + +<span class="pagenum"><a name="Vol2-Page-2-274"></a>2-274]</span> + +imprisonment. But resistance to provisors only brought +fresh vexations. The patrons who withstood +a Papal nominee in the name of the law +were summoned to defend themselves in the +Papal Court. From that moment the supremacy +of the Papal law over the law of the land became +a great question in which the lesser question of +provisors merged. The pretension of the Court +of Avignon was met in 1353 by a statute which +forbade any questioning of judgements rendered +in the King's Courts or any prosecution of a suit +in foreign courts under pain of outlawry, perpetual +imprisonment, or banishment from the land. +It was this act of Præmunire--as it came in after +renewals to be called--which furnished so terrible +a weapon to the Tudors in their later strife with +Rome. But the Papacy paid little heed to these +warnings, and its obstinacy in still receiving suits +and appeals in defiance of this statute roused the +pride of a conquering people. England was still +fresh from her glory at Brétigny when Edward +appealed to the Parliament of 1365. Complaints, +he said, were constantly being made by his +subjects to the Pope as to matters which were +cognizable in the King's Courts. The practice of +provisors was thus maintained in the teeth of the +laws, and "the laws, usages, ancient customs, and +franchises of his kingdom were thereby much +hindered, the King's crown degraded, and his +person defamed." The king's appeal was hotly + +<span class="pagenum"><a name="Vol2-Page-2-275"></a>2-275]</span> + +met. "Biting words," which it was thought wise +to suppress, were used in the debate which followed, +and the statutes against provisors and appeals +were solemnly confirmed. +</p> + +<p> +<span class="sidenote">Wyclif</span> +</p> + +<p> +What gave point to this challenge was the +assent of the prelates to the proceedings of the +Parliament; and the pride of Urban V. at once +met it by a counter-defiance. He demanded with +threats the payment of the annual sum of a +thousand marks promised by King John in acknowledgement +of the suzerainty of the See of +Rome. The insult roused the temper of the +realm. The king laid the demand before Parliament, +and both houses replied that "neither King +John nor any king could put himself, his kingdom, +nor his people under subjection save with +their accord or assent." John's submission had +been made "without their assent and against his +coronation oath" and they pledged themselves, +should the Pope attempt to enforce his claim, to +resist him with all their power. Even Urban +shrank from imperilling the Papacy by any +further demands, and the claim to a Papal lordship +over England was never again heard of. +But the struggle had brought to the front a man +who was destined to give a far wider scope and +significance to this resistance to Rome than any +as yet dreamed of. Nothing is more remarkable +than the contrast between the obscurity of John +Wyclif's earlier life and the fulness and vividness + +<span class="pagenum"><a name="Vol2-Page-2-276"></a>2-276]</span> + +of our knowledge of him during the twenty years +which preceded its close. Born in the earlier +part of the fourteenth century, he had already +passed middle age when he was appointed to the +mastership of Balliol College in the University of +Oxford and recognized as first among the schoolmen +of his day. Of all the scholastic doctors +those of England had been throughout the keenest +and most daring in philosophical speculation. A +reckless audacity and love of novelty was the +common note of Bacon, Duns Scotus, and Ockham, +as against the sober and more disciplined learning +of the Parisian schoolmen, Albert and Thomas +Aquinas. The decay of the University of Paris +during the English wars was transferring her intellectual +supremacy to Oxford, and in Oxford +Wyclif stood without a rival. From his predecessor, +Bradwardine, whose work as a scholastic +teacher he carried on in the speculative treatises +he published during this period, he inherited the +tendency to a predestinarian Augustinianism +which formed the groundwork of his later theological +revolt. His debt to Ockham revealed itself +in his earliest efforts at Church reform. Undismayed +by the thunder and excommunications +of the Church, Ockham had supported the Emperor +Lewis of Bavaria in his recent struggle, and he +had not shrunk in his enthusiasm for the Empire +from attacking the foundations of the Papal +supremacy or from asserting the rights of the + +<span class="pagenum"><a name="Vol2-Page-2-277"></a>2-277]</span> + +civil power. The spare, emaciated frame of +Wyclif, weakened by study and asceticism, hardly +promised a reformer who would carry on the +stormy work of Ockham; but within this frail +form lay a temper quick and restless, an immense +energy, an immovable conviction, an unconquerable +pride. The personal charm which ever +accompanies real greatness only deepened the +influence he derived from the spotless purity of +his life. As yet indeed even Wyclif himself can +hardly have suspected the immense range of his +intellectual power. It was only the struggle that +lay before him which revealed in the dry and +subtle schoolman the founder of our later English +prose, a master of popular invective, of irony, of +persuasion, a dexterous politician, an audacious +partizan, the organizer of a religious order, the +unsparing assailant of abuses, the boldest and +most indefatigable of controversialists, the first +Reformer who dared, when deserted and alone, +to question and deny the creed of the Christendom +around him, to break through the tradition of the +past, and with his last breath to assert the freedom +of religious thought against the dogmas of the +Papacy. +</p> + +<p> +<span class="sidenote">"De +Dominio +Divino."</span> +</p> + +<p> +At the moment of the quarrel with Pope +Urban however Wyclif was far from having +advanced to such a position as this. As the +most prominent of English scholars it was natural +that he should come forward in defence of the + +<span class="pagenum"><a name="Vol2-Page-2-278"></a>2-278]</span> + +independence and freedom of the English Church; +and he published a formal refutation of the claims +advanced by the Papacy to deal at its will with +church property in the form of a report of the +Parliamentary debates which we have described. +As yet his quarrel was not with the doctrines of +Rome but with its practices; and it was on the +principles of Ockham that he defended the Parliament's +refusal of the "tribute" which was claimed +by Urban. But his treatise on "The Kingdom of +God," "De Dominio Divino," which can hardly +have been written later than 1368, shows the +breadth of the ground he was even now prepared +to take up. In this, the most famous of his +works, Wyclif bases his argument on a distinct +ideal of society. All authority, to use his own +expression, is "founded in grace." Dominion in +the highest sense is in God alone; it is God who +as the suzerain of the universe deals out His rule +in fief to rulers in their various stations on tenure +of their obedience to Himself. It was easy to +object that in such a case "dominion" could never +exist, since mortal sin is a breach of such a tenure +and all men sin. But, as Wyclif urged it, the +theory is a purely ideal one. In actual practice +he distinguishes between dominion and power, +power which the wicked may have by God's permission, +and to which the Christian must submit +from motives of obedience to God. In his own +scholastic phrase, so strangely perverted afterwards, + +<span class="pagenum"><a name="Vol2-Page-2-279"></a>2-279]</span> + +here on earth "God must obey the devil." +But whether in the ideal or practical view of the +matter all power and dominion was of God. It +was granted by Him not to one person, His Vicar +on earth, as the Papacy alleged, but to all. The +king was as truly God's Vicar as the Pope. The +royal power was as sacred as the ecclesiastical, and +as complete over temporal things, even over the +temporalities of the Church, as that of the Church +over spiritual things. So far as the question of +Church and State therefore was concerned the +distinction between the ideal and practical view of +"dominion" was of little account. Wyclif's application +of the theory to the individual conscience +was of far higher and wider importance. Obedient +as each Christian might be to king or priest, he +himself as a possessor of "dominion" held immediately +of God. The throne of God Himself +was the tribunal of personal appeal. What the +Reformers of the sixteenth century attempted to +do by their theory of Justification by Faith Wyclif +attempted to do by his theory of Dominion, a +theory which in establishing a direct relation +between man and God swept away the whole basis +of a mediating priesthood, the very foundation on +which the mediaeval church was built. +</p> + +<p> +<span class="sidenote">England and +Aquitaine</span> +</p> + +<p> +As yet the full bearing of these doctrines was +little seen. But the social and religious excitement +which we have described was quickened by +the renewal of the war, and the general suffering + +<span class="pagenum"><a name="Vol2-Page-2-280"></a>2-280]</span> + +and discontent gathered bitterness when the success +which had flushed England with a new and +warlike pride passed into a long series of disasters +in which men forgot the glories of Crécy +and Poitiers. Triumph as it seemed, the treaty of +Brétigny was really fatal to Edward's cause in the +south of France. By the cession of Aquitaine to +him in full sovereignty the traditional claim on +which his strength rested lost its force. The +people of the south had clung to their Duke, even +though their Duke was a foreign ruler. They had +stubbornly resisted incorporation with Northern +France. While preserving however their traditional +fealty to the descendants of Eleanor they +still clung to the equally traditional suzerainty of +the kings of France. But the treaty of Brétigny +not only severed them from the realm of France, +it subjected them to the realm of England. +Edward ceased to be their hereditary Duke, he +became simply an English king ruling Aquitaine +as an English dominion. If the Southerners loved +the North-French little, they loved the English +less, and the treaty which thus changed their +whole position was followed by a quick revulsion +of feeling from the Garonne to the Pyrenees. The +Gascon nobles declared that John had no right to +transfer their fealty to another and to sever them +from the realm of France. The city of Rochelle +prayed the French king not to release it from its +fealty to him. "We will obey the English with + +<span class="pagenum"><a name="Vol2-Page-2-281"></a>2-281]</span> + +our lips," said its citizens, "but our hearts shall +never be moved towards them." Edward strove +to meet this passion for local independence, this +hatred of being ruled from London, by sending +the Black Prince to Bordeaux and investing him +in 1362 with the Duchy of Aquitaine. But the +new Duke held his Duchy as a fief from the +English king, and the grievance of the Southerners +was left untouched. Charles V. who succeeded +his father John in 1364 silently prepared to reap +this harvest of discontent. Patient, wary, unscrupulous, +he was hardly crowned before he put +an end to the war which had gone on without a +pause in Britanny by accepting homage from the +claimant whom France had hitherto opposed. +Through Bertrand du Guesclin, a fine soldier whom +his sagacity had discovered, he forced the king of +Navarre to a peace which closed the fighting in +Normandy. A more formidable difficulty in the +way of pacification and order lay in the Free +Companies, a union of marauders whom the disbanding +of both armies after the peace had set +free to harry the wasted land and whom the +king's military resources were insufficient to cope +with. It was the stroke by which Charles cleared +his realm of these scourges which forced on a new +struggle with the English in the south. +</p> + +<p> +<span class="sidenote">Pedro the +Cruel</span> +</p> + +<p> +In the judgement of the English court the +friendship of Castille was of the first importance +for the security of Aquitaine. Spain was the + +<span class="pagenum"><a name="Vol2-Page-2-282"></a>2-282]</span> + +strongest naval power of the western world, and +not only would the ports of Guienne be closed +but its communication with England would be at +once cut off by the appearance of a joint French +and Spanish fleet in the Channel. It was with +satisfaction therefore that Edward saw the growth +of a bitter hostility between Charles and the +Castilian king, Pedro the Cruel, through the +murder of his wife, Blanche of Bourbon, the +French king's sister-in-law. Henry of Trastamara, +a bastard son of Pedro's father Alfonso the +Eleventh, had long been a refugee at the French +court, and soon after the treaty of Brétigny +Charles in his desire to revenge this murder on +Pedro gave Henry aid in an attempt on the +Castilian throne. It was impossible for England +to look on with indifference while a dependant of +the French king became master of Castille; and +in 1362 a treaty offensive and defensive was concluded +between Pedro and Edward the Third. +The time was not come for open war; but the +subtle policy of Charles saw in this strife across +the Pyrenees an opportunity both of detaching +Castille from the English cause and of ridding +himself of the Free Companies. With characteristic +caution he dexterously held himself in the +background while he made use of the Pope, who +had been threatened by the Free Companies in his +palace at Avignon and was as anxious to get rid +of them as himself. Pedro's cruelty, misgovernment, + +<span class="pagenum"><a name="Vol2-Page-2-283"></a>2-283]</span> + +and alliance with the Moslem of Cordova +served as grounds for a crusade which was proclaimed +by Pope Urban; and Du Guesclin, who +was placed at the head of the expedition, found +in the Papal treasury and in the hope of booty +from an unravaged land means of gathering the +marauders round his standard. As soon as these +Crusaders crossed the Ebro Pedro was deserted by +his subjects, and in 1366 Henry of Trastamara +saw himself crowned without a struggle at Burgos +as king of Castille. Pedro with his two daughters +fled for shelter to Bordeaux and claimed the aid +promised in the treaty. The lords of Aquitaine +shrank from fighting for such a cause, but in spite +of their protests and the reluctance of the English +council to embark in so distant a struggle Edward +held that he had no choice save to replace his +ally, for to leave Henry seated on the throne was +to leave Aquitaine to be crushed between France +and Castille. +</p> + +<p> +<span class="sidenote">Charles the +Fifth</span> +</p> + +<p> +The after course of the war proved that in his +anticipations of the fatal result of a combination +of the two powers Edward was right, but his +policy jarred not only against the universal +craving for rest, but against the moral sense of +the world. The Black Prince however proceeded +to carry out his father's design in the teeth of the +general opposition. His call to arms robbed Henry +of the aid of those English Companies who had +marched till now with the rest of the crusaders, + +<span class="pagenum"><a name="Vol2-Page-2-284"></a>2-284]</span> + +but who returned at once to the standard of the +Prince; the passes of Navarre were opened with +gold, and in the beginning of 1367 the English +army crossed the Pyrenees. Advancing to the +Ebro the Prince offered battle at Navarete with +an army already reduced by famine and disease +in its terrible winter march, and Henry with +double his numbers at once attacked him. But in +spite of the obstinate courage of the Castilian +troops the discipline and skill of the English +soldiers once more turned the wavering day into +a victory. Du Guesclin was taken, Henry fled +across the Pyrenees, and Pedro was again seated +on his throne. The pay however which he had +promised was delayed; and the Prince, whose +army had been thinned by disease to a fifth of its +numbers and whose strength never recovered from +the hardships of this campaign, fell back sick and +beggared to Aquitaine. He had hardly returned +when his work was undone. In 1368 Henry reentered +Castille; its towns threw open their gates; +a general rising chased Pedro from the throne, +and a final battle in the spring of 1369 saw his +utter overthrow. His murder by Henry's hand +left the bastard undisputed master of Castille. +Meanwhile the Black Prince, sick and disheartened, +was hampered at Bordeaux by the expenses +of the campaign which Pedro had left unpaid. +To defray his debt he was driven in 1368 to lay a +hearth-tax on Aquitaine, and the tax served as a + +<span class="pagenum"><a name="Vol2-Page-2-285"></a>2-285]</span> + +pretext for an outbreak of the long-hoarded discontent. +Charles was now ready for open action. +He had won over the most powerful among the +Gascon nobles, and their influence secured the +rejection of the tax in a Parliament of the province +which met at Bordeaux. The Prince, pressed +by debt, persisted against the counsel of his wisest +advisers in exacting it; and the lords of Aquitaine +at once appealed to the king of France. Such an +appeal was a breach of the treaty of Brétigny in +which the French king had renounced his sovereignty +over the south; but Charles had craftily +delayed year after year the formal execution of +the renunciations stipulated in the treaty, and he +was still able to treat it as not binding on him. +The success of Henry of Trastamara decided him +to take immediate action, and in 1369 he summoned +the Black Prince as Duke of Aquitaine to +meet the appeal of the Gascon lords in his court. +</p> + +<p> +<span class="sidenote">Renewal of +the War</span> +</p> + +<p> +The Prince was maddened by the summons. +"I will come," he replied, "but with helmet on +head, and with sixty thousand men at my back." +War however had hardly been declared when the +ability with which Charles had laid his plans was +seen in his seizure of Ponthieu and in a rising of +the whole country south of the Garonne. Du +Gueselin returned in 1370 from Spain to throw +life into the French attack. Two armies entered +Guienne from the east; and a hundred castles +with La Réole and Limoges threw open their gates + +<span class="pagenum"><a name="Vol2-Page-2-286"></a>2-286]</span> + +to Du Guesclin. But the march of an English +army from Calais upon Paris recalled him from +the south to guard the capital at a moment when +the English leader advanced to recover Limoges, +and the Black Prince borne in a litter to its walls +stormed the town and sullied by a merciless massacre +of its inhabitants the fame of his earlier +exploits. Sickness however recalled him home in +the spring of 1371; and the war, protracted by +the caution of Charles who forbade his armies to +engage, did little but exhaust the energy and +treasure of England. As yet indeed the French +attack had made small impression on the south, +where the English troops stoutly held their ground +against Du Guesclin's inroads. But the protracted +war drained Edward's resources, while the diplomacy +of Charles was busy in rousing fresh dangers +from Scotland and Castille. It was in vain that +Edward looked for allies to the Flemish towns. +The male line of the Counts of Flanders ended in +Count Louis le Mâle; and the marriage of his +daughter Margaret with Philip, Duke of Burgundy, +a younger brother of the French king, secured +Charles from attack along his northern border. +In Scotland the death of David Bruce put an end +to Edward's schemes for a reunion of the two +kingdoms; and his successor, Robert the Steward, +renewed in 1371 the alliance with France. +</p> + +<p> +<span class="sidenote">Loss of +Aquitaine</span> +</p> + +<p> +Castille was a yet more serious danger; and an +effort which Edward made to neutralize its attack + +<span class="pagenum"><a name="Vol2-Page-2-287"></a>2-287]</span> + +only forced Henry of Trastamara to fling his whole +weight into the struggle. The two daughters of +Pedro had remained since their father's flight at +Bordeaux. The elder of these was now wedded +to John of Gaunt, Edward's fourth son, whom he +had created Duke of Lancaster on his previous +marriage with Blanche, a daughter of Henry of +Lancaster and the heiress of that house, while the +younger was wedded to Edward's fifth son, the +Earl of Cambridge. Edward's aim was that of +raising again the party of King Pedro and giving +Henry of Trastamara work to do at home which +would hinder his interposition in the war of +Guienne. It was with this view that John of +Gaunt on his marriage took the title of king of +Castille. But no adherent of Pedro's cause stirred in +Spain, and Henry replied to the challenge by sending +a Spanish fleet to the Channel. A decisive victory +which this fleet won over an English convoy off +Rochelle proved a fatal blow to the English cause. +It wrested from Edward the mastery of the seas, +and cut off all communication between England +and Guienne. Charles was at once roused to new +exertions. Poitou, Saintonge, and the Angoumois +yielded to his general Du Guesclin; and Rochelle +was surrendered by its citizens in 1372. The next +year saw a desperate attempt to restore the fortune +of the English arms. A great army under John +of Gaunt penetrated into the heart of France. +But it found no foe to engage. Charles had forbidden + +<span class="pagenum"><a name="Vol2-Page-2-288"></a>2-288]</span> + +any fighting. "If a storm rages over the +land," said the king coolly, "it disperses of itself; +and so will it be with the English." Winter in fact +overtook the Duke of Lancaster in the mountains +of Auvergne, and a mere fragment of his host +reached Bordeaux. The failure of this attack was +the signal for a general defection, and ere the +summer of 1374 had closed the two towns of +Bordeaux and Bayonne were all that remained of +the English possessions in Southern France. Even +these were only saved by the exhaustion of the +conquerors. The treasury of Charles was as +utterly drained as the treasury of Edward; and +the kings were forced to a truce. +</p> + +<p> +<span class="sidenote">The Social +Strife</span> +</p> + +<p> +Only fourteen years had gone by since the +Treaty of Brétigny raised England to a height of +glory such as it had never known before. But +the years had been years of a shame and suffering +which stung the people to madness. Never had +England fallen so low. Her conquests were lost, +her shores insulted, her commerce swept from the +seas. Within she was drained by the taxation +and bloodshed of the war. Its popularity had +wholly died away. When the Commons were +asked in 1354 whether they would assent to a +treaty of perpetual peace if they might have it, +"the said Commons responded all, and all together, +'Yes, yes!'" The population was thinned by the +ravages of pestilence, for till 1369, which saw its +last visitation, the Black Death returned again and + +<span class="pagenum"><a name="Vol2-Page-2-289"></a>2-289]</span> + +again. The social strife too gathered bitterness +with every effort at repression. It was in vain +that Parliament after Parliament increased the +severity of its laws. The demands of the Parliament +of 1376 show how inoperative the previous +Statutes of Labourers had proved. They prayed +that constables be directed to arrest all who infringed +the Statute, that no labourer should be +allowed to take refuge in a town and become an +artizan if there were need of his service in the +county from which he came, and that the king +would protect lords and employers against the +threats of death uttered by serfs who refused to +serve. The reply of the Royal Council shows that +statesmen at any rate were beginning to feel that +repression might be pushed too far. The king +refused to interfere by any further and harsher +provisions between employers and employed, and +left cases of breach of law to be dealt with in his +ordinary courts of justice. On the one side he +forbade the threatening gatherings which were +already common in the country, but on the other +he forbade the illegal exactions of the employers. +With such a reply however the proprietary +class were hardly likely to be content. +Two years later the Parliament of Gloucester called +for a Fugitive-slave Law, which would have enabled +lords to seize their serfs in whatever county +or town they found refuge, and in 1379 they +prayed that judges might be sent five times a + +<span class="pagenum"><a name="Vol2-Page-2-290"></a>2-290]</span> + +year into every shire to enforce the Statute of +Labourers. +</p> + +<p> +<span class="sidenote">Edward +and the +Parliament</span> +</p> + +<p> +But the strife between employers and employed +was not the only rift which was opening in the +social structure. Suffering and defeat had stripped +off the veil which hid from the nation the shallow +and selfish temper of Edward the Third. His +profligacy was now bringing him to a premature +old age. He was sinking into the tool of his +ministers and his mistresses. The glitter and profusion +of his court, his splendid tournaments, his +feasts, his Table Round, his new order of chivalry, +the exquisite chapel of St. Stephen whose +frescoed walls were the glory of his palace at +Westminster, the vast keep which crowned the +hill of Windsor, had ceased to throw their glamour +round a king who tricked his Parliament and +swindled his creditors. Edward paid no debts. +He had ruined the wealthiest bankers of Florence +by a cool act of bankruptcy. The sturdier Flemish +burghers only wrested payment from him by holding +his royal person as their security. His own +subjects fared no better than foreigners. The +prerogative of "purveyance" by which the king +in his progresses through the country had the +right of first purchase of all that he needed at fair +market price became a galling oppression in the +hands of a bankrupt king who was always moving +from place to place. "When men hear of +your coming," Archbishop Islip wrote to Edward, + +<span class="pagenum"><a name="Vol2-Page-2-291"></a>2-291]</span> + +"everybody at once for sheer fear sets about hiding +or eating or getting rid of their geese and +chickens or other possessions that they may not +utterly lose them through your arrival. The +purveyors and servants of your court seize on men +and horses in the midst of their field work. They +seize on the very bullocks that are at plough or at +sowing, and force them to work for two or three +days at a time without a penny of payment. It +is no wonder that men make dole and murmur at +your approach, for, as the truth is in God, I myself, +whenever I hear a rumour of it, be I at home +or in chapter or in church or at study, nay if I +am saying mass, even I in my own person tremble +in every limb." But these irregular exactions +were little beside the steady pressure of taxation. +Even in the years of peace fifteenths and tenths, +subsidies on wool and subsidies on leather, were +demanded and obtained from Parliament; and +with the outbreak of war the royal demands became +heavier and more frequent. As failure +followed failure the expenses of each campaign increased +an ineffectual attempt to relieve Rochelle +cost nearly a million; the march of John of Gaunt +through France utterly drained the royal treasury. +Nor were these legal supplies all that the king drew +from the nation. He had repudiated his pledge +to abstain from arbitrary taxation of imports and +exports. He sold monopolies to the merchants in +exchange for increased customs. He wrested + +<span class="pagenum"><a name="Vol2-Page-2-292"></a>2-292]</span> + +supplies from the clergy by arrangements with +the bishops or the Pope. There were signs that +Edward was longing to rid himself of the control +of Parliament altogether. The power of the +Houses seemed indeed as high as ever; great +statutes were passed. Those of Provisors and +Præmunire settled the relations of England to the +Roman Court. That of Treason in 1352 defined +that crime and its penalties. That of the Staples +in 1353 regulated the conditions of foreign trade +and the privileges of the merchant gilds which +conducted it. But side by side with these exertions +of influence we note a series of steady encroachments +by the Crown on the power of the +Houses. If their petitions were granted, they +were often altered in the royal ordinance which +professed to embody them. A plan of demanding +supplies for three years at once rendered the +annual assembly of Parliament less necessary. Its +very existence was threatened by the convocation +in 1352 and 1353 of occasional councils with but +a single knight from every shire and a single +burgess from a small number of the greater towns, +which acted as Parliament and granted subsidies. +</p> + +<p> +<span class="sidenote">The +Baronage +and the +Church</span> +</p> + +<p> +What aided Edward above all in eluding or +defying the constitutional restrictions on arbitrary +taxation, as well as in these more insidious attempts +to displace the Parliament, was the lessening of +the check which the Baronage and the Church had +till now supplied. The same causes which had + +<span class="pagenum"><a name="Vol2-Page-2-293"></a>2-293]</span> + +long been reducing the number of the greater +lords who formed the upper house went steadily +on. Under Edward the Second little more than +seventy were commonly summoned to Parliament; +little more than forty were summoned under +Edward the Third, and of these the bulk were +now bound to the Crown, partly by their employment +on its service, partly by their interest in the +continuance of the war. The heads of the Baronage +too were members of the royal family. Edward +had carried out on a far wider scale than before +the policy which had been more or less adhered to +from the days of Henry the Third, that of gathering +up in the hands of the royal house all the +greater heritages of the land. The Black Prince +was married to Joan of Kent, the heiress of Edward +the First's younger son, Earl Edmund of Woodstock. +His marriage with the heiress of the Earl +of Ulster brought to the king's second son, Lionel, +Duke of Clarence, a great part of the possessions +of the de Burghs. Later on the possessions of the +house of Bohun passed by like matches to his youngest +son, Thomas of Woodstock, and to his grandson, +Henry of Lancaster. But the greatest English +heritage fell to Edward's third living son, John of +Gaunt as he was called from his birth at Ghent +during his father's Flemish campaign. Originally +created Earl of Richmond, the death of his father-in-law, +Henry of Lancaster, and of Henry's eldest +daughter, raised John in his wife's right to the + +<span class="pagenum"><a name="Vol2-Page-2-294"></a>2-294]</span> + +Dukedom of Lancaster and the Earldoms of Derby, +Leicester, and Lincoln. But while the baronage +were thus bound to the Crown, they drifted more +and more into an hostility with the Church which +in time disabled the clergy from acting as a check +on it. What rent the ruling classes in twain was +the growing pressure of the war. The nobles and +knighthood of the country, already half ruined by +the rise in the labour market and the attitude of +the peasantry, were pressed harder than ever by +the repeated subsidies which were called for by +the continuance of the struggle. In the hour of +their distress they cast their eyes greedily--as in +the Norman and Angevin days--on the riches of +the Church. Never had her wealth been greater. +Out of a population of some three millions the +ecclesiastics numbered between twenty and thirty +thousand. Wild tales of their riches floated about +the country. They were said to own in landed +property alone more than a third of the soil, +while their "spiritualities" in dues and offerings +amounted to twice the king's revenue. Exaggerated +as such statements were, the wealth of the +Church was really great; but even more galling +to the nobles was its influence in the royal councils. +The feudal baronage, flushed with a new pride by +its victories at Crécy and Poitiers, looked with +envy and wrath at the throng of bishops around +the council-board, and attributed to their love of +peace the errors and sluggishness which had + +<span class="pagenum"><a name="Vol2-Page-2-295"></a>2-295]</span> + +caused, as they held, the disasters of the war. +To rob the Church of wealth and of power became +the aim of a great baronial party. +</p> + +<p> +<span class="sidenote">Weakness of +the Church</span> +</p> + +<p> +The efforts of the baronage indeed would have +been fruitless had the spiritual power of the +Church remained as of old. But the clergy were +rent by their own dissensions. The higher prelates +were busy with the cares of political office, +and severed from the lower priesthood by the +scandalous inequality between the revenues of the +wealthier ecclesiastics and the "poor parson" of +the country. A bitter hatred divided the secular +clergy from the regular; and this strife went +fiercely on in the Universities. Fitz-Ralf, the +Chancellor of Oxford, attributed to the friars the +decline which was already being felt in the number +of academical students, and the University checked +by statute their practice of admitting mere children +into their order. The clergy too at large +shared in the discredit and unpopularity of the +Papacy. Though they suffered more than any +other class from the exactions of Avignon, they +were bound more and more to the Papal cause. +The very statutes which would have protected +them were practically set aside by the treacherous +diplomacy of the Crown. At home and abroad +the Roman See was too useful for the king to +come to any actual breach with it. However +much Edward might echo the bold words of his +Parliament, he shrank from an open contest which + +<span class="pagenum"><a name="Vol2-Page-2-296"></a>2-296]</span> + +would have added the Papacy to his many foes, +and which would at the same time have robbed +him of his most effective means of wresting aids +from the English clergy by private arrangement +with the Roman court. Rome indeed was brought +to waive its alleged right of appointing foreigners +to English livings. But a compromise was arranged +between the Pope and the Crown in which +both united in the spoliation and enslavement of +the Church. The voice of chapters, of monks, of +ecclesiastical patrons, went henceforth for nothing +in the election of bishops or abbots or the nomination +to livings in the gift of churchmen. The +Crown recommended those whom it chose to the +Pope, and the Pope nominated them to see or cure +of souls. The treasuries of both King and Pope +profited by the arrangement; but we can hardly +wonder that after a betrayal such as this the +clergy placed little trust in statutes or royal protection, +and bowed humbly before the claims of +Rome. +</p> + +<p> +<span class="sidenote">Its Worldliness</span> +</p> + +<p> +But what weakened the clergy most was their +severance from the general sympathies of the +nation, their selfishness, and the worldliness of +their temper. Immense as their wealth was, they +bore as little as they could of the common burthens +of the realm. They were still resolute to assert +their exemption from the common justice of the +land, though the mild punishments of the bishops' +courts carried as little dismay as ever into the + +<span class="pagenum"><a name="Vol2-Page-2-297"></a>2-297]</span> + +mass of disorderly clerks. But privileged as they +thus held themselves against all interference from +the lay world without them, they carried on a +ceaseless interference with the affairs of this lay +world through their control over wills, contracts +and divorces. No figure was better known or +more hated than the summoner who enforced the +jurisdiction and levied the dues of their courts. +By their directly religious offices they penetrated +into the very heart of the social life about them. +But powerful as they were, their moral authority +was fast passing away. The wealthier churchmen +with their curled hair and hanging sleeves aped +the costume of the knightly society from which +they were drawn and to which they still really +belonged. We see the general impression of their +worldliness in Chaucer's pictures of the hunting +monk and the courtly prioress with her love-motto +on her brooch. The older religious orders in fact +had sunk into mere landowners, while the enthusiasm +of the friars had in great part died away +and left a crowd of impudent mendicants behind +it. Wyclif could soon with general applause +denounce them as sturdy beggars, and declare +that "the man who gives alms to a begging friar +is <i>ipso facto</i> excommunicate." +</p> + +<p> +<span class="sidenote">Advance +of the +Commons</span> +</p> + +<p> +It was this weakness of the Baronage and the +Church, and the consequent withdrawal of both as +represented in the temporal and spiritual Estates +of the Upper House from the active part which + +<span class="pagenum"><a name="Vol2-Page-2-298"></a>2-298]</span> + +they had taken till now in checking the Crown +that brought the Lower House to the front. The +Knight of the Shire was now finally joined with +the Burgess of the Town to form the Third Estate +of the realm: and this union of the trader and the +country gentleman gave a vigour and weight to +the action of the Commons which their House +could never have acquired had it remained as elsewhere +a mere gathering of burgesses. But it was +only slowly and under the pressure of one necessity +after another that the Commons took a growing +part in public affairs. Their primary business was +with taxation, and here they stood firm against +the evasions by which the king still managed to +baffle their exclusive right of granting supplies by +voluntary agreements with the merchants of the +Staple. Their steady pressure at last obtained in +1362 an enactment that no subsidy should henceforth +be set upon wool without assent of Parliament, +while Purveyance was restricted by a provision +that payments should be made for all things +taken for the king's use in ready money. A +hardly less important advance was made by the +change of Ordinances into Statutes. Till this +time, even when a petition of the Houses was +granted, the royal Council had reserved to itself +the right of modifying its form in the Ordinance +which professed to embody it. It was under +colour of this right that so many of the provisions +made in Parliament had hitherto been evaded or + +<span class="pagenum"><a name="Vol2-Page-2-299"></a>2-299]</span> + +set aside. But the Commons now met this abuse +by a demand that on the royal assent being +given their petitions should be turned without +change into Statutes of the Realm and derive force +of law from their entry on the Rolls of Parliament. +The same practical sense was seen in their dealings +with Edward's attempt to introduce occasional +smaller councils with parliamentary powers. Such +an assembly in 1353 granted a subsidy on wool. +The Parliament which met in the following year +might have challenged its proceedings as null and +void, but the Commons more wisely contented +themselves with a demand that the ordinances +passed in the preceding assembly should receive +the sanction of the Three Estates. A precedent +for evil was thus turned into a precedent for +good, and though irregular gatherings of a like +sort were for a while occasionally held they were +soon seen to be fruitless and discontinued. But +the Commons long shrank from meddling with +purely administrative matters. When Edward in +his anxiety to shift from himself the responsibility +of the war referred to them in 1354 for advice on +one of the numerous propositions of peace, they +referred him to the lords of his Council. "Most +dreaded lord," they replied, "as to this war and +the equipment needful for it we are so ignorant +and simple that we know not how nor have the +power to devise. Wherefore we pray your Grace +to excuse us in this matter, and that it please you + +<span class="pagenum"><a name="Vol2-Page-2-300"></a>2-300]</span> + +with the advice of the great and wise persons of +your Council to ordain what seems best for you +for the honour and profit of yourself and of your +kingdom. And whatsoever shall be thus ordained +by assent and agreement on the part of you and +your Lords we readily assent to and will hold it +firmly established." +</p> + +<p> +<span class="sidenote">Baronage +attacks the +Church</span> +</p> + +<p> +But humble as was their tone the growing +power of the Commons showed itself in significant +changes. In 1363 the Chancellor opened Parliament +with a speech in English, no doubt as a +tongue intelligible to the members of the Lower +House. From a petition in 1376 that knights of +the shire may be chosen by common election of +the better folk of the shire and not merely nominated +by the sheriff without due election, as well +as from an earlier demand that the sheriffs themselves +should be disqualified from serving in Parliament +during their term of office, we see that the +Crown had already begun not only to feel the +pressure of the Commons but to meet it by foisting +royal nominees on the constituencies. Such +an attempt at packing the House would hardly +have been resorted to had it not already proved +too strong for direct control. A further proof of +its influence was seen in a prayer of the Parliament +that lawyers practising in the King's Courts might +no longer be eligible as knights of the shire. The +petition marks the rise of a consciousness that the +House was now no mere gathering of local representatives, + +<span class="pagenum"><a name="Vol2-Page-2-301"></a>2-301]</span> + +but a national assembly, and that a seat +in it could no longer be confined to dwellers within +the bounds of this county or that. But it +showed also a pressure for seats, a passing away +of the old dread of being returned as a representative +and a new ambition to gain a place among +the members of the Commons. Whether they +would or no indeed the Commons were driven +forward to a more direct interference with public +affairs. From the memorable statute of 1322 +their right to take equal part in all matters +brought before Parliament had been incontestable, +and their waiver of much of this right faded away +before the stress of time. Their assent was needed +to the great ecclesiastical statutes which regulated +the relation of the See of Rome to the realm. +They naturally took a chief part in the enactment +and re-enactment of the Statute of Labourers. +The Statute of the Staple, with a host of smaller +commercial and economical measures, was of their +origination. But it was not till an open breach +took place between the baronage and the prelates +that their full weight was felt. In the Parliament +of 1371, on the resumption of the war, a noble +taunted the Church as an owl protected by the +feathers which other birds had contributed, and +which they had a right to resume when a hawk's +approach threatened them. The worldly goods of +the Church, the metaphor hinted, had been bestowed +on it for the common weal, and could be + +<span class="pagenum"><a name="Vol2-Page-2-302"></a>2-302]</span> + +taken from it on the coming of a common danger. +The threat was followed by a prayer that the +chief offices of state, which had till now been held +by the leading bishops, might be placed in lay +hands. The prayer was at once granted: William +of Wykeham, Bishop of Winchester, resigned the +Chancellorship, another prelate the Treasury, to +lay dependants of the great nobles; and the panic +of the clergy was seen in large grants which were +voted by both Convocations. +</p> + +<p> +<span class="sidenote">John of +Gaunt</span> +</p> + +<p> +At the moment of their triumph the assailants +of the Church found a leader in John of Gaunt. +The Duke of Lancaster now wielded the actual +power of the Crown. Edward himself was sinking +into dotage. Of his sons the Black Prince, who +had never rallied from the hardships of his Spanish +campaign, was fast drawing to the grave; he had +lost a second son by death in childhood; the third, +Lionel of Clarence, had died in 1368. It was his +fourth son therefore, John of Gaunt, to whom the +royal power mainly fell. By his marriage with +the heiress of the house of Lancaster the Duke had +acquired lands and wealth, but he had no taste for +the policy of the Lancastrian house or for acting +as leader of the barons in any constitutional resistance +to the Crown. His pride, already quickened +by the second match with Constance to which he +owed his shadowy kingship of Castille, drew him +to the throne; and the fortune which placed the +royal power practically in his hands bound him + +<span class="pagenum"><a name="Vol2-Page-2-303"></a>2-303]</span> + +only the more firmly to its cause. Men held that +his ambition looked to the Crown itself, for the +approaching death of Edward and the Prince of +Wales left but a boy, Richard, the son of the Black +Prince, a child of but a few years old, and a girl, +the daughter of the Duke of Clarence, between +John and the throne. But the Duke's success fell +short of his pride. In the campaign of 1373 he +traversed France without finding a foe and brought +back nothing save a ruined army to English shores. +The peremptory tone in which money was demanded +for the cost of this fruitless march while +the petitions of the Parliament were set aside till +it was granted roused the temper of the Commons. +They requested--it is the first instance of such a +practice--a conference with the lords, and while +granting fresh subsidies prayed that the grant +should be spent only on the war. The resentment +of the government at this advance towards a control +over the actual management of public affairs was +seen in the calling of no Parliament through the +next two years. But the years were disastrous +both at home and abroad. The war went steadily +against the English arms. The long negotiations +with the Pope which went on at Bruges through +1375, and in which Wyclif took part as one of the +royal commissioners, ended in a compromise by +which Rome yielded nothing. The strife over the +Statute of Labourers grew fiercer and fiercer, and +a return of the plague heightened the public distress. + +<span class="pagenum"><a name="Vol2-Page-2-304"></a>2-304]</span> + +Edward was now wholly swayed by Alice +Perrers, and the Duke shared his power with the +royal mistress. But if we gather its tenor from +the complaints of the succeeding Parliament his +administration was as weak as it was corrupt. +The new lay ministers lent themselves to gigantic +frauds. The chamberlain, Lord Latimer, bought +up the royal debts and embezzled the public +revenue. With Richard Lyons, a merchant through +whom the king negotiated with the gild of the +Staple, he reaped enormous profits by raising the +price of imports and by lending to the Crown at +usurious rates of interest. When the empty +treasury forced them to call a Parliament the +ministers tampered with the elections through the +sheriffs. +</p> + +<p> +<span class="sidenote">The Good +Parliament</span> +</p> + +<p> +But the temper of the Parliament which met in +1376, and which gained from after times the name +of the Good Parliament, shows that these precautions +had utterly failed. Even their promise +to pillage the Church had failed to win for the +Duke and his party the good will of the lesser +gentry or the wealthier burgesses who together +formed the Commons. Projects of wide constitutional +and social change, of the humiliation and +impoverishment of an estate of the realm, were +profoundly distasteful to men already struggling +with a social revolution on their own estates and +in their own workshops. But it was not merely +its opposition to the projects of Lancaster and his + +<span class="pagenum"><a name="Vol2-Page-2-305"></a>2-305]</span> + +party among the baronage which won for this +assembly the name of the Good Parliament. Its +action marked a new period in our Parliamentary +history, as it marked a new stage in the character +of the national opposition to the misrule of the +Crown. Hitherto the task of resistance had +devolved on the baronage, and had been carried +out through risings of its feudal tenantry. But +the misgovernment was now that of the baronage +or of a main part of the baronage itself in actual +conjunction with the Crown. Only in the power +of the Commons lay any adequate means of peaceful +redress. The old reluctance of the Lower +House to meddle with matters of State was roughly +swept away therefore by the pressure of the time. +The Black Prince, anxious to secure his child's +succession by the removal of John of Gaunt, the +prelates with William of Wykeham at their head, +resolute again to take their place in the royal +councils and to check the projects of ecclesiastical +spoliation put forward by their opponents, alike +found in it a body to oppose to the Duke's administration. +Backed by powers such as these, +the action of the Commons showed none of their +old timidity or self-distrust. The presentation of +a hundred and forty petitions of grievances preluded +a bold attack on the royal Council. "Trusting in +God, and standing with his followers before the +nobles, whereof the chief was John Duke of +Lancaster, whose doings were ever contrary," their + +<span class="pagenum"><a name="Vol2-Page-2-306"></a>2-306]</span> + +speaker, Sir Peter de la Mare, denounced the mis-management +of the war, the oppressive taxation, +and demanded an account of the expenditure. +"What do these base and ignoble knights attempt?" +cried John of Gaunt. "Do they think they be +kings or princes of the land?" But the movement +was too strong to be stayed. Even the Duke was +silenced by the charges brought against the +ministers. After a strict enquiry Latimer and +Lyons were alike thrown into prison, Alice Perrers +was banished, and several of the royal servants +were driven from the Court. At this moment the +death of the Black Prince shook the power of the +Parliament. But it only heightened its resolve +to secure the succession. His son, Richard of +Bordeaux, as he was called from the place of his +birth, was now a child of but ten years old; and +it was known that doubts were whispered on the +legitimacy of his birth and claim. An early +marriage of his mother Joan of Kent, a granddaughter +of Edward the First, with the Earl of +Salisbury had been annulled; but the Lancastrian +party used this first match to throw doubts on the +validity of her subsequent union with the Black +Prince and on the right of Richard to the +throne. The dread of Lancaster's ambition is the +first indication of the approach of what was from +this time to grow into the great difficulty of the +realm, the question of the succession to the Crown. +From the death of Edward the Third to the death + +<span class="pagenum"><a name="Vol2-Page-2-307"></a>2-307]</span> + +of Charles the First no English sovereign felt himself +secure from rival claimants of his throne. As +yet however the dread was a baseless one; the +people were heartily with the Prince and his child. +The Duke's proposal that the succession should be +settled in case of Richard's death was rejected; +and the boy himself was brought into Parliament +and acknowledged as heir of the Crown. +</p> + +<p> +<span class="sidenote">Wyclif +and John +of Gaunt</span> +</p> + +<p> +To secure their work the Commons ended by +obtaining the addition of nine lords with William +of Wykeham and two other prelates among them +to the royal Council. But the Parliament was no +sooner dismissed than the Duke at once resumed +his power. His anger at the blow which had been +dealt at his projects was no doubt quickened by +resentment at the sudden advance of the Lower +House. From the Commons who shrank even +from giving counsel on matters of state to the +Commons who dealt with such matters as their +special business, who investigated royal accounts, +who impeached royal ministers, who dictated +changes in the royal advisers, was an immense +step. But it was a step which the Duke believed +could be retraced. His haughty will flung aside +all restraints of law. He dismissed the new lords +and prelates from the Council. He called back +Alice Perrers and the disgraced ministers. He +declared the Good Parliament no parliament, and +did not suffer its petitions to be enrolled as statutes. +He imprisoned Peter de la Mare, and confiscated + +<span class="pagenum"><a name="Vol2-Page-2-308"></a>2-308]</span> + +the possessions of William of Wykeham. His +attack on this prelate was an attack on the clergy +at large, and the attack became significant when +the Duke gave his open patronage to the denunciations +of Church property which formed the +favourite theme of John Wyclif. To Wyclif such +a prelate as Wykeham symbolized the evil which +held down the Church. His administrative ability, +his political energy, his wealth and the colleges at +Winchester and at Oxford which it enabled him +to raise before his death, were all equally hateful. +It was this wealth, this intermeddling with worldly +business, which the ascetic reformer looked upon +as the curse that robbed prelates and churchmen +of that spiritual authority which could alone meet +the vice and suffering of the time. Whatever baser +motives might spur Lancaster and his party, their +projects of spoliation must have seemed to Wyclif +projects of enfranchisement for the Church. Poor +and powerless in worldly matters, he held that she +would have the wealth and might of heaven at her +command. Wyclif's theory of Church and State +had led him long since to contend that the property +of the clergy might be seized and employed like +other property for national purposes. Such a +theory might have been left, as other daring +theories of the schoolmen had been left, to the +disputation of the schools. But the clergy were +bitterly galled when the first among English +teachers threw himself hotly on the side of the + +<span class="pagenum"><a name="Vol2-Page-2-309"></a>2-309]</span> + +party which threatened them with spoliation, and +argued in favour of their voluntary abandonment +of all Church property and of a return to their +original poverty. They were roused to action +when Wyclif came forward as the theological bulwark +of the Lancastrian party at a moment when +the clergy were freshly outraged by the overthrow +of the bishops and the plunder of Wykeham. +They forced the king to cancel the sentence of +banishment from the precincts of the Court which +had been directed against the Bishop of Winchester +by refusing any grant of supply in Convocation +till William of Wykeham took his seat in it. But +in the prosecution of Wyclif they resolved to return +blow for blow. In February 1377 he was +summoned before Bishop Courtenay of London to +answer for his heretical propositions concerning +the wealth of the Church. +</p> + +<p> +The Duke of Lancaster accepted the challenge +as really given to himself, and stood by Wyclif's +side in the Consistory Court at St. Paul's. But +no trial took place. Fierce words passed between +the nobles and the prelate: the Duke himself was +said to have threatened to drag Courtenay out of +the church by the hair of his head; at last the +London populace, to whom John of Gaunt was +hateful, burst in to their Bishop's rescue, and +Wyclif's life was saved with difficulty by the aid +of the soldiery. But his boldness only grew with +the danger. A Papal bull which was procured by + +<span class="pagenum"><a name="Vol2-Page-2-310"></a>2-310]</span> + +the bishops, directing the University to condemn +and arrest him, extorted from him a bold defiance. +In a defence circulated widely through the kingdom +and laid before Parliament, Wyclif broadly asserted +that no man could be excommunicated by the Pope +"unless he were first excommunicated by himself." +He denied the right of the Church to exact or +defend temporal privileges by spiritual censures, +declared that a Church might justly be deprived +by the king or lay lords of its property for defect +of duty, and defended the subjection of ecclesiastics +to civil tribunals. It marks the temper of the time +and the growing severance between the Church +and the nation that, bold as the defiance was, it +won the support of the people as of the Crown. +When Wyclif appeared at the close of the year in +Lambeth Chapel to answer the Archbishop's summons +a message from the Court forbade the primate +to proceed and the Londoners broke in and +dissolved the session. +</p> + +<p> +<span class="sidenote">Death of +Edward the +Third</span> +</p> + +<p> +Meanwhile the Duke's unscrupulous tampering +with elections had packed the Parliament of 1377 +with his adherents. The work of the Good Parliament +was undone, and the Commons petitioned for +the restoration of all who had been impeached by +their predecessors. The needs of the treasury +were met by a novel form of taxation. To the +earlier land-tax, to the tax on personality which +dated from the Saladin Tithe, to the customs duties +which had grown into importance in the last two + +<span class="pagenum"><a name="Vol2-Page-2-311"></a>2-311]</span> + +reigns, was now added a tax which reached every +person in the realm, a poll-tax of a groat a head. +In this tax were sown the seeds of future trouble, +but when the Parliament broke up in March the +Duke's power seemed completely secured. Hardly +three months later it was wholly undone. In June +Edward the Third died in a dishonoured old age, +robbed on his death-bed even of his rings by the +mistress to whom he clung, and the accession of +his grandson, Richard the Second, changed the +whole face of affairs. The Duke withdrew from +Court, and sought a reconciliation with the party +opposed to him. The men of the Good Parliament +surrounded the new king, and a Parliament which +assembled in October took vigorously up its work. +Peter de la Mare was released from prison and +replaced in the chair of the House of Commons. +The action of the Lower House indeed was as +trenchant and comprehensive as that of the Good +Parliament itself. In petition after petition the +Commons demanded the confirmation of older +rights and the removal of modern abuses. They +complained of administrative wrongs such as the +practice of purveyance, of abuses of justice, of the +oppressions of officers of the exchequer and of the +forest, of the ill state of prisons, of the customs of +"maintenance" and "livery" by which lords extended +their protection to shoals of disorderly +persons and overawed the courts by means of them. +Amid ecclesiastical abuses they noted the state of + +<span class="pagenum"><a name="Vol2-Page-2-312"></a>2-312]</span> + +the Church courts, and the neglect of the laws +of Provisors. They demanded that the annual +assembly of Parliament, which had now become +customary, should be defined by law, and that +bills once sanctioned by the Crown should be +forthwith turned into statutes without further +amendment or change on the part of the royal +Council. With even greater boldness they laid +hands on the administration itself. They not +only demanded that the evil counsellors of the +last reign should be removed, and that the treasurer +of the subsidy on wool should account for +its expenditure to the lords, but that the royal +Council should be named in Parliament, and chosen +from members of either estate of the realm. Though +a similar request for the nomination of the officers +of the royal household was refused, their main +demand was granted. It was agreed that the great +officers of state, the chancellor, treasurer, and barons +of exchequer should be named by the lords in +Parliament, and removed from their offices during +the king's "tender years" only on the advice of +the lords. The pressure of the war, which rendered +the existing taxes insufficient, gave the House a +fresh hold on the Crown. While granting a new +subsidy in the form of a land and property tax, the +Commons restricted its proceeds to the war, and +assigned two of their members, William Walworth +and John Philpot, as a standing committee to +regulate its expenditure. The successor of this + +<span class="pagenum"><a name="Vol2-Page-2-313"></a>2-313]</span> + +Parliament in the following year demanded and +obtained an account of the way in which the subsidy +had been spent. +</p> + +<p> +<span class="sidenote">Discontent +of the +people</span> +</p> + +<p> +The minority of the king, who was but eleven +years old at his accession, the weakness of the royal +council amidst the strife of the baronial factions, +above all the disasters of the war without and the +growing anarchy within the realm itself, alone made +possible this startling assumption of the executive +power by the Houses. The shame of defeat abroad +was being added to the misery and discomfort at +home. The French war ran its disastrous course. +One English fleet was beaten by the Spaniards, a +second sunk by a storm; and a campaign in the heart +of France ended, like its predecessors, in disappointment +and ruin. Meanwhile the strife between +employers and employed was kindling into civil +war. The Parliament, drawn as it was wholly +from the proprietary classes, struggled as fiercely +for the mastery of the labourers as it struggled for +the mastery of the Crown. The Good Parliament +had been as strenuous in demanding the enforcement +of the Statute of Labourers as any of its +predecessors. In spite of statutes, however, the +market remained in the labourers' hands. The +comfort of the worker rose with his wages. Men +who had "no land to live on but their hands disdained +to live on penny ale or bacon, and called +for fresh flesh or fish, fried or bake, and that hot +and hotter for chilling of their maw." But there + +<span class="pagenum"><a name="Vol2-Page-2-314"></a>2-314]</span> + +were dark shades in this general prosperity of the +labour class. There were seasons of the year +during which employment for the floating mass of +labour was hard to find. In the long interval +between harvest-tide and harvest-tide work and +food were alike scarce in every homestead of the +time. Some lines of William Langland give us +the picture of a farm of the day. "I have no +penny pullets for to buy, nor neither geese nor +pigs, but two green cheeses, a few curds and cream, +and an oaten cake, and two loaves of beans and +bran baken for my children. I have no salt bacon +nor no cooked meat collops for to make, but I have +parsley and leeks and many cabbage plants, and +eke a cow and a calf, and a cart-mare to draw +afield my dung while the drought lasteth, and by +this livelihood we must all live till Lammas-tide +[August], and by that I hope to have harvest in +my croft." But it was not till Lammas-tide that +high wages and the new corn bade "Hunger go to +sleep," and during the long spring and summer the +free labourer and the "waster that will not work +but wander about, that will eat no bread but the +finest wheat, nor drink but of the best and brownest +ale," was a source of social and political danger. +"He grieveth him against God and grudgeth +against Reason, and then curseth he the King and +all his council after such law to allow labourers to +grieve." Such a smouldering mass of discontent +as this needed but a spark to burst into flame; and + +<span class="pagenum"><a name="Vol2-Page-2-315"></a>2-315]</span> + +the spark was found in the imposition of fresh +taxation. +</p> + +<p> +<span class="sidenote">The +Poll-Tax</span> +</p> + +<p> +If John of Gaunt was fallen from his old power +he was still the leading noble in the realm, and it +is possible that dread of the encroachments of the +last Parliament on the executive power drew after +a time even the new advisers of the Crown closer to +him. Whatever was the cause, he again came to +the front. But the supplies voted in the past +year were wasted in his hands. A fresh expedition +against France under the Duke himself ended in +failure before the walls of St. Malo, while at home +his brutal household was outraging public order +by the murder of a knight who had incurred John's +anger in the precincts of Westminster. So great +was the resentment of the Londoners at this act +that it became needful to summon Parliament elsewhere +than to the capital; and in 1378 the Houses +met at Gloucester. The Duke succeeded in bringing +the Lords to refuse those conferences with the +Commons which had given unity to the action of +the late Parliament, but he was foiled in an attack +on the clerical privilege of sanctuary and in the +threats which his party still directed against +Church property, while the Commons forced the +royal Council to lay before them the accounts of +the last subsidy and to appoint a commission to +examine into the revenue of the Crown. Unhappily +the financial policy of the preceding year was persisted +in. The check before St. Malo had been + +<span class="pagenum"><a name="Vol2-Page-2-316"></a>2-316]</span> + +somewhat redeemed by treaties with Charles of +Evreux and the Duke of Britanny which secured +to England the right of holding Cherbourg and +Brest; but the cost of these treaties only swelled +the expenses of the war. The fresh supplies voted +at Gloucester proved insufficient for their purpose, +and a Parliament in the spring of 1379 renewed +the Poll-tax in a graduated form. But the proceeds +of the tax proved miserably inadequate, and +when fresh debts beset the Crown in 1380 a return +was again made to the old system of subsidies. +But these failed in their turn; and at the close of +the year the Parliament again fell back on a severer +Poll-tax. One of the attractions of the new mode +of taxation seems to have been that the clergy, +who adopted it for themselves, paid in this way a +larger share of the burthens of the state; but the +chief ground for its adoption lay, no doubt, in its +bringing within the net of the tax-gatherer a class +which had hitherto escaped him, men such as the +free labourer, the village smith, the village tiler. +But few courses could have been more dangerous. +The Poll-tax not only brought the pressure of the +war home to every household; it goaded into action +precisely the class which was already seething with +discontent. The strife between labour and capital +was going on as fiercely as ever in country and in +town. The landlords were claiming new services, +or forcing men who looked on themselves as free +to prove they were no villeins by law. The free + +<span class="pagenum"><a name="Vol2-Page-2-317"></a>2-317]</span> + +labourer was struggling against the attempt to +exact work from him at low wages. The wandering +workman was being seized and branded as a +vagrant. The abbey towns were struggling for +freedom against the abbeys. The craftsmen within +boroughs were carrying on the same strife against +employer and craft-gild. And all this mass of +discontent was being heightened and organized by +agencies with which the Government could not +cope. The poorer villeins and the free labourers +had long since banded together in secret conspiracies +which the wealthier villeins supported +with money. The return of soldiers from the war +threw over the land a host of broken men, skilled +in arms, and ready to take part in any rising. +The begging friars, wandering and gossiping from +village to village and street to street, shared the +passions of the class from which they sprang. +Priests like Ball openly preached the doctrines of +communism. And to these had been recently +added a fresh agency, which could hardly fail to +stir a new excitement. With the practical ability +which marked his character, Wyclif set on foot +about this time a body of poor preachers to supply, +as he held, the place of those wealthier clergy who +had lost their hold on the land. The coarse +sermons, bare feet, and russet dress of these +"Simple Priests" moved the laughter of rector and +canon, but they proved a rapid and effective means +of diffusing Wyclif's protests against the wealth + +<span class="pagenum"><a name="Vol2-Page-2-318"></a>2-318]</span> + +and sluggishness of the clergy, and we can hardly +doubt that in the general turmoil their denunciation +of ecclesiastical wealth passed often into more +general denunciations of the proprietary classes. +</p> + +<p> +<span class="sidenote">John Ball</span> +</p> + +<p> +As the spring went by quaint rimes passed +through the country, and served as a summons to +revolt. "John Ball," ran one, "greeteth you all, +and doth for to understand he hath rung your +bell. Now right and might, will and skill, God +speed every dele." "Help truth," ran another, +"and truth shall help you! Now reigneth pride +in price, and covetise is counted wise, and lechery +withouten shame, and gluttony withouten blame. +Envy reigneth with treason, and sloth is take in +great season. God do bote, for now is tyme!" +We recognize Ball's hand in the yet more stirring +missives of "Jack the Miller" and "Jack the +Carter." "Jack Miller asketh help to turn his +mill aright. He hath grounden small, small: the +King's Son of Heaven he shall pay for all. Look +thy mill go aright with the four sailes, and the +post stand with steadfastness. With right and +with might, with skill and with will; let might +help right, and skill go before will, and right +before might, so goeth our mill aright." "Jack +Carter," ran the companion missive, "prays you +all that ye make a good end of that ye have +begun, and do well, and aye better and better: +for at the even men heareth the day." "Falseness +and guile," sang Jack Trewman, "have reigned + +<span class="pagenum"><a name="Vol2-Page-2-319"></a>2-319]</span> + +too long, and truth hath been set under a lock, +and falseness and guile reigneth in every stock. +No man may come truth to, but if he sing 'si +dedero.' True love is away that was so good, +and clerks for wealth work them woe. God do +bote, for now is time." In the rude jingle of these +lines began for England the literature of political +controversy: they are the first predecessors of +the pamphlets of Milton and of Burke. Rough as +they are, they express clearly enough the mingled +passions which met in the revolt of the peasants: +their longing for a right rule, for plain and simple +justice; their scorn of the immorality of the nobles +and the infamy of the court; their resentment at the +perversion of the law to the cause of oppression. +</p> + +<p> +<span class="sidenote">The Peasant +Rising</span> +</p> + +<p> +From the eastern and midland counties the +restlessness spread to all England south of the +Thames. But the grounds of discontent varied +with every district. The actual outbreak began +on the 5th of June at Dartford, where a tiler +killed one of the collectors of the poll-tax in +vengeance for a brutal outrage on his daughter. +The county at once rose in arms. Canterbury, +where "the whole town was of their mind," threw +open its gates to the insurgents who plundered +the Archbishop's palace and dragged John Ball +from his prison. A hundred thousand Kentishmen +gathered round Walter Tyler of Essex and +John Hales of Malling to march upon London. +Their grievance was mainly a political one. + +<span class="pagenum"><a name="Vol2-Page-2-320"></a>2-320]</span> + +Villeinage was unknown in Kent. As the +peasants poured towards Blackheath indeed every +lawyer who fell into their hands was put to death; +"not till all these were killed would the land +enjoy its old freedom again," the Kentishmen +shouted as they fired the houses of the stewards +and flung the rolls of the manor-courts into the +flames. But this action can hardly have been due +to anything more than sympathy with the rest of +the realm, the sympathy which induced the same +men when pilgrims from the north brought news +that John of Gaunt was setting free his bondmen +to send to the Duke an offer to make him Lord +and King of England. Nor was their grievance a +religious one. Lollardry can have made little way +among men whose grudge against the Archbishop +of Canterbury sprang from his discouragement of +pilgrimages. Their discontent was simply political; +they demanded the suppression of the poll-tax +and better government; their aim was to slay +the nobles and wealthier clergy, to take the king +into their own hands, and pass laws which should +seem good to the Commons of the realm. The +whole population joined the Kentishmen as they +marched along, while the nobles were paralyzed +with fear. The young king--he was but a boy of +sixteen--addressed them from a boat on the river; +but the refusal of his Council under the guidance of +Archbishop Sudbury to allow him to land kindled +the peasants to fury, and with cries of "Treason" the + +<span class="pagenum"><a name="Vol2-Page-2-321"></a>2-321]</span> + +great mass rushed on London. On the +13th of June its gates were flung open by the +poorer artizans within the city, and the stately +palace of John of Gaunt at the Savoy, the new +inn of the lawyers at the Temple, the houses of +the foreign merchants, were soon in a blaze. But +the insurgents, as they proudly boasted, were +"seekers of truth and justice, not thieves or +robbers," and a plunderer found carrying off a +silver vessel from the sack of the Savoy was flung +with his spoil into the flames. Another body of +insurgents encamped at the same time to the east +of the city. In Essex and the eastern counties +the popular discontent was more social than +political. The demands of the peasants were that +bondage should be abolished, that tolls and imposts +on trade should be done away with, that "no acre +of land which is held in bondage or villeinage be +held at higher rate than fourpence a year," in +other words for a money commutation of all +villein services. Their rising had been even +earlier than that of the Kentishmen. Before +Whitsuntide an attempt to levy the poll-tax +gathered crowds of peasants together, armed with +clubs, rusty swords, and bows. The royal commissioners +who were sent to repress the tumult +were driven from the field, and the Essex men +marched upon London on one side of the river as +the Kentishmen marched on the other. The +evening of the thirteenth, the day on which Tyler + +<span class="pagenum"><a name="Vol2-Page-2-322"></a>2-322]</span> + +entered the city, saw them encamped without its +walls at Mile-end. At the same moment Highbury +and the northern heights were occupied by the +men of Hertfordshire and the villeins of St. +Albans, where a strife between abbot and town +had been going on since the days of Edward the +Second. +</p> + +<p> +<span class="sidenote">Richard the +Second</span> +</p> + +<p> +The royal Council with the young king had +taken refuge in the Tower, and their aim seems to +have been to divide the forces of the insurgents. +On the morning of the fourteenth therefore Richard +rode from the Tower to Mile-end to meet the Essex +men. "I am your King and Lord, good people," +the boy began with a fearlessness which marked +his bearing throughout the crisis, "what will +you?" "We will that you free us for ever," +shouted the peasants, "us and our lands; and +that we be never named nor held for serfs!" "I +grant it," replied Richard; and he bade them go +home, pledging himself at once to issue charters of +freedom and amnesty. A shout of joy welcomed +the promise. Throughout the day more than +thirty clerks were busied writing letters of pardon +and emancipation, and with these the mass of the +Essex men and the men of Hertfordshire withdrew +quietly to their homes. But while the king was +successful at Mile-end a terrible doom had fallen +on the councillors he left behind him. Richard +had hardly quitted the Tower when the Kentishmen +who had spent the night within the city + +<span class="pagenum"><a name="Vol2-Page-2-323"></a>2-323]</span> + +appeared at its gates. The general terror was +shown ludicrously enough when they burst in and +taking the panic-stricken knights of the royal +household in rough horse-play by the beard +promised to be their equals and good comrades in +the days to come. But the horse-play changed +into dreadful earnest when they found that +Richard had escaped their grasp, and the discovery +of Archbishop Sudbury and other ministers in the +chapel changed their fury into a cry for blood. +The Primate was dragged from his sanctuary and +beheaded. The same vengeance was wreaked on +the Treasurer and the Chief Commissioner for the +levy of the hated poll-tax, the merchant Richard +Lyons who had been impeached by the Good +Parliament. Richard meanwhile had ridden +round the northern wall of the city to the Wardrobe +near Blackfriars, and from this new refuge he +opened his negotiations with the Kentish insurgents. +Many of these dispersed at the news of +the king's pledge to the men of Essex, but a body +of thirty thousand still surrounded Wat Tyler +when Richard on the morning of the fifteenth +encountered that leader by a mere chance at +Smithfield. Hot words passed between his train +and the peasant chieftain who advanced to confer +with the king, and a threat from Tyler brought +on a brief struggle in which the Mayor of London, +William Walworth, struck him with his dagger to +the ground. "Kill! kill!" shouted the crowd: + +<span class="pagenum"><a name="Vol2-Page-2-324"></a>2-324]</span> + +"they have slain our captain!" But Richard +faced the Kentishmen with the same cool courage +with which he faced the men of Essex. "What +need ye, my masters?" cried the boy-king as he +rode boldly up to the front of the bowmen. "I +am your Captain and your King; follow me!" +The hopes of the peasants centred in the young +sovereign; one aim of their rising had been to +free him from the evil counsellors who, as they +believed, abused his youth; and at his word they +followed him with a touching loyalty and trust +till he entered the Tower. His mother welcomed +him within its walls with tears of joy. "Rejoice +and praise God," Richard answered, "for I have +recovered to-day my heritage which was lost and +the realm of England!" But he was compelled +to give the same pledge of freedom to the +Kentishmen as at Mile-end, and it was only after +receiving his letters of pardon and emancipation +that the yeomen dispersed to their homes. +</p> + +<p> +<span class="sidenote">The general +revolt</span> +</p> + +<p> +The revolt indeed was far from being at an end. +As the news of the rising ran through the country +the discontent almost everywhere broke into flame. +There were outbreaks in every shire south of the +Thames as far westward as Devonshire. In the +north tumults broke out at Beverley and +Scarborough, and Yorkshire and Lancashire made +ready to rise. The eastern counties were in one +wild turmoil of revolt. At Cambridge the townsmen +burned the charters of the University and + +<span class="pagenum"><a name="Vol2-Page-2-325"></a>2-325]</span> + +attacked the colleges. A body of peasants occupied +St. Albans. In Norfolk a Norwich artizan, called +John the Litster or Dyer, took the title of King +of the Commons, and marching through the +country at the head of a mass of peasants compelled +the nobles whom he captured to act as his +meat-tasters and to serve him on their knees +during his repast. The story of St. Edmundsbury +shows us what was going on in Suffolk. Ever +since the accession of Edward the Third the +townsmen and the villeins of their lands around +had been at war with the abbot and his monks. +The old and more oppressive servitude had long +passed away, but the later abbots had set +themselves against the policy of concession and +conciliation which had brought about this advance +towards freedom. The gates of the town were +still in the abbot's hands. He had succeeded in +enforcing his claim to the wardship of all orphans +born within his domain. From claims such as +these the town could never feel itself safe so long +as mysterious charters from Pope or King, interpreted +cunningly by the wit of the new lawyer +class, lay stored in the abbey archives. But the +archives contained other and hardly less formidable +documents than these. Untroubled by the waste +of war, the religious houses profited more than any +other landowners by the general growth of wealth. +They had become great proprietors, money-lenders +to their tenants, extortionate as the Jew whom + +<span class="pagenum"><a name="Vol2-Page-2-326"></a>2-326]</span> + +they had banished from their land. There were few +townsmen of St. Edmund's who had not some bonds +laid up in the abbey registry. In 1327 one band +of debtors had a covenant lying there for the payment +of five hundred marks and fifty casks of wine. +Another company of the wealthier burgesses were +joint debtors on a bond for ten thousand pounds. +The new spirit of commercial activity joined with +the troubles of the time to throw the whole community +into the abbot's hands. +</p> + +<p> +<span class="sidenote">Saint +Edmundsbury</span> +</p> + +<p> +We can hardly wonder that riots, lawsuits, and +royal commissions marked the relation of the town +and abbey under the first two Edwards. Under +the third came an open conflict. In 1327 the +townsmen burst into the great house, drove the +monks into the choir, and dragged them thence to +the town prison. The abbey itself was sacked; +chalices, missals, chasubles, tunicles, altar frontals, +the books of the library, the very vats and dishes +of the kitchen, all disappeared. The monks +estimated their losses at ten thousand pounds. +But the townsmen aimed at higher booty than +this. The monks were brought back from prison +to their own chapter-house, and the spoil of their +registry, papal bulls and royal charters, deeds and +bonds and mortgages, were laid before them. +Amidst the wild threats of the mob they were +forced to execute a grant of perfect freedom and of +a gild to the town as well as of free release to their +debtors. Then they were left masters of the + +<span class="pagenum"><a name="Vol2-Page-2-327"></a>2-327]</span> + +ruined house. But all control over town or land +was gone. Through spring and summer no rent +or fine was paid. The bailiffs and other officers of +the abbey did not dare to show their faces in the +streets. News came at last that the abbot was in +London, appealing for redress to the court, and the +whole county was at once on fire. A crowd of +rustics, maddened at the thought of revived claims +of serfage, of interminable suits of law, poured into +the streets of the town. From thirty-two of the +neighbouring villages the priests marched at the +head of their flocks as on a new crusade. The +wild mass of men, women, and children, twenty +thousand in all, as men guessed, rushed again on +the abbey, and for four November days the work +of destruction went on unhindered. When gate, +stables, granaries, kitchen, infirmary, hostelry had +gone up in flames, the multitude swept away to +the granges and barns of the abbey farms. Their +plunder shows what vast agricultural proprietors +the monks had become. A thousand horses, a +hundred and twenty plough-oxen, two hundred +cows, three hundred bullocks, three hundred hogs, +ten thousand sheep were driven off, and granges +and barns burned to the ground. It was judged +afterwards that sixty thousand pounds would +hardly cover the loss. +</p> + +<p> +Weak as was the government of Mortimer and +Isabella, the appeal of the abbot against this outrage +was promptly heeded. A royal force quelled + +<span class="pagenum"><a name="Vol2-Page-2-328"></a>2-328]</span> + +the riot, thirty carts full of prisoners were +despatched to Norwich; twenty-four of the chief +townsmen with thirty-two of the village priests +were convicted as aiders and abettors of the attack +on the abbey, and twenty were summarily hanged. +Nearly two hundred persons remained under +sentence of outlawry, and for five weary years +their case dragged on in the King's Courts. At +last matters ended in a ludicrous outrage. +Irritated by repeated breaches of promise on the +abbot's part, the outlawed burgesses seized him as +he lay in his manor of Chevington, robbed and +bound him, and carried him off to London. There +he was hurried from street to street lest his hiding-place +should be detected till opportunity offered +for shipping him off to Brabant. The Primate and +the Pope levelled their excommunications against +the abbot's captors in vain, and though he was at +last discovered and brought home it was probably +with some pledge of the arrangement which +followed in 1332. The enormous damages +assessed by the royal justices were remitted, the +outlawry of the townsmen was reversed, the +prisoners were released. On the other hand the +deeds which had been stolen were again replaced +in the archives of the abbey, and the charters +which had been extorted from the monks were +formally cancelled. +</p> + +<p> +<span class="sidenote">St. Edmundsbury +in 1381</span> +</p> + +<p> +The spirit of townsmen and villeins remained +crushed by their failure, and throughout the reign + +<span class="pagenum"><a name="Vol2-Page-2-329"></a>2-329]</span> + +of Edward the Third the oppression against which +they had risen went on without a check. It was +no longer the rough blow of sheer force; it was +the more delicate but more pitiless tyranny of the +law. At Richard's accession Prior John of Cambridge +in the vacancy of the abbot was in charge +of the house. The prior was a man skilled in all +the arts of his day. In sweetness of voice, in +knowledge of sacred song, his eulogists pronounced +him superior to Orpheus, to Nero, and to one yet +more illustrious in the Bury cloister though obscure +to us, the Breton Belgabred. John was "industrious +and subtle," and subtlety and industry found +their scope in suit after suit with the burgesses +and farmers around him. "Faithfully he strove," +says the monastic chronicler, "with the villeins of +Bury for the rights of his house." The townsmen +he owned specially as his "adversaries," but it was +the rustics who were to show what a hate he had +won. On the fifteenth of June, the day of Wat +Tyler's fall, the howl of a great multitude round +his manor-house at Mildenhall broke roughly on +the chauntings of Prior John. He strove to fly, +but he was betrayed by his own servants, judged +in rude mockery of the law by villein and +bondsman, condemned and killed. The corpse lay +naked in the open field while the mob poured +unresisted into Bury. Bearing the prior's head +on a lance before them through the streets, the +frenzied throng at last reached the gallows where + +<span class="pagenum"><a name="Vol2-Page-2-330"></a>2-330]</span> + +the head of one of the royal judges, Sir John +Cavendish, was already impaled; and pressing the +cold lips together in mockery of their friendship +set them side by side. Another head soon joined +them. The abbey gates were burst open, and the +cloister filled with a maddened crowd, howling for +a new victim, John Lackenheath, the warder of +the barony. Few knew him as he stood among the +group of trembling monks, but he courted death +with a contemptuous courage. "I am the man +you seek," he said, stepping forward; and in a +minute, with a mighty roar of "Devil's son! Monk! +Traitor!" he was swept to the gallows, and his +head hacked from his shoulders. Then the crowd +rolled back again to the abbey gate, and +summoned the monks before them. They told +them that now for a long time they had oppressed +their fellows, the burgesses of Bury; wherefore +they willed that in the sight of the Commons they +should forthwith surrender their bonds and +charters. The monks brought the parchments to +the market-place; many which were demanded +they swore they could not find. A compromise +was at last patched up; and it was agreed that +the charters should be surrendered till the future +abbot should confirm the liberties of the town. +Then, unable to do more, the crowd ebbed away. +</p> + +<p> +<span class="sidenote">Close of the +rising</span> +</p> + +<p> +A scene less violent, but even more picturesque, +went on the same day at St. Albans. William +Grindecobbe, the leader of its townsmen, returned + +<span class="pagenum"><a name="Vol2-Page-2-331"></a>2-331]</span> + +with one of the charters of emancipation which +Richard had granted after his interview at Mile-end +to the men of Essex and Hertfordshire, and +breaking into the abbey precincts at the head of +the burghers, forced the abbot to deliver up the +charters which bound the town in bondage to his +house. But a more striking proof of servitude +than any charters could give remained in the millstones +which after a long suit at law had been adjudged +to the abbey and placed within its cloister +as a triumphant witness that no townsman might +grind corn within the domain of the abbey save at +the abbot's mill. Bursting into the cloister, the +burghers now tore the mill-stones from the floor, +and broke them into small pieces, "like blessed +bread in church," which each might carry off to +show something of the day when their freedom +was won again. But it was hardly won when it +was lost anew. The quiet withdrawal and dispersion +of the peasant armies with their charters of +emancipation gave courage to the nobles. Their +panic passed away. The warlike Bishop of Norwich +fell lance in hand on Litster's camp, and +scattered the peasants of Norfolk at the first shock. +Richard with an army of forty thousand men +marched in triumph through Kent and Essex, and +spread terror by the ruthlessness of his executions. +At Waltham he was met by the display of his own +recent charters and a protest from the Essex men +that "they were so far as freedom went the peers + +<span class="pagenum"><a name="Vol2-Page-2-332"></a>2-332]</span> + +of their lords." But they were to learn the worth +of a king's word. "Villeins you were," answered +Richard, "and villeins you are. In bondage you +shall abide, and that not your old bondage, but a +worse!" The stubborn resistance which he met +showed that the temper of the people was not +easily broken. The villagers of Billericay threw +themselves into the woods and fought two hard +fights before they were reduced to submission. It +was only by threats of death that verdicts of guilty +could be wrung from Essex jurors when the leaders +of the revolt were brought before them. Grindecobbe +was offered his life if he would persuade his +followers at St. Albans to restore the charters they +had wrung from the monks. He turned bravely +to his fellow-townsmen and bade them take no +thought for his trouble. "If I die," he said, "I +shall die for the cause of the freedom we have won, +counting myself happy to end my life by such a +martyrdom. Do then to-day as you would have +done had I been killed yesterday." But repression +went pitilessly on, and through the summer and +the autumn seven thousand men are said to have +perished on the gallows or the field. +</p> + +</div> + +<span class="pagenum"><a name="Vol2-Page-2-333"></a>2-333]</span> + +<div class="chapter"> +<div class="head"> +<hr> +<a name="Bk4-Ch4"></a><ul> + +<li> +<a name="id4552756"></a>CHAPTER IV</li> +<li> +<a name="id4552762"></a>RICHARD THE SECOND</li> +<li> +<a name="id4552768"></a>1381-1400</li> + +</ul> +</div> + + + +<p> +<span class="sidenote">Results of +the Peasant +Revolt</span> +</p> + +<p> +Terrible as were the measures of repression which +followed the Peasant Revolt, and violent as was +the passion of reaction which raged among the +proprietary classes at its close, the end of the rising +was in fact secured. The words of Grindecobbe +ere his death were a prophecy which time fulfilled. +Cancel charters of manumission as the council +might, serfage was henceforth a doomed and perishing +thing. The dread of another outbreak hung +round the employer. The attempts to bring back +obsolete services quietly died away. The old process +of enfranchisement went quietly on. During +the century and a half which followed the Peasant +Revolt villeinage died out so rapidly that it became +a rare and antiquated thing. The class of small +freeholders sprang fast out of the wreck of it into +numbers and importance. In twenty years more +they were in fact recognized as the basis of our + +<span class="pagenum"><a name="Vol2-Page-2-334"></a>2-334]</span> + +electoral system in every English county. The +Labour Statutes proved as ineffective as of old in +enchaining labour or reducing its price. A hundred +years after the Black Death the wages of an English +labourer was sufficient to purchase twice the amount +of the necessaries of life which could have been +obtained for the wages paid under Edward the +Third. The incidental descriptions of the life of +the working classes which we find in Piers Ploughman +show that this increase of social comfort had +been going on even during the troubled period +which preceded the outbreak of the peasants, and +it went on faster after the revolt was over. But +inevitable as such a progress was, every step of it +was taken in the teeth of the wealthier classes. +Their temper indeed at the close of the rising was +that of men frenzied by panic and the taste of +blood. They scouted all notion of concession. +The stubborn will of the conquered was met by as +stubborn a will in their conquerors. The royal +Council showed its sense of the danger of a mere +policy of resistance by submitting the question of +enfranchisement to the Parliament which assembled +in November 1381 with words which suggested a +compromise. "If you desire to enfranchise and set +at liberty the said serfs," ran the royal message, +"by your common assent, as the King has been +informed that some of you desire, he will consent +to your prayer." But no thoughts of compromise +influenced the landowners in their reply. The + +<span class="pagenum"><a name="Vol2-Page-2-335"></a>2-335]</span> + +king's grant and letters, the Parliament answered +with perfect truth, were legally null and void: +their serfs were their goods, and the king could +not take their goods from them but by their own +consent. "And this consent," they ended, "we +have never given and never will give, were we all +to die in one day." Their temper indeed expressed +itself in legislation which was a fit sequel to the +Statutes of Labourers. They forbade the child of +any tiller of the soil to be apprenticed in a town. +They prayed the king to ordain "that no bondman +nor bondwoman shall place their children at school, +as has been done, so as to advance their children +in the world by their going into the church." The +new colleges which were being founded at the +Universities at this moment closed their gates upon +villeins. +</p> + +<p> +<span class="sidenote">Religious +reaction</span> +</p> + +<p> +The panic which produced this frenzied reaction +against all projects of social reform produced inevitably +as frenzied a panic of reaction against all +plans for religious reform. Wyclif had been supported +by the Lancastrian party till the very eve +of the Peasant Revolt. But with the rising his +whole work seemed suddenly undone. The quarrel +between the baronage and the Church on which +his political action had as yet been grounded was +hushed in the presence of a common danger. His +"poor preachers" were looked upon as missionaries +of socialism. The friars charged Wyclif with being +a "sower of strife, who by his serpentlike instigation + +<span class="pagenum"><a name="Vol2-Page-2-336"></a>2-336]</span> + +had set the serf against his lord," and though +he tossed back the charge with disdain he had to +bear a suspicion which was justified by the conduct +of some of his followers. John Ball, who had +figured in the front rank of the revolt, was falsely-named +as one of his adherents, and was alleged to +have denounced in his last hour the conspiracy of +the "Wyclifites." Wyclif's most prominent scholar, +Nicholas Herford, was said to have openly approved +the brutal murder of Archbishop Sudbury. Whatever +belief such charges might gain, it is certain +that from this moment all plans for the reorganization +of the Church were confounded in the general +odium which attached to the projects of the peasant +leaders, and that any hope of ecclesiastical reform +at the hands of the baronage and the Parliament +was at an end. But even if the Peasant Revolt +had not deprived Wyclif of the support of the +aristocratic party with whom he had hitherto cooperated, +their alliance must have been dissolved +by the new theological position which he had already +taken up. Some months before the outbreak +of the insurrection he had by one memorable step +passed from the position of a reformer of the discipline +and political relations of the Church to that +of a protester against its cardinal beliefs. If there +was one doctrine upon which the supremacy of the +Mediæval Church rested, it was the doctrine of +Transubstantiation. It was by his exclusive right +to the performance of the miracle which was + +<span class="pagenum"><a name="Vol2-Page-2-337"></a>2-337]</span> + +wrought in the mass that the lowliest priest was +raised high above princes. With the formal denial +of the doctrine of Transubstantiation which Wyclif +issued in the spring of 1381 began that great movement +of religious revolt which ended more than +a century after in the establishment of religious +freedom by severing the mass of the Teutonic +peoples from the general body of the Catholic +Church. The act was the bolder that he stood +utterly alone. The University of Oxford, in which +his influence had been hitherto all-powerful, at +once condemned him. John of Gaunt enjoined +him to be silent. Wyclif was presiding as Doctor +of Divinity over some disputations in the schools +of the Augustinian Canons when his academical +condemnation was publicly read, but though +startled for the moment he at once challenged +Chancellor or doctor to disprove the conclusions +at which he had arrived. The prohibition of the +Duke of Lancaster he met by an open avowal of +his teaching, a confession which closes proudly +with the quiet words, "I believe that in the end +the truth will conquer." +</p> + +<p> +<span class="sidenote">Rise of +Lollardry</span> +</p> + +<p> +For the moment his courage dispelled the panic +around him. The University responded to his +appeal, and by displacing his opponents from office +tacitly adopted his cause. But Wyclif no longer +looked for support to the learned or wealthier +classes on whom he had hitherto relied. He +appealed, and the appeal is memorable as the first + +<span class="pagenum"><a name="Vol2-Page-2-338"></a>2-338]</span> + +of such a kind in our history, to England at large. +With an amazing industry he issued tract after +tract in the tongue of the people itself. The dry, +syllogistic Latin, the abstruse and involved argument +which the great doctor had addressed to his +academic hearers, were suddenly flung aside, and +by a transition which marks the wonderful genius +of the man the schoolman was transformed into +the pamphleteer. If Chaucer is the father of our +later English poetry, Wyclif is the father of our +later English prose. The rough, clear, homely +English of his tracts, the speech of the ploughman +and the trader of the day though coloured with +the picturesque phraseology of the Bible, is in its +literary use as distinctly a creation of his own as +the style in which he embodied it, the terse +vehement sentences, the stinging sarcasms, the +hard antitheses which roused the dullest mind like +a whip. Once fairly freed from the trammels of +unquestioning belief, Wyclif's mind worked fast in +its career of scepticism. Pardons, indulgences, +absolutions, pilgrimages to the shrines of the saints, +worship of their images, worship of the saints +themselves, were successively denied. A formal +appeal to the Bible as the one ground of faith, +coupled with an assertion of the right of every +instructed man to examine the Bible for himself, +threatened the very groundwork of the older +dogmatism with ruin. Nor were these daring +denials confined to the small circle of scholars who + +<span class="pagenum"><a name="Vol2-Page-2-339"></a>2-339]</span> + +still clung to him. The "Simple Priests" were +active in the diffusion of their master's doctrines, +and how rapid their progress must have been we +may see from the panic-struck exaggerations of +their opponents. A few years later they complained +that the followers of Wyclif abounded +everywhere and in all classes, among the baronage, +in the cities, among the peasantry of the countryside, +even in the monastic cell itself. "Every +second man one meets is a Lollard." +</p> + +<p> +<span class="sidenote">Lollardry at +Oxford</span> +</p> + +<p> +"Lollard," a word which probably means "idle +babbler," was the nickname of scorn with which +the orthodox Churchmen chose to insult their +assailants. But this rapid increase changed their +scorn into vigorous action. In 1382 Courtenay, +who had now become Archbishop, summoned a +council at Blackfriars and formally submitted +twenty-four propositions drawn from Wyclif's +works. An earthquake in the midst of the proceedings +terrified every prelate but the resolute +Primate; the expulsion of ill humours from the +earth, he said, was of good omen for the expulsion +of ill humours from the Church; and the condemnation +was pronounced. Then the Archbishop +turned fiercely upon Oxford as the fount and centre +of the new heresies. In an English sermon at St. +Frideswide's Nicholas Herford had asserted the +truth of Wyclif's doctrines, and Courtenay ordered +the Chancellor to silence him and his adherents on +pain of being himself treated as a heretic. The + +<span class="pagenum"><a name="Vol2-Page-2-340"></a>2-340]</span> + +Chancellor fell back on the liberties of the +University, and appointed as preacher another +Wyclifite, Repyngdon, who did not hesitate to +style the Lollards "holy priests," and to affirm that +they were protected by John of Gaunt. Party +spirit meanwhile ran high among the students. +The bulk of them sided with the Lollard leaders, +and a Carmelite, Peter Stokes, who had procured +the Archbishop's letters, cowered panic stricken in +his chamber while the Chancellor, protected by an +escort of a hundred townsmen, listened approvingly +to Repyngdon's defiance. "I dare go no further," +wrote the poor Friar to the Archbishop, "for fear +of death"; but he mustered courage at last to +descend into the schools where Repyngdon was +now maintaining that the clerical order was +"better when it was but nine years old than now +that it has grown to a thousand years and more." +The appearance however of scholars in arms again +drove Stokes to fly in despair to Lambeth, while a +new heretic in open Congregation maintained +Wyclif's denial of Transubstantiation. "There is +no idolatry," cried William James, "save in the +Sacrament of the Altar." "You speak like a wise +man," replied the Chancellor, Robert Rygge. +Courtenay however was not the man to bear +defiance tamely, and his summons to Lambeth +wrested a submission from Rygge which was only +accepted on his pledge to suppress the Lollardism +of the University. "I dare not publish them, on + +<span class="pagenum"><a name="Vol2-Page-2-341"></a>2-341]</span> + +fear of death," exclaimed the Chancellor when +Courtenay handed him his letters of condemnation. +"Then is your University an open <i>fautor</i> of +heretics," retorted the Primate, "if it suffers not +the Catholic truth to be proclaimed within its +bounds." The royal Council supported the Archbishop's +injunction, but the publication of the +decrees at once set Oxford on fire. The scholars +threatened death against the friars, "crying that +they wished to destroy the University." The +masters suspended Henry Crump from teaching as +a troubler of the public peace for calling the +Lollards "heretics." The Crown however at last +stepped in to Courtenay's aid, and a royal writ +ordered the instant banishment of all favourers of +Wyclif with the seizure and destruction of all +Lollard books on pain of forfeiture of the University's +privileges. The threat produced its effect. +Herford and Repyngdon appealed in vain to John +of Gaunt for protection; the Duke himself +denounced them as heretics against the Sacrament +of the Altar, and after much evasion they were +forced to make a formal submission. Within +Oxford itself the suppression of Lollardism was +complete, but with the death of religious freedom +all trace of intellectual life suddenly disappears. +The century which followed the triumph of +Courtenay is the most barren in its annals, nor +was the sleep of the University broken till the +advent of the New Learning restored to it some of + +<span class="pagenum"><a name="Vol2-Page-2-342"></a>2-342]</span> + +the life and liberty which the Primate had so +roughly trodden out. +</p> + +<p> +<span class="sidenote">Wyclif's +Bible</span> +</p> + +<p> +Nothing marks more strongly the grandeur of +Wyclif's position as the last of the great schoolmen +than the reluctance of so bold a man as Courtenay +even after his triumph over Oxford to take extreme +measures against the head of Lollardry. Wyclif, +though summoned, had made no appearance before +the "Council of the Earthquake." "Pontius +Pilate and Herod are made friends to-day," was +his bitter comment on the new union which proved +to have sprung up between the prelates and the +monastic orders who had so long been at variance +with each other; "since they have made a heretic +of Christ, it is an easy inference for them to count +simple Christians heretics." He seems indeed to +have been sick at the moment, but the announcement +of the final sentence roused him to life again. +He petitioned the king and Parliament that he +might be allowed freely to prove the doctrines he +had put forth, and turning with characteristic +energy to the attack of his assailants, he asked +that all religious vows might be suppressed, that +tithes might be diverted to the maintenance of the +poor and the clergy maintained by the free alms +of their flocks, that the Statutes of Provisors and +Præmunire might be enforced against the Papacy, +that Churchmen might be declared incapable of +secular offices, and imprisonment for excommunication +cease. Finally in the teeth of the council's + +<span class="pagenum"><a name="Vol2-Page-2-343"></a>2-343]</span> + +condemnation he demanded that the doctrine of +the Eucharist which he advocated might be freely +taught. If he appeared in the following year +before the convocation at Oxford it was to perplex +his opponents by a display of scholastic logic +which permitted him to retire without any retractation +of his sacramental heresy. For the time +his opponents seemed satisfied with his expulsion +from the University, but in his retirement at +Lutterworth he was forging during these troubled +years the great weapon which, wielded by other +hands than his own, was to produce so terrible an +effect on the triumphant hierarchy. An earlier +translation of the Scriptures, in part of which he +was aided by his scholar Herford, was being +revised and brought to the second form which is +better known as "Wyclif's Bible" when death +drew near. The appeal of the prelates to Rome +was answered at last by a Brief ordering him to +appear at the Papal Court. His failing strength +exhausted itself in a sarcastic reply which explained +that his refusal to comply with the summons +simply sprang from broken health. "I am always +glad," ran the ironical answer, "to explain my +faith to any one, and above all to the Bishop of +Rome; for I take it for granted that if it be +orthodox he will confirm it, if it be erroneous he +will correct it. I assume too that as chief Vicar +of Christ upon earth the Bishop of Rome is of all +mortal men most bound to the law of Christ's + +<span class="pagenum"><a name="Vol2-Page-2-344"></a>2-344]</span> + +Gospel, for among the disciples of Christ a majority +is not reckoned by simply counting heads in the +fashion of this world, but according to the imitation +of Christ on either side. Now Christ during His +life upon earth was of all men the poorest, casting +from Him all worldly authority. I deduce from +these premisses as a simple counsel of my own that +the Pope should surrender all temporal authority +to the civil power and advise his clergy to do the +same." The boldness of his words sprang perhaps +from a knowledge that his end was near. The +terrible strain on energies enfeebled by age and +study had at last brought its inevitable result, and +a stroke of paralysis while Wyclif was hearing +mass in his parish church of Lutterworth was +followed on the next day by his death. +</p> + +<p> +<span class="sidenote">The Lollard +movement</span> +</p> + +<p> +The persecution of Courtenay deprived the +religious reform of its more learned adherents and +of the support of the Universities. Wyclif's death +robbed it of its head at a moment when little had +been done save a work of destruction. From that +moment Lollardism ceased to be in any sense an +organized movement and crumbled into a general +spirit of revolt. All the religious and social discontent +of the times floated instinctively to this +new centre. The socialist dreams of the peasantry, +the new and keener spirit of personal morality, the +hatred of the friars, the jealousy of the great lords +towards the prelacy, the fanaticism of the reforming +zealot were blended together in a common + +<span class="pagenum"><a name="Vol2-Page-2-345"></a>2-345]</span> + +hostility to the Church and a common resolve to +substitute personal religion for its dogmatic and +ecclesiastical system. But it was this want of +organization, this looseness and fluidity of the new +movement, that made it penetrate through every +class of society. Women as well as men became +the preachers of the new sect. Lollardry had its +own schools, its own books; its pamphlets were +passed everywhere from hand to hand; scurrilous +ballads which revived the old attacks of "Golias" +in the Angevin times upon the wealth and luxury +of the clergy were sung at every corner. Nobles +like the Earl of Salisbury and at a later time Sir +John Oldcastle placed themselves openly at the +head of the cause and threw open their gates as a +refuge for its missionaries. London in its hatred +of the clergy became fiercely Lollard, and defended +a Lollard preacher who ventured to advocate the +new doctrines from the pulpit of St. Paul's. One +of its mayors, John of Northampton, showed the +influence of the new morality by the Puritan spirit +in which he dealt with the morals of the city. +Compelled to act, as he said, by the remissness of +the clergy who connived for money at every kind +of debauchery, he arrested the loose women, cut +off their hair, and carted them through the streets +as objects of public scorn. But the moral spirit +of the new movement, though infinitely its grander +side, was less dangerous to the Church than its +open repudiation of the older doctrines and systems + +<span class="pagenum"><a name="Vol2-Page-2-346"></a>2-346]</span> + +of Christendom. Out of the floating mass of +opinion which bore the name of Lollardry one faith +gradually evolved itself, a faith in the sole authority +of the Bible as a source of religious truth. The +translation of Wyclif did its work. Scripture, +complains a canon of Leicester, "became a vulgar +thing, and more open to lay folk and women that +knew how to read than it is wont to be to clerks +themselves." Consequences which Wyclif had +perhaps shrunk from drawing were boldly drawn +by his disciples. The Church was declared to +have become apostate, its priesthood was denounced +as no priesthood, its sacraments as idolatry. +</p> + +<p> +<span class="sidenote">Lollardry +and the +Church</span> +</p> + +<p> +It was in vain that the clergy attempted to +stifle the new movement by their old weapon of +persecution. The jealousy entertained by the +baronage and gentry of every pretension of the +Church to secular power foiled its efforts to make +persecution effective. At the moment of the +Peasant Revolt Courtenay procured the enactment +of a statute which commissioned the sheriffs to +seize all persons convicted before the bishops of +preaching heresy. But the statute was repealed +in the next session, and the Commons added to +the bitterness of the blow by their protest that +they considered it "in nowise their interest to be +more under the jurisdiction of the prelates or +more bound by them than their ancestors had +been in times past." Heresy indeed was still a +felony by the common law, and if as yet we meet + +<span class="pagenum"><a name="Vol2-Page-2-347"></a>2-347]</span> + +with no instances of the punishment of heretics by +the fire it was because the threat of such a death +was commonly followed by the recantation of the +Lollard. But the restriction of each bishop's +jurisdiction within the limits of his own diocese +made it impossible to arrest the wandering +preachers of the new doctrine, and the civil +punishment--even if it had been sanctioned by +public opinion--seems to have long fallen into +desuetude. Experience proved to the prelates +that few sheriffs would arrest on the mere warrant +of an ecclesiastical officer, and that no royal court +would issue the writ "for the burning of a heretic" +on a bishop's requisition. But powerless as the +efforts of the Church were for purposes of repression, +they were effective in rousing the temper of +the Lollards into a bitter fanaticism. The heretics +delighted in outraging the religious sense of their +day. One Lollard gentleman took home the +sacramental wafer and lunched on it with wine +and oysters. Another flung some images of the +saints into his cellar. The Lollard preachers +stirred up riots by the virulence of their preaching +against the friars. But they directed even fiercer +invectives against the wealth and secularity of the +great Churchmen. In a formal petition which was +laid before Parliament in 1395 they mingled +denunciations of the riches of the clergy with an +open profession of disbelief in transubstantiation, +priesthood, pilgrimages, and image-worship, and a + +<span class="pagenum"><a name="Vol2-Page-2-348"></a>2-348]</span> + +demand, which illustrates the strange medley of +opinions which jostled together in the new movement, +that war might be declared unchristian and +that trades such as those of the goldsmith or the +armourer, which were contrary to apostolical +poverty, might be banished from the realm. They +contended (and it is remarkable that a Parliament +of the next reign adopted the statement) that from +the superfluous revenues of the Church, if once +they were applied to purposes of general utility, +the king might maintain fifteen earls, fifteen +hundred knights, and six thousand squires, besides +endowing a hundred hospitals for the relief of the +poor. +</p> + +<p> +<span class="sidenote">Disasters of +the War</span> +</p> + +<p> +The distress of the landowners, the general +disorganization of the country, in every part of +which bands of marauders were openly defying +the law, the panic of the Church and of society +at large as the projects of the Lollards shaped +themselves into more daring and revolutionary +forms, added a fresh keenness to the national +discontent at the languid and inefficient prosecution +of the war. The junction of the French and +Spanish fleets had made them masters of the seas, +and what fragments were left of Guienne lay at +their mercy. The royal Council strove to detach +the House of Luxemburg from, the French alliance +by winning for Richard the hand of Anne, a +daughter of the late Emperor Charles the Fourth +who had fled at Crécy, and sister of King Wenzel + +<span class="pagenum"><a name="Vol2-Page-2-349"></a>2-349]</span> + +of Bohemia who was now king of the Romans. +But the marriage remained without political +result, save that the Lollard books which were +sent into their native country by the Bohemian +servants of the new queen stirred the preaching of +John Huss and the Hussite wars. Nor was +English policy more successful in Flanders. +Under Philip van Arteveldt, the son of the leader +of 1345, the Flemish towns again sought the +friendship of England against France, but at the +close of 1382 the towns were defeated and their +leader slain in the great French victory of Rosbecque. +An expedition to Flanders in the +following year under the warlike Bishop of +Norwich turned out a mere plunder-raid and ended +in utter failure. A short truce only gave France +the leisure to prepare a counter-blow by the +despatch of a small but well-equipped force under +John de Vienne to Scotland in 1385. Thirty +thousand Scots joined in the advance of this force +over the border: and though northern England +rose with a desperate effort and an English army +penetrated as far as Edinburgh in the hope of +bringing the foe to battle, it was forced to fall +back without an encounter. Meanwhile France +dealt a more terrible blow in the reduction of +Ghent. The one remaining market for English +commerce was thus closed up, while the forces +which should have been employed in saving Ghent +and in the protection of the English shores against + +<span class="pagenum"><a name="Vol2-Page-2-350"></a>2-350]</span> + +the threat of invasion were squandered by John +of Gaunt in a war which he was carrying on alone +the Spanish frontier in pursuit of the visionary +crown which he claimed in his wife's right. The +enterprise showed that the Duke had now +abandoned the hope of directing affairs at home +and was seeking a new sphere of activity abroad. +To drive him from the realm had been from the +close of the Peasant Revolt the steady purpose of +the councillors who now surrounded the young +king, of his favourite Robert de Vere and his +Chancellor Michael de la Pole, who was raised in +1385 to the Earldom of Suffolk. The Duke's +friends were expelled from office; John of +Northampton, the head of his adherents among the +Commons, was thrown into prison; the Duke +himself was charged with treason and threatened +with arrest. In 1386 John of Gaunt abandoned +the struggle and sailed for Spain. +</p> + +<p> +<span class="sidenote">Temper of +the Court</span> +</p> + +<p> +Richard himself took part in these measures +against the Duke. He was now twenty, handsome +and golden-haired, with a temper capable of great +actions and sudden bursts of energy but indolent +and unequal. The conception of kingship in +which he had been reared made him regard the +constitutional advance which had gone on during +the war as an invasion of the rights of his Crown. +He looked on the nomination of the royal Council +and the great officers of state by the two Houses +or the supervision of the royal expenditure by the + +<span class="pagenum"><a name="Vol2-Page-2-351"></a>2-351]</span> + +Commons as Infringements on the prerogative +which only the pressure of the war and the weakness +of a minority had forced the Crown to bow +to. The judgement of his councillors was one +with that of the king. Vere was no mere royal +favourite; he was a great noble and of ancient +lineage. Michael de la Pole was a man of large +fortune and an old servant of the Crown; he had +taken part in the war for thirty years, and had +been admiral and captain of Calais. But neither +were men to counsel the young king wisely in his +effort to obtain independence at once of Parliament +and of the great nobles. His first aim had been +to break the pressure of the royal house itself, and +in his encounter with John of Gaunt he had +proved successful. But the departure of the Duke +of Lancaster only called to the front his brother +and his son. Thomas of Woodstock, the Duke of +Gloucester, had inherited much of the lands and +the influence of the old house of Bohun. Round +Henry, Earl of Derby, the son of John of Gaunt +by Blanche of Lancaster, the old Lancastrian party +of constitutional opposition was once more forming +itself. The favour shown to the followers of +Wyclif at the Court threw on the side of this new +opposition the bulk of the bishops and Churchmen. +Richard himself showed no sympathy with the +Lollards, but the action of her Bohemian servants +shows the tendencies of his queen. Three +members of the royal Council were patrons of the + +<span class="pagenum"><a name="Vol2-Page-2-352"></a>2-352]</span> + +Lollards, and the Earl of Salisbury, a favourite +with the king, was their avowed head. The +Commons displayed no hostility to the Lollards +nor any zeal for the Church; but the lukewarm +prosecution of the war, the profuse expenditure of +the Court, and above all the manifest will of the +king to free himself from Parliamentary control, +estranged the Lower House. Richard's haughty +words told their own tale. When the Parliament +of 1385 called for an enquiry every year into the +royal household, the king replied he would enquire +when he pleased. When it prayed to know the +names of the officers of state, he answered that he +would change them at his will. +</p> + +<p> +<span class="sidenote">The Lords +Appellant</span> +</p> + +<p> +The burthen of such answers and of the policy +they revealed fell on the royal councillors, and the +departure of John of Gaunt forced the new +opposition into vigorous action. The Parliament +of 1386 called for the removal of Suffolk. Richard +replied that he would not for such a prayer +dismiss a turnspit of his kitchen. The Duke of +Gloucester and Bishop Arundel of Ely were sent +by the Houses as their envoys, and warned the +king that should a ruler refuse to govern with the +advice of his lords and by mad counsels work out +his private purposes it was lawful to depose him. +The threat secured Suffolk's removal; he was +impeached for corruption and maladministration, +and condemned to forfeiture and imprisonment. +It was only by submitting to the nomination of a + +<span class="pagenum"><a name="Vol2-Page-2-353"></a>2-353]</span> + +Continual Council, with the Duke of Gloucester at +its head, that Richard could obtain a grant of +subsidies. But the Houses were no sooner broken +up than Suffolk was released, and in 1387 the +young king rode through the country calling on +the sheriffs to raise men against the barons, and +bidding them suffer no knight of the shire to be +returned for the next Parliament "save one whom +the King and his Council chose." The general ill-will +foiled both his efforts: and he was forced to +take refuge in an opinion of five of the judges +that the Continual Council was unlawful, the +sentence on Suffolk erroneous, and that the Lords +and Commons had no power to remove a king's +servant. Gloucester answered the challenge by +taking up arms, and a general refusal to fight for +the king forced Richard once more to yield. A +terrible vengeance was taken on his supporters in +the recent schemes. In the Parliament of 1388 +Gloucester, with the four Earls of Derby, Arundel, +Warwick, and Nottingham, appealed on a charge +of high treason Suffolk and De Vere, the Archbishop +of York, the Chief Justice Tresilian, and +Sir Nicholas Bramber. The first two fled, Suffolk +to France, De Vere after a skirmish at Radcot +Bridge to Ireland; but the Archbishop was +deprived of his see, Bramber beheaded, and +Tresilian hanged. The five judges were banished, +and Sir Simon Burley with three other members +of the royal household sent to the block. +</p> + + + +<span class="pagenum"><a name="Vol2-Page-2-354"></a>2-354]</span> + + +<p> +<span class="sidenote">Richard's +Rule</span> +</p> + +<p> +At the prayer of the "Wonderful Parliament," +as some called this assembly, or as others with +more justice "The Merciless Parliament," it was +provided that all officers of state should henceforth +be named in Parliament or by the Continual +Council. Gloucester remained at the head of the +latter body, but his power lasted hardly a year. +In May 1389 Richard found himself strong enough +to break down the government by a word. Entering +the Council he suddenly asked his uncle how old +he was. "Your highness," answered Gloucester, +"is in your twenty-fourth year!" "Then I am +old enough to manage my own affairs," said +Richard coolly; "I have been longer under +guardianship than any ward in my realm. I +thank you for your past services, my lords, but I +need them no more." The resolution was welcomed +by the whole country; and Richard justified +the country's hopes by wielding his new power +with singular wisdom and success. He refused to +recall De Vere or the five judges. The intercession +of John of Gaunt on his return from Spain brought +about a full reconciliation with the Lords Appellant. +A truce was concluded with France, and its renewal +year after year enabled the king to lighten the +burthen of taxation. Richard announced his +purpose to govern by advice of Parliament; he +soon restored the Lords Appellant to his Council, +and committed the chief offices of state to great +Churchmen like Wykeham and Arundel. A series + +<span class="pagenum"><a name="Vol2-Page-2-355"></a>2-355]</span> + +of statutes showed the activity of the Houses. A +Statute of Provisors which re-enacted those of +Edward the Third was passed in 1390; the Statute +of Præmunire, which punished the obtaining of +bulls or other instruments from Rome with forfeiture, +in 1393. The lords were bridled anew by a +Statute of Maintenance, which forbade their +violently supporting other men's causes in courts +of justice, and giving "livery" to a host of retainers. +The Statute of Uses in 1391, which rendered +illegal the devices which had been invented to +frustrate that of Mortmain, showed the same +resolve to deal firmly with the Church. A reform +of the staple and other mercantile enactments +proved the king's care for trade. Throughout +the legislation of these eight years we see the same +tone of coolness and moderation. Eager as he was +to win the good-will of the Parliament and the +Church, Richard refused to bow to the panic of +the landowners or to second the persecution of the +priesthood. The demands of the Parliament that +education should be denied to the sons of villeins +was refused. Lollardry as a social danger was +held firmly at bay, and in 1387 the king ordered +Lollard books to be seized and brought before the +Council. But the royal officers showed little zeal +in aiding the bishops to seize or punish the heretical +teachers. +</p> + +<p> +<span class="sidenote">French and +English</span> +</p> + +<p> +It was in the period of peace which was won +for the country by the wisdom and decision of its + +<span class="pagenum"><a name="Vol2-Page-2-356"></a>2-356]</span> + +young king that England listened to the voice of +her first great singer. The work of Chaucer +marks the final settlement of the English tongue. +The close of the great movement towards national +unity which had been going on ever since the +Conquest was shown in the middle of the fourteenth +century by the disuse, even amongst the nobler +classes, of the French tongue. In spite of the +efforts of the grammar schools and of the strength +of fashion English won its way throughout the +reign of Edward the Third to its final triumph in +that of his grandson. It was ordered to be used +in courts of law in 1362 "because the French +tongue is much unknown," and in the following +year it was employed by the Chancellor in opening +Parliament. Bishops began to preach in English, +and the English tracts of Wyclif made it once +more a literary tongue. We see the general +advance in two passages from writers of Edward's +and Richard's reigns. "Children in school," says +Higden, a writer of the first period, "against the +usage and manner of all other nations be compelled +for to leave their own language and for to construe +their lessons and their things in French, and so +they have since the Normans first came into +England. Also gentlemen's children be taught for +to speak French from the time that they be rocked +in their cradle, and know how to speak and play +with a child's toy; and uplandish (or country) +men will liken themselves to gentlemen, and strive + +<span class="pagenum"><a name="Vol2-Page-2-357"></a>2-357]</span> + +with, great busyness to speak French for to be more +told of." "This manner," adds John of Trevisa, +Higden's translator in Richard's time, "was much +used before the first murrain (the Black Death of +1349), and is since somewhat changed. For John +Cornwal, a master of grammar, changed the lore +in grammar school and construing of French into +English; and Richard Pencrych learned this +manner of teaching of him, as other men did of +Pencrych. So that now, the year of our Lord +1385 and of the second King Richard after the +Conquest nine, in all the grammar schools of +England children leaveth French, and construeth +and learneth in English. Also gentlemen have +now much left for to teach their children French." +</p> + +<p> +<span class="sidenote">Chaucer</span> +</p> + +<p> +This drift towards a general use of the national +tongue told powerfully on literature. The influence +of the French romances everywhere tended to +make French the one literary language at the +opening of the fourteenth century, and in England +this influence had been backed by the French tone +of the court of Henry the Third and the three +Edwards. But at the close of the reign of Edward +the Third the long French romances needed to be +translated even for knightly hearers. "Let clerks +indite in Latin," says the author of the "Testament +of Love," "and let Frenchmen in their French +also indite their quaint terms, for it is kindly to +their mouths; and let us show our fantasies in +such wordes as we learned of our mother's tongue." + +<span class="pagenum"><a name="Vol2-Page-2-358"></a>2-358]</span> + +But the new national life afforded nobler materials +than "fantasies" now for English literature. With +the completion of the work of national unity had +come the completion of the work of national +freedom. The vigour of English life showed itself +in the wide extension of commerce, in the progress +of the towns, and the upgrowth of a free yeomanry. +It gave even nobler signs of its activity in the +spirit of national independence and moral earnestness +which awoke at the call of Wyclif. New +forces of thought and feeling which were destined +to tell on every age of our later history broke +their way through the crust of feudalism in the +socialist revolt of the Lollards, and a sudden burst +of military glory threw its glamour over the age +of Crécy and Poitiers. It is this new gladness of +a great people which utters itself in the verse of +Geoffrey Chaucer. Chaucer was born about 1340, +the son of a London vintner who lived in Thames +Street; and it was in London that the bulk of his +life was spent. His family, though not noble, +seems to have been of some importance, for from +the opening of his career we find Chaucer in close +connexion with the Court. At sixteen he was +made page to the wife of Lionel of Clarence; at +nineteen he first bore arms in the campaign of +1359. But he was luckless enough to be made +prisoner; and from the time of his release after +the treaty of Brétigny he took no further share in +the military enterprises of his time. He seems + +<span class="pagenum"><a name="Vol2-Page-2-359"></a>2-359]</span> + +again to have returned to service about the Court, +and it was now that his first poems made their +appearance, the "Compleynte to Pity" in 1368, +and in 1369 the "Death of Blanch the Duchesse," +the wife of John of Gaunt who from this time at +least may be looked upon as his patron. It may +have been to John's influence that he owed his +employment in seven diplomatic missions which +were probably connected with the financial straits +of the Crown. Three of these, in 1372, 1374, and +1378, carried him to Italy. He visited Genoa and +the brilliant court of the Visconti at Milan; at +Florence, where the memory of Dante, the "great +master" whom he commemorates so reverently in +his verse, was still living, he may have met +Boccaccio; at Padua, like his own clerk of Oxenford, +he possibly caught the story of Griseldis from +the lips of Petrarca. +</p> + +<p> +<span class="sidenote">His Early +Poems</span> +</p> + +<p> +It was these visits to Italy which gave us the +Chaucer whom we know. From that hour his +work stands out in vivid contrast with the poetic +literature from the heart of which it sprang. The +long French romances were the product of an age +of wealth and ease, of indolent curiosity, of a +fanciful and self-indulgent sentiment. Of the +great passions which gave life to the Middle Ages, +that of religious enthusiasm had degenerated into +the conceits of Mariolatry, that of war into the +extravagances of Chivalry. Love indeed remained; +it was the one theme of troubadour and trouveur; + +<span class="pagenum"><a name="Vol2-Page-2-360"></a>2-360]</span> + +but it was a love of refinement, of romantic follies, +of scholastic discussions, of sensuous enjoyment--a +plaything rather than a passion. Nature had to +reflect the pleasant indolence of man; the song of +the minstrel moved through a perpetual May-time; +the grass was ever green; the music of the lark +and the nightingale rang out from field and thicket. +There was a gay avoidance of all that is serious, +moral, or reflective in man's life: life was too +amusing to be serious, too piquant, too sentimental, +too full of interest and gaiety and chat. It was an +age of talk: "mirth is none," says Chaucer's host, +"to ride on by the way dumb as a stone "; and +the Trouveur aimed simply at being the most +agreeable talker of his day. His romances, his +rimes of Sir Tristram, his Romance of the Rose, +are full of colour and fantasy, endless in detail, +but with a sort of gorgeous idleness about their +very length, the minuteness of their description of +outer things, the vagueness of their touch when it +passes to the subtler inner world. +</p> + +<p> +It was with this literature that Chaucer had till +now been familiar, and it was this which he +followed in his earlier work. But from the time +of his visits to Milan and Genoa his sympathies +drew him not to the dying verse of France but +to the new and mighty upgrowth of poetry in +Italy. Dante's eagle looks at him from the sun. +"Fraunces Petrark, the laureat poete," is to him +one "whose rethorique sweete enlumyned al Itail + +<span class="pagenum"><a name="Vol2-Page-2-361"></a>2-361]</span> + +of poetrie." The "Troilus" which he produced +about 1382 is an enlarged English version of +Boccaccio's "Filostrato"; the Knight's Tale, whose +first draft is of the same period, bears slight traces +of his Teseide. It was indeed the "Decameron" +which suggested the very form of the "Canterbury +Tales," the earliest of which, such as those of the +Doctor, the Man of Law, the Clerk, the Prioress, +the Franklin, and the Squire, may probably be +referred like the Parliament of Foules and the +House of Fame to this time of Chaucer's life. But +even while changing, as it were, the front of +English poetry Chaucer preserves his own distinct +personality. If he quizzes in the rime of Sir +Thopaz the wearisome idleness of the French +romance he retains all that was worth retaining of +the French temper, its rapidity and agility of +movement, its lightness and brilliancy of touch, +its airy mockery, its gaiety and good humour, its +critical coolness and self-control. The French wit +quickens in him more than in any English writer +the sturdy sense and shrewdness of our national +disposition, corrects its extravagance, and relieves +its somewhat ponderous morality. If on the other +hand he echoes the joyous carelessness of the +Italian tale, he tempers it with the English +seriousness. As he follows Boccaccio all his +changes are on the side of purity; and when the +Troilus of the Florentine ends with the old sneer +at the changeableness of woman Chaucer bids us + +<span class="pagenum"><a name="Vol2-Page-2-362"></a>2-362]</span> + +"look Godward," and dwells on the unchangeableness +of Heaven. +</p> + +<p> +<span class="sidenote">The Canterbury +Tales</span> +</p> + +<p> +The genius of Chaucer however was neither +French nor Italian, whatever element it might +borrow from either literature, but English to the +core; and from the year 1384 all trace of foreign +influence dies away. Chaucer had now reached +the climax of his poetic power. He was a busy, +practical worker, Comptroller of the Customs in +1374, of the Petty Customs in 1382, a member of +the Commons in the Parliament of 1386. The +fall of the Duke of Lancaster from power may +have deprived him of employment for a time, but +from 1389 to 1391 he was Clerk of the Royal +Works, busy with repairs and building at Westminster, +Windsor, and the Tower. His air indeed +was that of a student rather than of a man of the +world. A single portrait has preserved for us his +forked beard, his dark-coloured dress, the knife +and pen-case at his girdle, and we may supplement +this portrait by a few vivid touches of his own. +The sly, elvish face, the quick walk, the plump +figure and portly waist were those of a genial and +humorous man; but men jested at his silence, his +abstraction, his love of study. "Thou lookest as +thou wouldest find an hare," laughs the host, "and +ever on the ground I see thee stare." He heard +little of his neighbours' talk when office work in +Thames Street was over. "Thou goest home to +thy own house anon, and also dumb as any stone + +<span class="pagenum"><a name="Vol2-Page-2-363"></a>2-363]</span> + +thou sittest at another book till fully dazed is thy +look, and livest thus as an heremite, although," +he adds slyly, "thy abstinence is lite," or little. +But of this seeming abstraction from the world +about him there is not a trace in Chaucer's verse. +We see there how keen his observation was, how +vivid and intense his sympathy with nature and +the men among whom he moved. "Farewell, my +book," he cried as spring came after winter and +the lark's song roused him at dawn to spend hours +gazing alone on the daisy whose beauty he sang. +But field and stream and flower and bird, much as +he loved them, were less to him than man. No +poetry was over more human than Chaucer's, none +ever came more frankly and genially home to men +than his "Canterbury Tales." +</p> + +<p> +It was the continuation and revision of this +work which mainly occupied him during the years +from 1384 to 1391. Its best stories, those of the +Miller, the Reeve, the Cook, the Wife of Bath, the +Merchant, the Friar, the Nun, the Priest, and the +Pardoner, are ascribed to this period, as well as +the Prologue. The framework which Chaucer +chose--that of a pilgrimage from London to Canterbury--not +only enabled him to string these tales +together, but lent itself admirably to the peculiar +characteristics of his poetic temper, his dramatic +versatility and the universality of his sympathy. +His tales cover the whole field of mediæval poetry; +the legend of the priest, the knightly romance, + +<span class="pagenum"><a name="Vol2-Page-2-364"></a>2-364]</span> + +the wonder-tale of the traveller, the broad humour +of the fabliau, allegory and apologue, all are there. +He finds a yet wider scope for his genius in the +persons who tell these stories, the thirty pilgrims +who start in the May morning from the Tabard in +Southwark--thirty distinct figures, representatives +of every class of English society from the noble to +the ploughman. We see the "verray perfight +gentil knight" in cassock and coat of mail, with +his curly-headed squire beside him, fresh as the +May morning, and behind them the brown-faced +yeoman in his coat and hood of green with a +mighty bow in his hand. A group of ecclesiastics +light up for us the mediaeval church--the brawny +hunt-loving monk, whose bridle jingles as loud and +clear as the chapel-bell--the wanton friar, first +among the beggars and harpers of the country-side--the +poor parson, threadbare, learned, and devout, +("Christ's lore and his apostles twelve he taught, +and first he followed it himself")--the summoner +with his fiery face--the pardoner with his wallet +"bretfull of pardons, come from Rome all hot"--the +lively prioress with her courtly French lisp, +her soft little red mouth, and "Amor vincit omnia" +graven on her brooch. Learning is there in the +portly person of the doctor of physic, rich with +the profits of the pestilence--the busy serjeant-of-law, +"that ever seemed busier than he was"--the +hollow-cheeked clerk of Oxford with his love of +books and short sharp sentences that disguise a + +<span class="pagenum"><a name="Vol2-Page-2-365"></a>2-365]</span> + +latent tenderness which breaks out at last in the +story of Griseldis. Around them crowd types of +English industry: the merchant; the franklin in +whose house "it snowed of meat and drink"; the +sailor fresh from frays in the Channel; the buxom +wife of Bath; the broad-shouldered miller; the +haberdasher, carpenter, weaver, dyer, tapestry-maker, +each in the livery of his craft; and last the +honest ploughman who would dyke and delve for +the poor without hire. It is the first time in +English poetry that we are brought face to face +not with characters or allegories or reminiscences +of the past, but with living and breathing men, +men distinct in temper and sentiment as in face or +costume or mode of speech; and with this distinctness +of each maintained throughout the story +by a thousand shades of expression and action. It +is the first time, too, that we meet with the dramatic +power which not only creates each character +but combines it with its fellows, which not only +adjusts each tale or jest to the temper of the +person who utters it but fuses all into a poetic +unity. It is life in its largeness, its variety, its +complexity, which surrounds us in the "Canterbury +Tales." In some of the stories indeed, which were +composed no doubt at an earlier time, there is the +tedium of the old romance or the pedantry of the +schoolman; but taken as a whole the poem is the +work not of a man of letters but of a man of +action. Chaucer has received his training from + +<span class="pagenum"><a name="Vol2-Page-2-366"></a>2-366]</span> + +war, courts, business, travel--a training not of +books but of life. And it is life that he loves--the +delicacy of its sentiment, the breadth of its +farce, its laughter and its tears, the tenderness of +its Griseldis or the Smollett-like adventures of the +miller and the clerks. It is this largeness of heart, +this wide tolerance, which enables him to reflect man +for us as none but Shakspere has ever reflected +him, and to do this with a pathos, a shrewd sense +and kindly humour, a freshness and joyousness +of feeling, that even Shakspere has not surpassed. +</p> + +<p> +<span class="sidenote">The French +Marriage</span> +</p> + +<p> +The last ten years of Chaucer's life saw a few +more tales added to the Pilgrimage and a few +poems to his work; but his power was lessening, +and in 1400 he rested from his labours in his last +home, a house in the garden of St. Mary's Chapel +at Westminster. His body rests within the Abbey +church. It was strange that such a voice should +have awakened no echo in the singers that follow, +but the first burst of English song died as suddenly +in Chaucer as the hope and glory of his age. He +died indeed at the moment of a revolution which +was the prelude to years of national discord and +national suffering. Whatever may have been the +grounds of his action, the rule of Richard the +Second after his assumption of power had shown +his capacity for self-restraint. Parted by his own +will from the counsellors of his youth, calling to +his service the Lords Appellant, reconciled alike +with the baronage and the Parliament, the young + +<span class="pagenum"><a name="Vol2-Page-2-367"></a>2-367]</span> + +king promised to be among the noblest and wisest +rulers that England had seen. But the violent +and haughty temper which underlay this self-command +showed itself from time to time. The +Earl of Arundel and his brother the bishop stood +in the front rank of the party which had coerced +Richard in his early days; their influence was +great in the new government. But a strife between +the Earl and John of Gaunt revived the +king's resentment at the past action of this house; +and at the funeral of Anne of Bohemia in 1394 a +fancied slight roused Richard to a burst of passion. +He struck the Earl so violently that the blow drew +blood. But the quarrel was patched up, and the +reconciliation was followed by the elevation of +Bishop Arundel to the vacant Primacy in 1396. +In the preceding year Richard had crossed to +Ireland and in a short autumn campaign reduced +its native chiefs again to submission. Fears of +Lollard disturbances soon recalled him, but these +died at the king's presence, and Richard was able +to devote himself to the negotiation of a marriage +which was to be the turning-point of his reign. +His policy throughout the recent years had been a +policy of peace. It was war which rendered the +Crown helpless before the Parliament, and peace +was needful if the work of constant progress was +not to be undone. But the short truces, renewed +from time to time, which he had as yet secured +were insufficient for this purpose, for so long as + +<span class="pagenum"><a name="Vol2-Page-2-368"></a>2-368]</span> + +war might break out in the coming year the king +hands were tied. The impossibility of renouncing +the claim to the French crown indeed made a +formal peace impossible, but its ends might be +secured by a lengthened truce, and it was with a +view to this that Richard in 1396 wedded Isabella, +the daughter of Charles the Sixth of France. The +bride was a mere child, but she brought with her +a renewal of the truce for five-and-twenty years. +</p> + +<p> +<span class="sidenote">Change of +Richard's +temper</span> +</p> + +<p> +The match was hardly concluded when the veil +under which Richard had shrouded his real temper +began to be dropped. His craving for absolute +power, such as he witnessed in the Court of France, +was probably intensified from this moment by a +mental disturbance which gathered strength as the +months went on. As if to preclude any revival of +the war Richard had surrendered Cherbourg to +the king of Navarre and now gave back Brest to +the Duke of Britanny. He was said to have +pledged himself at his wedding to restore Calais +to the king of France. But once freed from all +danger of such a struggle the whole character of +his rule seemed to change. His court became as +crowded and profuse as his grandfather's. Money +was recklessly borrowed and as recklessly +squandered. The king's pride became insane, +and it was fed with dreams of winning the +Imperial crown through the deposition of Wenzel +of Bohemia. The councillors with whom he had +acted since his resumption of authority saw themselves + +<span class="pagenum"><a name="Vol2-Page-2-369"></a>2-369]</span> + +powerless. John of Gaunt indeed still +retained influence over the king. It was the +support of the Duke of Lancaster after his return +from his Spanish campaign which had enabled +Richard to hold in check the Duke of Gloucester +and the party that he led; and the anxiety of the +young king to retain this support was seen in his +grant of Aquitaine to his uncle, and in the legitimation +of the Beauforts, John's children by a mistress, +Catherine Swinford, whom he married after the +death of his second wife. The friendship of the +Duke brought with it the adhesion of one even +more important, his son Henry, the Earl of Derby. +As heir through his mother, Blanche of Lancaster, +to the estates and influence of the Lancastrian +house, Henry was the natural head of a constitutional +opposition, and his weight was increased by +a marriage with the heiress of the house of Bohun. +He had taken a prominent part in the overthrow +of Suffolk and De Vere, and on the king's resumption +of power he had prudently withdrawn from +the realm on a vow of Crusade, had touched at +Barbary, visited the Holy Sepulchre, and in 1390 +sailed for Dantzig and taken part in a campaign +against the heathen Prussians with the Teutonic +Knights. Since his return he had silently followed +in his father's track. But the counsels of John of +Gaunt were hardly wiser than of old; Arundel +had already denounced his influence as a hurtful +one; and in the events which were now to hurry + +<span class="pagenum"><a name="Vol2-Page-2-370"></a>2-370]</span> + +quickly on he seems to have gone hand in hand +with the king. +</p> + +<p> +<span class="sidenote">Richard's +Tyranny</span> +</p> + +<p> +A new uneasiness was seen in the Parliament +of 1397, and the Commons prayed for a redress +of the profusion of the Court. Richard at once +seized on the opportunity for a struggle. He +declared himself grieved that his subjects should +"take on themselves any ordinance or governance +of the person of the King or his hostel or of any +persons of estate whom he might be pleased to +have in his company." The Commons were at +once overawed; they owned that the cognizance +of such matters belonged wholly to the king, and +gave up to the Duke of Lancaster the name of the +member, Sir Thomas Haxey, who had brought +forward this article of their prayer. The lords +pronounced him a traitor, and his life was only +saved by the fact that he was a clergyman and by +the interposition of Archbishop Arundel. The +Earl of Arundel and the Duke of Gloucester at +once withdrew from Court. They stood almost +alone, for of the royal house the Dukes of Lancaster +and York with their sons the Earls of Derby and +Rutland were now with the king, and the old +coadjutor of Gloucester, the Earl of Nottingham, +was in high favour with him. The Earl of +Warwick alone joined them, and he was included +in a charge of conspiracy which was followed by +the arrest of the three. A fresh Parliament in +September was packed with royal partizans, and + +<span class="pagenum"><a name="Vol2-Page-2-371"></a>2-371]</span> + +Richard moved boldly to his end. The pardons +of the Lords Appellant were revoked. Archbishop +Arundel was impeached and banished from the +realm, he was transferred by the Pope to the See +of St. Andrews, and the Primacy given to Roger +Walden. The Earl of Arundel, accused before +the Peers under John of Gaunt as High Steward, +was condemned and executed in a single day. +Warwick, who owned the truth of the charge, was +condemned to perpetual imprisonment. The Duke +of Gloucester was saved from a trial by a sudden +death in his prison at Calais. A new Parliament +at Shrewsbury in the opening of 1398 completed +the king's work. In three days it declared null +the proceedings of the Parliament of 1388, granted +to the king a subsidy on wool and leather for his +life, and delegated its authority to a standing +committee of eighteen members from both Houses +with power to continue their sittings even after the +dissolution of the Parliament and to "examine and +determine all matters and subjects which had been +moved in the presence of the king with all the +dependencies thereof." +</p> + +<p> +<span class="sidenote">Henry of +Lancaster</span> +</p> + +<p> +In a single year the whole colour of Richard's +government had changed. He had revenged himself +on the men who had once held him down, and +his revenge was hardly taken before he disclosed +a plan of absolute government. He had used the +Parliament to strike down the Primate as well as +the greatest nobles of the realm and to give him + +<span class="pagenum"><a name="Vol2-Page-2-372"></a>2-372]</span> + +a revenue for life which enabled him to get rid +of Parliament itself, for the Permanent Committee +which it named were men devoted, as Richard +held, to his cause. John of Gaunt was at its +head, and the rest of its lords were those who +had backed the king in his blow at Gloucester +and the Arundels. Two however were excluded. +In the general distribution of rewards which followed +Gloucester's overthrow the Earl of Derby +had been made Duke of Hereford, the Earl of +Nottingham Duke of Norfolk. But at the close +of 1397 the two Dukes charged each other with +treasonable talk as they rode between Brentford +and London, and the Permanent Committee +ordered the matter to be settled by a single combat. +In September 1398 the Dukes entered the +lists; but Richard forbade the duel, sentenced +the Duke of Norfolk to banishment for life, and +Henry of Lancaster to exile for ten years. As +Henry left London the streets were crowded with +people weeping for his fate; some followed him +even to the coast. But his withdrawal removed +the last check on Richard's despotism. He forced +from every tenant of the Crown an oath to recognize +the acts of his Committee as valid, and to +oppose any attempts to alter or revoke them. +Forced loans, the sale of charters of pardon to +Gloucester's adherents, the outlawry of seven +counties at once on the plea that they had supported +his enemies and must purchase pardon, a + +<span class="pagenum"><a name="Vol2-Page-2-373"></a>2-373]</span> + +reckless interference with the course of justice, +roused into new life the old discontent. Even +this might have been defied had not Richard set +an able and unscrupulous leader at its head. +Leave had been given to Henry of Lancaster to +receive his father's inheritance on the death of +John of Gaunt, in February 1399. But an ordinance +of the Continual Committee annulled this +permission and Richard seized the Lancastrian +estates. Archbishop Arundel at once saw the +chance of dealing blow for blow. He hastened +to Paris and pressed the Duke to return to England, +telling him how all men there looked for it, +"especially the Londoners, who loved him a +hundred times more than they did the king." +For a while Henry remained buried in thought, +"leaning on a window overlooking a garden"; +but Arundel's pressure at last prevailed, he made +his way secretly to Britanny, and with fifteen +knights set sail from Vannes. +</p> + +<p> +<span class="sidenote">Ireland and +the Pale</span> +</p> + +<p> +What had really decided him was the opportunity +offered by Richard's absence from the +realm. From the opening of his reign the king's +attention had been constantly drawn to his dependent +lordship of Ireland. More than two +hundred years had passed away since the troubles +which followed the murder of Archbishop Thomas +forced Henry the Second to leave his work of +conquest unfinished, and the opportunity for a +complete reduction of the island which had been + +<span class="pagenum"><a name="Vol2-Page-2-374"></a>2-374]</span> + +lost then had never returned. When Henry +quitted Ireland indeed Leinster was wholly in +English hands, Connaught bowed to a nominal +acknowledgement of the English overlordship, and +for a while the work of conquest seemed to go +steadily on. John de Courcy penetrated into +Ulster and established himself at Downpatrick; +and Henry planned the establishment of his +youngest son, John, as Lord of Ireland. But +the levity of the young prince, who mocked +the rude dresses of the native chieftains and +plucked them in insult by the beard, soon forced +his father to recall him; and in the continental +struggle which soon opened on the Angevin kings, +as in the constitutional struggle within England +itself which followed it, all serious purpose of +completing the conquest of Ireland was forgotten. +Nothing indeed but the feuds and weakness of +the Irish tribes enabled the adventurers to hold +the districts of Drogheda, Dublin, Wexford, +Waterford, and Cork, which formed what was +thenceforth known as "the English Pale." In +all the history of Ireland no event has proved +more disastrous than this half-finished conquest. +Had the Irish driven their invaders into the sea, +or the English succeeded in the complete reduction +of the island, the misery of its after ages +might have been avoided. A struggle such as that +in which Scotland drove out its conquerors might +have produced a spirit of patriotism and national + +<span class="pagenum"><a name="Vol2-Page-2-375"></a>2-375]</span> + +union which would have formed a people out of +the mass of warring clans. A conquest such as +that in which the Normans made England their +own would have spread at any rate the law, the +order, the civilization of the conquering country +over the length and breadth of the conquered. +Unhappily Ireland, while powerless to effect its +entire deliverance, was strong enough to hold its +assailants partially at bay. The country was +broken into two halves whose conflict has never +ceased. So far from either giving elements of +civilization or good government to the other, +conqueror and conquered reaped only degradation +from the ceaseless conflict. The native tribes lost +whatever tendency to union or social progress had +survived the invasion of the Danes. Their barbarism +was intensified by their hatred of the +more civilized intruders. But these intruders +themselves, penned within the narrow limits of +the Pale, brutalized by a merciless conflict, cut +off from contact with the refining influences of a +larger world, sank rapidly to the level of the barbarism +about them: and the lawlessness, the +ferocity, the narrowness of feudalism broke out +unchecked in this horde of adventurers who held +the land by their sword. +</p> + +<p> +<span class="sidenote">English and +Irish</span> +</p> + +<p> +From the first the story of the English Pale +was a story of degradation and anarchy. It +needed the stern vengeance of John, whose army +stormed its strongholds and drove its leading + +<span class="pagenum"><a name="Vol2-Page-2-376"></a>2-376]</span> + +barons into exile, to preserve even their fealty to +the English Crown. John divided the Pale into +counties and ordered the observance of the English +law; but the departure of his army was the +signal for a return of the disorder he had trampled +under foot. Between Englishmen and Irishmen +went on a ceaseless and pitiless war. Every Irishman +without the Pale was counted by the English +settlers an enemy and a robber whose murder +found no cognizance or punishment at the hands +of the law. Half the subsistence of the English +barons was drawn from forays across the border, +and these forays were avenged by incursions of +native marauders which carried havoc at times +to the very walls of Dublin. Within the Pale +itself the misery was hardly less. The English +settlers were harried and oppressed by their own +baronage as much as by the Irish marauders, +while the feuds of the English lords wasted their +strength and prevented any effective combination +either for common conquest or common defence. +So utter seemed their weakness that Robert Bruce +saw in it an opportunity for a counter-blow at +his English assailants, and his victory at Bannockburn +was followed up by the despatch of a Scotch +force to Ireland with his brother Edward at its +head. A general rising of the Irish welcomed this +deliverer; but the danger drove the barons of the +Pale to a momentary union, and in 1316 their +valour was proved on the bloody field of Athenree + +<span class="pagenum"><a name="Vol2-Page-2-377"></a>2-377]</span> + +by the slaughter of eleven thousand of their foes +and the almost complete annihilation of the sept +of the O'Connors. But with victory returned the +old anarchy and degradation. The barons of the +Pale sank more and more into Irish chieftains. +The Fitz-Maurices, who became Earls of Desmond +and whose vast territory in Minister was erected +into a County Palatine, adopted the dress and +manners of the natives around them. The rapid +growth of this evil was seen in the ruthless provisions +by which Edward the Third strove to +check it in his Statute of Kilkenny. The Statute +forbade the adoption of the Irish language or +name or dress by any man of English blood: it +enforced within the Pale the exclusive use of +English law, and made the use of the native or +Brehon law, which was gaining ground, an act +of treason; it made treasonable any marriage of +the Englishry with persons of Irish race, or +any adoption of English children by Irish foster-fathers. +</p> + +<p> +<span class="sidenote">Richard in +Ireland</span> +</p> + +<p> +But stern as they were these provisions proved +fruitless to check the fusion of the two races, +while the growing independence of the Lords of +the Pale threw off all but the semblance of obedience +to the English government. It was this +which stirred Richard to a serious effort for the +conquest and organization of the island. In 1386 +he granted the "entire dominion" of Ireland +with the title of its Duke to Robert de Vere on + +<span class="pagenum"><a name="Vol2-Page-2-378"></a>2-378]</span> + +condition of his carrying out its utter reduction. +But the troubles of the reign soon recalled De +Vere, and it was not till the truce with France +had freed his hands that the king again took up +his projects of conquest. In 1394 he landed with +an army at Waterford, and received the general +submission of the native chieftains. But the +Lords of the Pale held sullenly aloof; and Richard +had no sooner quitted the island than the Irish in +turn refused to carry out their promise of quitting +Leinster, and engaged in a fresh contest with the +Earl of March, whom the king had proclaimed as +his heir and left behind him as his lieutenant in +Ireland. In the summer of 1398 March was +beaten and slain in battle: and Richard resolved +to avenge his cousin's death and complete the +work he had begun by a fresh invasion. He felt +no apprehension of danger. At home his triumph +seemed complete. The death of Norfolk, the +exile of Henry of Lancaster, left the baronage +without heads for any rising. He ensured, as +he believed, the loyalty of the great houses by +the hostages of their blood whom he carried with +him, at whose head was Henry of Lancaster's son, +the future Henry the Fifth. The refusal of the +Percies, the Earl of Northumberland and his son +Henry Percy or Hotspur, to obey his summons +might have warned him that danger was brewing +in the north. Richard however took little heed. +He banished the Percies, who withdrew into + +<span class="pagenum"><a name="Vol2-Page-2-379"></a>2-379]</span> + +Scotland; and sailed for Ireland at the end of +May, leaving his uncle the Duke of York regent +in his stead. +</p> + +<p> +<span class="sidenote">Landing of +Henry</span> +</p> + +<p> +The opening of his campaign was indecisive, +and it was not till fresh reinforcements arrived +at Dublin that the king could prepare for a march +into the heart of the island. But while he planned +the conquest of Ireland the news came that England +was lost. Little more than a month had +passed after his departure when Henry of Lancaster +entered the Humber and landed at Ravenspur. +He came, he said, to claim his heritage; +and three of his Yorkshire castles at once threw +open their gates. The two great houses of the +north joined him at once. Ralph Neville, the Earl +of Westmoreland, had married his half-sister; the +Percies came from their exile over the Scottish +border. As he pushed quickly to the south all +resistance broke down. The army which the +Regent gathered refused to do hurt to the Duke; +London called him to her gates; and the royal +Council could only march hastily on Bristol in +the hope of securing that port for the King's +return. But the town at once yielded to Henry's +summons, the Regent submitted to him, and with +an army which grew at every step the Duke +marched upon Cheshire, where Richard's adherents +were gathering in arms to meet the king. +Contrary winds had for a while kept Richard +ignorant of his cousin's progress, and even when + +<span class="pagenum"><a name="Vol2-Page-2-380"></a>2-380]</span> + +the news reached him he was in a web of +treachery. The Duke of Albemarle, the son of +the Regent Duke of York, was beside him, and +at his persuasion the King abandoned his first +purpose of returning at once, and sent the Earl +of Salisbury to Conway while he himself waited +to gather his army and fleet. The six days he +proposed to gather them in became sixteen, and +the delay proved fatal to his cause. As no news +came of Richard the Welshmen who flocked to +Salisbury's camp dispersed on Henry's advance +to Chester. Henry was in fact master of the +realm at the opening of August when Richard at +last sailed from Waterford and landed at Milford +Haven. +</p> + +<p> +<span class="sidenote">Richard's +capture</span> +</p> + +<p> +Every road was blocked, and the news that all +was lost told on the thirty thousand men he +brought with him. In a single day but six +thousand remained, and even these dispersed +when it was found that the King had ridden off +disguised as a friar to join the force which he +believed to be awaiting him in North Wales with +Salisbury at its head. He reached Caernarvon +only to find this force already disbanded, and +throwing himself into the castle despatched his +kinsmen, the Dukes of Exeter and Surrey, to +Chester to negotiate with Henry of Lancaster. +But they were detained there while the Earl of +Northumberland pushed forward with a picked +body of men, and securing the castles of the coast + +<span class="pagenum"><a name="Vol2-Page-2-381"></a>2-381]</span> + +at last sought an interview with Richard at Conway. +The King's confidence was still unbroken. +He threatened to raise a force of Welshmen and +to put Lancaster to death. Deserted as he was +indeed, a King was in himself a power, and only +the treacherous pledges of the Earl induced him +to set aside his plans for a reconciliation to be +brought about in Parliament and to move from +Conway on the promise of a conference with +Henry at Flint. But he had no sooner reached +the town than he found himself surrounded by Lancaster's +forces. "I am betrayed," he cried, as the +view of his enemies burst on him from the hill; +"there are pennons and banners in the valley." +But it was too late for retreat. Richard was +seized and brought before his cousin. "I am +come before my time," said Lancaster, "but I will +show you the reason. Your people, my lord, +complain that for the space of twenty years you +have ruled them harshly: however, if it please +God, I will help you to rule them better." "Fair +cousin," replied the King, "since it pleases you, +it pleases me well." Then, breaking in private +into passionate regrets that he had ever spared +his cousin's life, he suffered himself to be carried +a prisoner along the road to London. +</p> + +</div> +</div> +<div class="teidiv"> +<div class="head"> +<hr> +<a name="index-div-id4555750"></a> +END OF VOL. II. +</div> + +</div> + </div> + +<br> +<br> +<br> +<br> +<br> +<hr class="pg" noshade> +<p>***END OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK HISTORY OF THE ENGLISH PEOPLE, VOLUME II (OF 8)***</p> +<p>******* This file should be named 17038-h.txt or 17038-h.zip *******</p> +<p>This and all associated files of various formats will be found in:<br> +<a href="https://www.gutenberg.org/dirs/1/7/0/3/17038">https://www.gutenberg.org/1/7/0/3/17038</a></p> +<p>Updated editions will replace the previous one--the old editions +will be renamed.</p> + +<p>Creating the works from public domain print editions means that no +one owns a United States copyright in these works, so the Foundation +(and you!) can copy and distribute it in the United States without +permission and without paying copyright royalties. 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You may copy it, give it away or +re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included +with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.org + + + + + +Title: History of the English People, Volume II (of 8) + The Charter, 1216-1307; The Parliament, 1307-1400 + + +Author: John Richard Green + + + +Release Date: November 10, 2005 [eBook #17038] +Most recently updated: May 20, 2008 + +Language: English + +Character set encoding: ISO-646-US (US-ASCII) + + +***START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK HISTORY OF THE ENGLISH PEOPLE, +VOLUME II (OF 8)*** + + +E-text prepared by Paul Murray and the Project Gutenberg Online +Distributed Proofreading Team (https://www.pgdp.net/) + + + +Note: Project Gutenberg also has an HTML version of this + file which includes the original illustrations. + See 17038-h.htm or 17038-h.zip: + (https://www.gutenberg.org/dirs/1/7/0/3/17038/17038-h/17038-h.htm) + or + (https://www.gutenberg.org/dirs/1/7/0/3/17038/17038-h.zip) + + Readers who are unable to use the fully illustrated html + version of this text may wish to view the individual images, + located within the "images" directory of the html file + (https://www.gutenberg.org/dirs/1/7/0/3/17038/17038-h/images). + The image file names have been included with each + illustration caption in this text. + + + The index for the entire 8 volume set of _History of + the English People_ was located at the end of Volume + VIII. For ease in accessibility, it has been removed + and produced as a separate volume + (https://www.gutenberg.org/etext/25533). + + + + + +HISTORY OF THE ENGLISH PEOPLE, VOLUME II + +by + +JOHN RICHARD GREEN, M.A. +Honorary Fellow of Jesus College, Oxford + +THE CHARTER, 1216-1307 +THE PARLIAMENT, 1307-1400 + + + + + + + +_First Edition, Demy 8vo, November_ 1877; +_Reprinted December_ 1877, 1881, 1885, 1890. +_Eversley Edition,_ 1895. +London MacMillan and Co. and New York 1895 + + + + +CONTENTS + + Volume II + + Book III--The Charter--1216-1307 + + Chapter II--Henry the Third--1216-1232 + + Chapter III--The Barons' War--1232-1272 + + Chapter IV--Edward the First--1272-1307 + + Book IV--The Parliament--1307-1461 + + Authorities for Book IV + + Chapter I--Edward II--1307-1327 + + Chapter II--Edward the Third--1327-1347 + + Chapter III--The Peasant Revolt--1347-1381 + + Chapter IV--Richard the Second--1381-1400 + + +LIST OF MAPS + + Scotland in 1290 (v2-map-1.jpg) + + France at the Treaty of Bretigny (v2-map-2.jpg) + + + + + +VOLUME II + + +BOOK III +THE CHARTER +1216-1307 + + +CHAPTER II +HENRY THE THIRD +1216-1232 + + + +[Sidenote: William Marshal] + +The death of John changed the whole face of English affairs. His son, Henry +of Winchester, was but nine years old, and the pity which was stirred by +the child's helplessness was aided by a sense of injustice in burthening +him with the iniquity of his father. At his death John had driven from his +side even the most loyal of his barons; but William Marshal had clung to +him to the last, and with him was Gualo, the Legate of Innocent's +successor, Honorius the Third. The position of Gualo as representative of +the Papal overlord of the realm was of the highest importance, and his +action showed the real attitude of Rome towards English freedom. The +boy-king was hardly crowned at Gloucester when Legate and Earl issued in +his name the very Charter against which his father had died fighting. Only +the clauses which regulated taxation and the summoning of parliament were +as yet declared to be suspended. The choice of William Marshal as "governor +of King and kingdom" gave weight to this step; and its effect was seen when +the contest was renewed in 1217. Lewis was at first successful in the +eastern counties, but the political reaction was aided by jealousies which +broke out between the English and French nobles in his force, and the first +drew gradually away from him. So general was the defection that at the +opening of summer William Marshal felt himself strong enough for a blow at +his foes. Lewis himself was investing Dover, and a joint army of French and +English barons under the Count of Perche and Robert Fitz-Walter was +besieging Lincoln, when gathering troops rapidly from the royal castles the +regent marched to the relief of the latter town. Cooped up in its narrow +streets and attacked at once by the Earl and the garrison, the barons fled +in utter rout; the Count of Perche fell on the field, Robert Fitz-Walter +was taken prisoner. Lewis at once retreated on London and called for aid +from France. But a more terrible defeat crushed his remaining hopes. A +small English fleet which set sail from Dover under Hubert de Burgh fell +boldly on the reinforcements which were crossing under escort of Eustace +the Monk, a well-known freebooter of the Channel. Some incidents of the +fight light up for us the naval warfare of the time. From the decks of the +English vessels bowmen poured their arrows into the crowded transports, +others hurled quicklime into their enemies' faces, while the more active +vessels crashed with their armed prows into the sides of the French ships. +The skill of the mariners of the Cinque Ports turned the day against the +larger forces of their opponents, and the fleet of Eustace was utterly +destroyed. The royal army at once closed upon London, but resistance was +really at an end. By a treaty concluded at Lambeth in September Lewis +promised to withdraw from England on payment of a sum which he claimed as +debt; his adherents were restored to their possessions, the liberties of +London and other towns confirmed, and the prisoners on either side set at +liberty. A fresh issue of the Charter, though in its modified form, +proclaimed yet more clearly the temper and policy of the Earl Marshal. + + +[Sidenote: Hubert de Burgh] + +His death at the opening of 1219, after a year spent in giving order to the +realm, brought no change in the system he had adopted. The control of +affairs passed into the hands of a new legate, Pandulf, of Stephen Langton +who had just returned forgiven from Rome, and of the Justiciar, Hubert de +Burgh. It was a time of transition, and the temper of the Justiciar was +eminently transitional. Bred in the school of Henry the Second, Hubert had +little sympathy with national freedom, and though resolute to maintain the +Charter he can have had small love for it; his conception of good +government, like that of his master, lay in a wise personal administration, +in the preservation of order and law. But he combined with this a +thoroughly English desire for national independence, a hatred of +foreigners, and a reluctance to waste English blood and treasure in +Continental struggles. Able as he proved himself, his task was one of no +common difficulty. He was hampered by the constant interference of Rome. A +Papal legate resided at the English court, and claimed a share in the +administration of the realm as the representative of its overlord and as +guardian of the young sovereign. A foreign party too had still a footing in +the kingdom, for William Marshal had been unable to rid himself of men like +Peter des Roches or Faukes de Breaute, who had fought on the royal side in +the struggle against Lewis. Hubert had to deal too with the anarchy which +that struggle left behind it. From the time of the Conquest the centre of +England had been covered with the domains of great houses, whose longings +were for feudal independence and whose spirit of revolt had been held in +check partly by the stern rule of the kings and partly by the rise of a +baronage sprung from the Court and settled for the most part in the North. +The oppression of John united both the earlier and these newer houses in +the struggle for the Charter. But the character of each remained unchanged, +and the close of the struggle saw the feudal party break out in their old +lawlessness and defiance of the Crown. + + +[Sidenote: Order restored] + +For a time the anarchy of Stephen's days seemed to revive. But the +Justiciar was resolute to crush it, and he was backed by the strenuous +efforts of Stephen Langton. A new and solemn coronation of the young king +in 1220 was followed by a demand for the restoration of the royal castles +which had been seized by the barons and foreigners. The Earl of Chester, +the head of the feudal baronage, though he rose in armed rebellion, quailed +before the march of Hubert and the Primate's threats of excommunication. A +more formidable foe remained in the Frenchman, Faukes de Breaute, the +sheriff of six counties, with six royal castles in his hands, and allied +both with the rebel barons and Llewelyn of Wales. But in 1224 his castle of +Bedford was besieged for two months; and on its surrender the stern justice +of Hubert hung the twenty-four knights and their retainers who formed the +garrison before its walls. The blow was effectual; the royal castles were +surrendered by the barons, and the land was once more at peace. Freed from +foreign soldiery, the country was freed also from the presence of the +foreign legate. Langton wrested a promise from Rome that so long as he +lived no future legate should be sent to England, and with Pandulf's +resignation in 1221 the direct interference of the Papacy in the government +of the realm came to an end. But even these services of the Primate were +small compared with his services to English freedom. Throughout his life +the Charter was the first object of his care. The omission of the articles +which restricted the royal power over taxation in the Charter which was +published at Henry's accession in 1216 was doubtless due to the +Archbishop's absence and disgrace at Rome. The suppression of disorder +seems to have revived the older spirit of resistance among the royal +ministers; for when Langton demanded a fresh confirmation of the Charter in +Parliament at London William Brewer, one of the King's councillors, +protested that it had been extorted by force and was without legal +validity. "If you loved the King, William," the Primate burst out in anger, +"you would not throw a stumbling-block in the way of the peace of the +realm." The young king was cowed by the Archbishop's wrath, and promised +observance of the Charter. But it may have been their consciousness of such +a temper among the royal councillors that made Langton and the baronage +demand two years later a fresh promulgation of the Charter as the price of +a subsidy, and Henry's assent established the principle, so fruitful of +constitutional results, that redress of wrongs precedes a grant to the +Crown. + + +[Sidenote: State of the Church] + +These repeated sanctions of the Charter and the government of the realm +year after year in accordance with its provisions were gradually bringing +the new freedom home to the mass of Englishmen. But the sense of liberty +was at this time quickened and intensified by a religious movement which +stirred English society to its depths. Never had the priesthood wielded +such boundless power over Christendom as in the days of Innocent the Third +and his immediate successors. But its religious hold on the people was +loosening day by day. The old reverence for the Papacy was fading away +before the universal resentment at its political ambition, its lavish use +of interdict and excommunication for purely secular ends, its degradation +of the most sacred sentences into means of financial extortion. In Italy +the struggle that was opening between Rome and Frederick the Second +disclosed a spirit of scepticism which among the Epicurean poets of +Florence denied the immortality of the soul and attacked the very +foundations of the faith itself. In Southern Gaul, Languedoc and Provence +had embraced the heresy of the Albigenses and thrown off all allegiance to +the Papacy. Even in England, though there were no signs as yet of religious +revolt, and though the political action of Rome had been in the main on the +side of freedom, there was a spirit of resistance to its interference with +national concerns which broke out in the struggle against John. "The Pope +has no part in secular matters," had been the reply of London to the +interdict of Innocent. And within the English Church itself there was much +to call for reform. Its attitude in the strife for the Charter as well as +the after work of the Primate had made it more popular than ever; but its +spiritual energy was less than its political. The disuse of preaching, the +decline of the monastic orders into rich landowners, the non-residence and +ignorance of the parish priests, lowered the religious influence of the +clergy. The abuses of the time foiled even the energy of such men as Bishop +Grosseteste of Lincoln. His constitutions forbid the clergy to haunt +taverns, to gamble, to share in drinking bouts, to mix in the riot and +debauchery of the life of the baronage. But such prohibitions witness to +the prevalence of the evils they denounce. Bishops and deans were still +withdrawn from their ecclesiastical duties to act as ministers, judges, or +ambassadors. Benefices were heaped in hundreds at a time on royal +favourites like John Mansel. Abbeys absorbed the tithes of parishes and +then served them by half-starved vicars, while exemptions purchased from +Rome shielded the scandalous lives of canons and monks from all episcopal +discipline. And behind all this was a group of secular statesmen and +scholars, the successors of such critics as Walter Map, waging indeed no +open warfare with the Church, but noting with bitter sarcasm its abuses and +its faults. + + +[Sidenote: The Friars] + +To bring the world back again within the pale of the Church was the aim of +two religious orders which sprang suddenly to life at the opening of the +thirteenth century. The zeal of the Spaniard Dominic was roused at the +sight of the lordly prelates who sought by fire and sword to win the +Albigensian heretics to the faith. "Zeal," he cried, "must be met by zeal, +lowliness by lowliness, false sanctity by real sanctity, preaching lies by +preaching truth." His fiery ardour and rigid orthodoxy were seconded by the +mystical piety, the imaginative enthusiasm of Francis of Assisi. The life +of Francis falls like a stream of tender light across the darkness of the +time. In the frescoes of Giotto or the verse of Dante we see him take +Poverty for his bride. He strips himself of all, he flings his very clothes +at his father's feet, that he may be one with Nature and God. His +passionate verse claims the moon for his sister and the sun for his +brother, he calls on his brother the Wind, and his sister the Water. His +last faint cry was a "Welcome, Sister Death!" Strangely as the two men +differed from each other, their aim was the same--to convert the heathen, +to extirpate heresy, to reconcile knowledge with orthodoxy, above all to +carry the Gospel to the poor. The work was to be done by an utter reversal +of the older monasticism, by seeking personal salvation in effort for the +salvation of their fellow-men, by exchanging the solitary of the cloister +for the preacher, the monk for the "brother" or friar. To force the new +"brethren" into entire dependence on those among whom they laboured their +vow of Poverty was turned into a stern reality; the "Begging Friars" were +to subsist solely on alms, they might possess neither money nor lands, the +very houses in which they lived were to be held in trust for them by +others. The tide of popular enthusiasm which welcomed their appearance +swept before it the reluctance of Rome, the jealousy of the older orders, +the opposition of the parochial priesthood. Thousands of brethren gathered +in a few years round Francis and Dominic; and the begging preachers, clad +in coarse frock of serge with a girdle of rope round their waist, wandered +barefooted as missionaries over Asia, battled with heresy in Italy and +Gaul, lectured in the Universities, and preached and toiled among the poor. + + +[Sidenote: The Friars and the Towns] + +To the towns especially the coming of the Friars was a religious +revolution. They had been left for the most part to the worst and most +ignorant of the clergy, the mass-priest, whose sole subsistence lay in his +fees. Burgher and artizan were left to spell out what religious instruction +they might from the gorgeous ceremonies of the Church's ritual or the +scriptural pictures and sculptures which were graven on the walls of its +minsters. We can hardly wonder at the burst of enthusiasm which welcomed +the itinerant preacher whose fervid appeal, coarse wit, and familiar story +brought religion into the fair and the market place. In England, where the +Black Friars of Dominic arrived in 1221, the Grey Friars of Francis in +1224, both were received with the same delight. As the older orders had +chosen the country, the Friars chose the town. They had hardly landed at +Dover before they made straight for London and Oxford. In their ignorance +of the road the first two Grey Brothers lost their way in the woods between +Oxford and Baldon, and fearful of night and of the floods turned aside to a +grange of the monks of Abingdon. Their ragged clothes and foreign gestures, +as they prayed for hospitality, led the porter to take them for jongleurs, +the jesters and jugglers of the day, and the news of this break in the +monotony of their lives brought prior, sacrist, and cellarer to the door to +welcome them and witness their tricks. The disappointment was too much for +the temper of the monks, and the brothers were kicked roughly from the gate +to find their night's lodging under a tree. But the welcome of the townsmen +made up everywhere for the ill-will and opposition of both clergy and +monks. The work of the Friars was physical as well as moral. The rapid +progress of population within the boroughs had outstripped the sanitary +regulations of the Middle Ages, and fever or plague or the more terrible +scourge of leprosy festered in the wretched hovels of the suburbs. It was +to haunts such as these that Francis had pointed his disciples, and the +Grey Brethren at once fixed themselves in the meanest and poorest quarters +of each town. Their first work lay in the noisome lazar-houses; it was +amongst the lepers that they commonly chose the site of their homes. At +London they settled in the shambles of Newgate; at Oxford they made their +way to the swampy ground between its walls and the streams of Thames. Huts +of mud and timber, as mean as the huts around them, rose within the rough +fence and ditch that bounded the Friary. The order of Francis made a hard +fight against the taste for sumptuous buildings and for greater personal +comfort which characterized the time. "I did not enter into religion to +build walls," protested an English provincial when the brethren pressed for +a larger house; and Albert of Pisa ordered a stone cloister which the +burgesses of Southampton had built for them to be razed to the ground. "You +need no little mountains to lift your heads to heaven," was his scornful +reply to a claim for pillows. None but the sick went shod. An Oxford Friar +found a pair of shoes one morning, and wore them at matins. At night he +dreamed that robbers leapt on him in a dangerous pass between Gloucester +and Oxford with, shouts of "Kill, kill!" "I am a friar," shrieked the +terror-stricken brother. "You lie," was the instant answer, "for you go +shod." The Friar lifted up his foot in disproof, but the shoe was there. In +an agony of repentance he woke and flung the pair out of window. + + +[Sidenote: Revival of Theology] + +It was with less success that the order struggled against the passion of +the time for knowledge. Their vow of poverty, rigidly interpreted as it was +by their founders, would have denied them the possession of books or +materials for study. "I am your breviary, I am your breviary," Francis +cried passionately to a novice who asked for a psalter. When the news of a +great doctor's reception was brought to him at Paris, his countenance fell. +"I am afraid, my son," he replied, "that such doctors will be the +destruction of my vineyard. They are the true doctors who with the meekness +of wisdom show forth good works for the edification of their neighbours." +One kind of knowledge indeed their work almost forced on them. The +popularity of their preaching soon led them to the deeper study of +theology; within a short time after their establishment in England we find +as many as thirty readers or lecturers appointed at Hereford, Leicester, +Bristol, and other places, and a regular succession of teachers provided at +each University. The Oxford Dominicans lectured on theology in the nave of +their new church while philosophy was taught in the cloister. The first +provincial of the Grey Friars built a school in their Oxford house and +persuaded Grosseteste to lecture there. His influence after his promotion +to the see of Lincoln was steadily exerted to secure theological study +among the Friars, as well as their establishment in the University; and in +this work he was ably seconded by his scholar, Adam Marsh, or de Marisco, +under whom the Franciscan school at Oxford attained a reputation throughout +Christendom. Lyons, Paris, and Koln borrowed from it their professors: it +was through its influence indeed that Oxford rose to a position hardly +inferior to that of Paris itself as a centre of scholasticism. But the +result of this powerful impulse was soon seen to be fatal to the wider +intellectual activity which had till now characterized the Universities. +Theology in its scholastic form resumed its supremacy in the schools. Its +only efficient rivals were practical studies such as medicine and law. The +last, as he was by far the greatest, instance of the freer and wider +culture which had been the glory of the last century, was Roger Bacon, and +no name better illustrates the rapidity and completeness with which it +passed away. + + +[Sidenote: Roger Bacon] + +Roger Bacon was the child of royalist parents who were driven into exile +and reduced to poverty by the civil wars. From Oxford, where he studied +under Edmund of Abingdon to whom he owed his introduction to the works of +Aristotle, he passed to the University of Paris, and spent his whole +heritage there in costly studies and experiments. "From my youth up," he +writes, "I have laboured at the sciences and tongues. I have sought the +friendship of all men among the Latins who had any reputation for +knowledge. I have caused youths to be instructed in languages, geometry, +arithmetic, the construction of tables and instruments, and many needful +things besides." The difficulties in the way of such studies as he had +resolved to pursue were immense. He was without instruments or means of +experiment. "Without mathematical instruments no science can be mastered," +he complains afterwards, "and these instruments are not to be found among +the Latins, nor could they be made for two or three hundred pounds. +Besides, better tables are indispensably necessary, tables on which the +motions of the heavens are certified from the beginning to the end of the +world without daily labour, but these tables are worth a king's ransom and +could not be made without a vast expense. I have often attempted the +composition of such tables, but could not finish them through failure of +means and the folly of those whom I had to employ." Books were difficult +and sometimes even impossible to procure. "The scientific works of +Aristotle, of Avicenna, of Seneca, of Cicero, and other ancients cannot be +had without great cost; their principal works have not been translated into +Latin, and copies of others are not to be found in ordinary libraries or +elsewhere. The admirable books of Cicero de Republica are not to be found +anywhere, so far as I can hear, though I have made anxious enquiry for them +in different parts of the world, and by various messengers. I could never +find the works of Seneca, though I made diligent search for them during +twenty years and more. And so it is with many more most useful books +connected with the science of morals." It is only words like these of his +own that bring home to us the keen thirst for knowledge, the patience, the +energy of Roger Bacon. He returned as a teacher to Oxford, and a touching +record of his devotion to those whom he taught remains in the story of John +of London, a boy of fifteen, whose ability raised him above the general +level of his pupils. "When he came to me as a poor boy," says Bacon in +recommending him to the Pope, "I caused him to be nurtured and instructed +for the love of God, especially since for aptitude and innocence I have +never found so towardly a youth. Five or six years ago I caused him to be +taught in languages, mathematics, and optics, and I have gratuitously +instructed him with my own lips since the time that I received your +mandate. There is no one at Paris who knows so much of the root of +philosophy, though he has not produced the branches, flowers, and fruit +because of his youth, and because he has had no experience in teaching. But +he has the means of surpassing all the Latins if he live to grow old and +goes on as he has begun." + +The pride with which he refers to his system of instruction was justified +by the wide extension which he gave to scientific teaching in Oxford. It is +probably of himself that he speaks when he tells us that "the science of +optics has not hitherto been lectured on at Paris or elsewhere among the +Latins, save twice at Oxford." It was a science on which he had laboured +for ten years. But his teaching seems to have fallen on a barren soil. From +the moment when the Friars settled in the Universities scholasticism +absorbed the whole mental energy of the student world. The temper of the +age was against scientific or philosophical studies. The older enthusiasm +for knowledge was dying down; the study of law was the one source of +promotion, whether in Church or state; philosophy was discredited, +literature in its purer forms became almost extinct. After forty years of +incessant study, Bacon found himself in his own words "unheard, forgotten, +buried." He seems at one time to have been wealthy, but his wealth was +gone. "During the twenty years that I have specially laboured in the +attainment of wisdom, abandoning the path of common men, I have spent on +these pursuits more than two thousand pounds, not to mention the cost of +books, experiments, instruments, tables, the acquisition of languages, and +the like. Add to all this the sacrifices I have made to procure the +friendship of the wise and to obtain well-instructed assistants." Ruined +and baffled in his hopes, Bacon listened to the counsels of his friend +Grosseteste and renounced the world. He became a friar of the order of St. +Francis, an order where books and study were looked upon as hindrances to +the work which it had specially undertaken, that of preaching among the +masses of the poor. He had written little. So far was he from attempting to +write that his new superiors prohibited him from publishing anything under +pain of forfeiture of the book and penance of bread and water. But we can +see the craving of his mind, the passionate instinct of creation which +marks the man of genius, in the joy with which he seized a strange +opportunity that suddenly opened before him. "Some few chapters on +different subjects, written at the entreaty of friends," seem to have got +abroad, and were brought by one of the Pope's chaplains under the notice of +Clement the Fourth. The Pope at once invited Bacon to write. But +difficulties stood in his way. Materials, transcription, and other expenses +for such a work as he projected would cost at least, L60, and the Pope sent +not a penny. Bacon begged help from his family, but they were ruined like +himself. No one would lend to a mendicant friar, and when his friends +raised the money he needed it was by pawning their goods in the hope of +repayment from Clement. Nor was this all; the work itself, abstruse and +scientific as was its subject, had to be treated in a clear and popular +form to gain the Papal ear. But difficulties which would have crushed +another man only roused Roger Bacon to an almost superhuman energy. By the +close of 1267 the work was done. The "greater work," itself in modern form +a closely-printed folio, with its successive summaries and appendices in +the "lesser" and the "third" works (which make a good octavo more), were +produced and forwarded to the Pope within fifteen months. + + +[Sidenote: The Opus Majus] + +No trace of this fiery haste remains in the book itself. The "Opus Majus" +is alike wonderful in plan and detail. Bacon's main purpose, in the words +of Dr. Whewell, is "to urge the necessity of a reform in the mode of +philosophizing, to set forth the reasons why knowledge had not made a +greater progress, to draw back attention to sources of knowledge which had +been unwisely neglected, to discover other sources which were yet wholly +unknown, and to animate men to the undertaking by a prospect of the vast +advantages which it offered." The developement of his scheme is on the +largest scale; he gathers together the whole knowledge of his time on every +branch of science which it possessed, and as he passes them in review he +suggests improvements in nearly all. His labours, both here and in his +after works, in the field of grammar and philology, his perseverance in +insisting on the necessity of correct texts, of an accurate knowledge of +languages, of an exact interpretation, are hardly less remarkable than his +scientific investigations. From grammar he passes to mathematics, from +mathematics to experimental philosophy. Under the name of mathematics +indeed was included all the physical science of the time. "The neglect of +it for nearly thirty or forty years," pleads Bacon passionately, "hath +nearly destroyed the entire studies of Latin Christendom. For he who knows +not mathematics cannot know any other sciences; and what is more, he cannot +discover his own ignorance or find its proper remedies." Geography, +chronology, arithmetic, music, are brought into something of scientific +form, and like rapid sketches are given of the question of climate, +hydrography, geography, and astrology. The subject of optics, his own +especial study, is treated with greater fulness; he enters into the +question of the anatomy of the eye besides discussing problems which lie +more strictly within the province of optical science. In a word, the +"Greater Work," to borrow the phrase of Dr. Whewell, is "at once the +Encyclopedia and the Novum Organum of the thirteenth century." The whole of +the after-works of Roger Bacon--and treatise after treatise has of late +been disentombed from our libraries--are but developements in detail of the +magnificent conception he laid before Clement. Such a work was its own +great reward. + +From the world around Roger Bacon could look for and found small +recognition. No word of acknowledgement seems to have reached its author +from the Pope. If we may credit a more recent story, his writings only +gained him a prison from his order. "Unheard, forgotten, buried," the old +man died as he had lived, and it has been reserved for later ages to roll +away the obscurity that had gathered round his memory, and to place first +in the great roll of modern science the name of Roger Bacon. + + +[Sidenote: Scholasticism] + +The failure of Bacon shows the overpowering strength of the drift towards +the practical studies, and above all towards theology in its scholastic +guise. Aristotle, who had been so long held at bay as the most dangerous +foe of mediaeval faith, was now turned by the adoption of his logical +method in the discussion and definition of theological dogma into its +unexpected ally. It was this very method that led to "that unprofitable +subtlety and curiosity" which Lord Bacon notes as the vice of the +scholastic philosophy. But "certain it is"--to continue the same great +thinker's comment on the Friars--"that if these schoolmen to their great +thirst of truth and unwearied travel of wit had joined variety of reading +and contemplation, they had proved excellent lights to the great +advancement of all learning and knowledge." What, amidst all their errors, +they undoubtedly did was to insist on the necessity of rigid demonstration +and a more exact use of words, to introduce a clear and methodical +treatment of all subjects into discussion, and above all to substitute an +appeal to reason for unquestioning obedience to authority. It was by this +critical tendency, by the new clearness and precision which scholasticism +gave to enquiry, that in spite of the trivial questions with which it often +concerned itself it trained the human mind through the next two centuries +to a temper which fitted it to profit by the great disclosure of knowledge +that brought about the Renascence. And it is to the same spirit of fearless +enquiry as well as to the strong popular sympathies which their very +constitution necessitated that we must attribute the influence which the +Friars undoubtedly exerted in the coming struggle between the people and +the Crown. Their position is clearly and strongly marked throughout the +whole contest. The University of Oxford, which soon fell under the +direction of their teaching, stood first in its resistance to Papal +exactions and its claim of English liberty. The classes in the towns, on +whom the influence of the Friars told most directly, were steady supporters +of freedom throughout the Barons' Wars. + + +[Sidenote: Its Political Influence] + +Politically indeed the teaching of the schoolmen was of immense value, for +it set on a religious basis and gave an intellectual form to the +constitutional theory of the relations between king and people which was +slowly emerging from the struggle with the Crown. In assuming the +responsibility of a Christian king to God for the good government of his +realm, in surrounding the pledges whether of ruler or ruled with religious +sanctions, the mediaeval Church entered its protest against any personal +despotism. The schoolmen pushed further still to the doctrine of a contract +between king and people; and their trenchant logic made short work of the +royal claims to irresponsible power and unquestioning obedience. "He who +would be in truth a king," ran a poem which embodies their teaching at this +time in pungent verse--"he is a 'free king' indeed if he rightly rule +himself and his realm. All things are lawful to him for the government of +his realm, but nothing is lawful to him for its destruction. It is one +thing to rule according to a king's duty, another to destroy a kingdom by +resisting the law." "Let the community of the realm advise, and let it be +known what the generality, to whom their laws are best known, think on the +matter. They who are ruled by the laws know those laws best; they who make +daily trial of them are best acquainted with them; and since it is their +own affairs which are at stake they will take the more care and will act +with an eye to their own peace." "It concerns the community to see what +sort of men ought justly to be chosen for the weal of the realm." The +constitutional restrictions on the royal authority, the right of the whole +nation to deliberate and decide on its own affairs and to have a voice in +the selection of the administrators of government, had never been so +clearly stated before. But the importance of the Friar's work lay in this, +that the work of the scholar was supplemented by that of the popular +preacher. The theory of government wrought out in cell and lecture-room was +carried over the length and breadth of the land by the mendicant brother, +begging his way from town to town, chatting with farmer or housewife at the +cottage door, and setting up his portable pulpit in village green or +market-place. His open-air sermons, ranging from impassioned devotion to +coarse story and homely mother wit, became the journals as well as the +homilies of the day; political and social questions found place in them +side by side with spiritual matters; and the rudest countryman learned his +tale of a king's oppression or a patriot's hopes as he listened to the +rambling, passionate, humorous discourse of the begging friar. + + +[Sidenote: Henry the Third] + +Never had there been more need of such a political education of the whole +people than at the moment we have reached. For the triumph of the Charter, +the constitutional government of Governor and Justiciar, had rested mainly +on the helplessness of the king. As boy or youth, Henry the Third had bowed +to the control of William Marshal or Langton or Hubert de Burgh. But he was +now grown to manhood, and his character was from this hour to tell on the +events of his reign. From the cruelty, the lust, the impiety of his father +the young king was absolutely free. There was a geniality, a vivacity, a +refinement in his temper which won a personal affection for him even in his +worst days from some who bitterly censured his rule. The Abbey-church of +Westminster, with which he replaced the ruder minster of the Confessor, +remains a monument of his artistic taste. He was a patron and friend of men +of letters, and himself skilled in the "gay science" of the troubadour. But +of the political capacity which was the characteristic of his house he had +little or none. Profuse, changeable, false from sheer meanness of spirit, +impulsive alike in good and ill, unbridled in temper and tongue, reckless +in insult and wit, Henry's delight was in the display of an empty and +prodigal magnificence, his one notion of government was a dream of +arbitrary power. But frivolous as the king's mood was, he clung with a weak +man's obstinacy to a distinct line of policy; and this was the policy not +of Hubert or Langton but of John. He cherished the hope of recovering his +heritage across the sea. He believed in the absolute power of the Crown; +and looked on the pledges of the Great Charter as promises which force had +wrested from the king and which force could wrest back again. France was +telling more and more on English opinion; and the claim which the French +kings were advancing to a divine and absolute power gave a sanction in +Henry's mind to the claim of absolute authority which was still maintained +by his favourite advisers in the royal council. Above all he clung to the +alliance with the Papacy. Henry was personally devout; and his devotion +only bound him the more firmly to his father's system of friendship with +Rome. Gratitude and self-interest alike bound him to the Papal See. Rome +had saved him from ruin as a child; its legate had set the crown on his +head; its threats and excommunications had foiled Lewis and built up again +a royal party. Above all it was Rome which could alone free him from his +oath to the Charter, and which could alone defend him if like his father he +had to front the baronage in arms. + + +[Sidenote: England and Rome] + +His temper was now to influence the whole system of government. In 1227 +Henry declared himself of age; and though Hubert still remained Justiciar +every year saw him more powerless in his struggle with the tendencies of +the king. The death of Stephen Langton in 1228 was a yet heavier blow to +English freedom. In persuading Rome to withdraw her Legate the Primate had +averted a conflict between the national desire for self-government and the +Papal claims of overlordship. But his death gave the signal for a more +serious struggle, for it was in the oppression of the Church of England by +the Popes through the reign of Henry that the little rift first opened +which was destined to widen into the gulf that parted the one from the +other at the Reformation. In the mediaeval theory of the Papacy, as +Innocent and his successors held it, Christendom, as a spiritual realm of +which the Popes were the head, took the feudal form of the secular realms +which lay within its pale. The Pope was its sovereign, the Bishops were his +barons, and the clergy were his under vassals. As the king demanded aids +and subsidies in case of need from his liegemen, so in the theory of Rome +might the head of the Church demand aid in need from the priesthood. And at +this moment the need of the Popes was sore. Rome had plunged into her +desperate conflict with the Emperor, Frederick the Second, and was looking +everywhere for the means of recruiting her drained exchequer. On England +she believed herself to have more than a spiritual claim for support. She +regarded the kingdom as a vassal kingdom, and as bound to aid its overlord. +It was only by the promise of a heavy subsidy that Henry in 1229 could buy +the Papal confirmation of Langton's successor. But the baronage was of +other mind than Henry as to this claim of overlordship, and the demand of +an aid to Rome from the laity was at once rejected by them. Her spiritual +claim over the allegiance of the clergy however remained to fall back upon, +and the clergy were in the Pope's hand. Gregory the Ninth had already +claimed for the Papal See a right of nomination to some prebends in each +cathedral church; he now demanded a tithe of all the moveables of the +priesthood, and a threat of excommunication silenced their murmurs. +Exaction followed exaction as the needs of the Papal treasury grew greater. +The very rights of lay patrons were set aside, and under the name of +"reserves" presentations to English benefices were sold in the Papal +market, while Italian clergy were quartered on the best livings of the +Church. + + +[Sidenote: Fall of Hubert de Burgh] + +The general indignation at last found vent in a wide conspiracy. In 1231 +letters from "the whole body of those who prefer to die rather than be +ruined by the Romans" were scattered over the kingdom by armed men; tithes +gathered for the Pope or the foreign priests were seized and given to the +poor; the Papal collectors were beaten and their bulls trodden under foot. +The remonstrances of Rome only made clearer the national character of the +movement; but as enquiry went on the hand of the Justiciar himself was seen +to have been at work. Sheriffs had stood idly by while violence was done; +royal letters had been shown by the rioters as approving their acts; and +the Pope openly laid the charge of the outbreak on the secret connivance of +Hubert de Burgh. No charge could have been more fatal to Hubert in the mind +of the king. But he was already in full collision with the Justiciar on +other grounds. Henry was eager to vindicate his right to the great heritage +his father had lost: the Gascons, who still clung to him, not because they +loved England but because they hated France, spurred him to war; and in +1229 a secret invitation came from the Norman barons. But while Hubert held +power no serious effort was made to carry on a foreign strife. The Norman +call was rejected through his influence, and when a great armament gathered +at Portsmouth for a campaign in Poitou it dispersed for want of transport +and supplies. The young king drew his sword and rushed madly on the +Justiciar, charging him with treason and corruption by the gold of France. +But the quarrel was appeased and the expedition deferred for the year. In +1230 Henry actually took the field in Britanny and Poitou, but the failure +of the campaign was again laid at the door of Hubert whose opposition was +said to have prevented a decisive engagement. It was at this moment that +the Papal accusation filled up the measure of Henry's wrath against his +minister. In the summer of 1232 he was deprived of his office of Justiciar, +and dragged from a chapel at Brentwood where threats of death had driven +him to take sanctuary. A smith who was ordered to shackle him stoutly +refused. "I will die any death," he said, "before I put iron on the man who +freed England from the stranger and saved Dover from France." The +remonstrances of the Bishop of London forced the king to replace Hubert in +sanctuary, but hunger compelled him to surrender; he was thrown a prisoner +into the Tower, and though soon released he remained powerless in the +realm. His fall left England without a check to the rule of Henry himself. + + + + + +CHAPTER III +THE BARON'S WAR +1232-1272 + + + +[Sidenote: The Aliens] + +Once master of his realm, Henry the Third was quick to declare his plan of +government. The two great checks on a merely personal rule lay as yet in +the authority of the great ministers of State and in the national character +of the administrative body which had been built up by Henry the Second. +Both of these checks Henry at once set himself to remove. He would be his +own minister. The Justiciar ceased to be the Lieutenant-General of the king +and dwindled into a presiding judge of the law-courts. The Chancellor had +grown into a great officer of State, and in 1226 this office had been +conferred on the Bishop of Chichester by the advice and consent of the +Great Council. But Henry succeeded in wresting the seal from him and naming +to this as to other offices at his pleasure. His policy was to entrust all +high posts of government to mere clerks of the royal chapel; trained +administrators, but wholly dependent on the royal will. He found equally +dependent agents of administration by surrounding himself with foreigners. +The return of Peter des Roches to the royal councils was the first sign of +the new system; and hosts of hungry Poitevins and Bretons were summoned +over to occupy the royal castles and fill the judicial and administrative +posts about the Court. The king's marriage in 1236 to Eleanor of Provence +was followed by the arrival in England of the new queen's uncles. The +"Savoy," as his house in the Strand was named, still recalls Peter of Savoy +who arrived five years later to take for a while the chief place at Henry's +council-board; another brother, Boniface, was consecrated on Archbishop +Edmund's death to the highest post in the realm save the Crown itself, the +Archbishoprick of Canterbury. The young Primate, like his brother, brought +with him foreign fashions strange enough to English folk. His armed +retainers pillaged the markets. His own archiepiscopal fist felled to the +ground the prior of St. Bartholomew-by-Smithfield who opposed his +visitation. London was roused by the outrage; on the king's refusal to do +justice a noisy crowd of citizens surrounded the Primate's house at Lambeth +with cries of vengeance, and the "handsome archbishop," as his followers +styled him, was glad to escape over sea. This brood of Provencals was +followed in 1243 by the arrival of the Poitevin relatives of John's queen, +Isabella of Angouleme. Aymer was made Bishop of Winchester; William of +Valence received at a later time the earldom of Pembroke. Even the king's +jester was a Poitevin. Hundreds of their dependants followed these great +nobles to find a fortune in the English realm. The Poitevin lords brought +in their train a bevy of ladies in search of husbands, and three English +earls who were in royal wardship were wedded by the king to foreigners. The +whole machinery of administration passed into the hands of men who were +ignorant and contemptuous of the principles of English government or +English law. Their rule was a mere anarchy; the very retainers of the royal +household turned robbers and pillaged foreign merchants in the precincts of +the Court; corruption invaded the judicature; at the close of this period +of misrule Henry de Bath, a justiciary, was proved to have openly taken +bribes and to have adjudged to himself disputed estates. + + +[Sidenote: Henry and the Baronage] + +That misgovernment of this kind should have gone on unchecked in defiance +of the provisions of the Charter was owing to the disunion and sluggishness +of the English baronage. On the first arrival of the foreigners Richard, +the Earl Marshal, a son of the great Regent, stood forth as their leader to +demand the expulsion of the strangers from the royal Council. Though +deserted by the bulk of the nobles he defeated the foreign troops sent +against him and forced the king to treat for peace. But at this critical +moment the Earl was drawn by an intrigue of Peter des Roches to Ireland; he +fell in a petty skirmish, and the barons were left without a head. The +interposition of a new primate, Edmund of Abingdon, forced the king to +dismiss Peter from court; but there was no real change of system, and the +remonstrances of the Archbishop and of Robert Grosseteste, the Bishop of +Lincoln, remained fruitless. In the long interval of misrule the financial +straits of the king forced him to heap exaction on exaction. The Forest +Laws were used as a means of extortion, sees and abbeys were kept vacant, +loans were wrested from lords and prelates, the Court itself lived at free +quarters wherever it moved. Supplies of this kind however were utterly +insufficient to defray the cost of the king's prodigality. A sixth of the +royal revenue was wasted in pensions to foreign favourites. The debts of +the Crown amounted to four times its annual income. Henry was forced to +appeal for aid to the great Council of the realm, and aid was granted in +1237 on promise of control in its expenditure and on condition that the +king confirmed the Charter. But Charter and promise were alike disregarded; +and in 1242 the resentment of the barons expressed itself in a determined +protest and a refusal of further subsidies. In spite of their refusal +however Henry gathered money enough for a costly expedition for the +recovery of Poitou. The attempt ended in failure and shame. At Taillebourg +the king's force fled in disgraceful rout before the French as far as +Saintes, and only the sudden illness of Lewis the Ninth and a disease which +scattered his army saved Bordeaux from the conquerors. The treasury was +utterly drained, and Henry was driven in 1244 to make a fresh appeal with +his own mouth to the baronage. But the barons had now rallied to a plan of +action, and we can hardly fail to attribute their union to the man who +appears at their head. This was the Earl of Leicester, Simon of Montfort. + + +[Sidenote: Simon of Montfort] + +Simon was the son of another Simon of Montfort, whose name had become +memorable for his ruthless crusade against the Albigensian heretics in +Southern Gaul, and who had inherited the Earldom of Leicester through his +mother, a sister and co-heiress of the last Earl of the house of Beaumont. +But as Simon's tendencies were for the most part French John had kept the +revenues of the earldom in his own hands, and on his death the claim of his +elder son, Amaury, was met by the refusal of Henry the Third to accept a +divided allegiance. The refusal marks the rapid growth of that sentiment of +nationality which the loss of Normandy had brought home. Amaury chose to +remain French, and by a family arrangement with the king's sanction the +honour of Leicester passed in 1231 to his younger brother Simon. His choice +made Simon an Englishman, but his foreign blood still moved the jealousy of +the barons, and this jealousy was quickened by a secret match in 1238 with +Eleanor, the king's sister and widow of the second William Marshal. The +match formed probably part of a policy which Henry pursued throughout his +reign of bringing the great earldoms into closer connexion with the Crown. +That of Chester had fallen to the king through the extinction of the family +of its earls; Cornwall was held by his brother, Richard; Salisbury by his +cousin. Simon's marriage linked the Earldom of Leicester to the royal +house. But it at once brought Simon into conflict with the nobles and the +Church. The baronage, justly indignant that such a step should have been +taken without their consent, for the queen still remained childless and +Eleanor's children by one whom they looked on as a stranger promised to be +heirs of the Crown, rose in a revolt which failed only through the +desertion of their head, Earl Richard of Cornwall, who was satisfied with +Earl Simon's withdrawal from the Royal Council. The censures of the Church +on Eleanor's breach of a vow of chaste widowhood which she had made at her +first husband's death were averted with hardly less difficulty by a journey +to Rome. It was after a year of trouble that Simon returned to England to +reap as it seemed the fruits of his high alliance. He was now formally made +Earl of Leicester and re-entered the Royal Council. But it is probable that +he still found there the old jealousy which had forced from him a pledge of +retirement after his marriage; and that his enemies now succeeded in +winning over the king. In a few months, at any rate, he found the +changeable king alienated from him, he was driven by a burst of royal +passion from the realm, and was forced to spend seven months in France. + + +[Sidenote: Simon's early action] + +Henry's anger passed as quickly as it had risen, and in the spring of 1240 +the Earl was again received with honour at court. It was from this moment +however that his position changed. As yet it had been that of a foreigner, +confounded in the eyes of the nation at large with the Poitevins and +Provencals who swarmed about the court. But in the years of retirement +which followed Simon's return to England his whole attitude was reversed. +There was as yet no quarrel with the king: he followed him in a campaign +across the Channel, and shared in his defeat at Saintes. But he was a +friend of Grosseteste and a patron of the Friars, and became at last known +as a steady opponent of the misrule about him. When prelates and barons +chose twelve representatives to confer with Henry in 1244 Simon stood with +Earl Richard of Cornwall at the head of them. A definite plan of reform +disclosed his hand. The confirmation of the Charter was to be followed by +the election of Justiciar, Chancellor, Treasurer, in the Great Council. Nor +was this restoration of a responsible ministry enough; a perpetual Council +was to attend the king and devise further reforms. The plan broke against +Henry's resistance and a Papal prohibition; but from this time the Earl +took his stand in the front rank of the patriot leaders. The struggle of +the following years was chiefly with the exactions of the Papacy, and Simon +was one of the first to sign the protest which the Parliament in 1246 +addressed to the court of Rome. He was present at the Lent Parliament of +1248, and we can hardly doubt that he shared in its bold rebuke of the +king's misrule and its renewed demand for the appointment of the higher +officers of state by the Council. It was probably a sense of the danger of +leaving at home such a centre of all efforts after reform that brought +Henry to send him in the autumn of 1248 as Seneschal of Gascony to save for +the Crown the last of its provinces over sea. + + +[Sidenote: Simon in Gascony] + +Threatened by France and by Navarre without as well as by revolt within, +the loss of Gascony seemed close at hand; but in a few months the stern +rule of the new Seneschal had quelled every open foe within or without its +bounds. To bring the province to order proved a longer and a harder task. +Its nobles were like the robber-nobles of the Rhine: "they rode the country +by night," wrote the Earl, "like thieves, in parties of twenty or thirty or +forty," and gathered in leagues against the Seneschal, who set himself to +exact their dues to the Crown and to shield merchant and husbandman from +their violence. For four years Earl Simon steadily warred down these robber +bands, storming castles where there was need, and bridling the wilder +country with a chain of forts. Hard as the task was, his real difficulty +lay at home. Henry sent neither money nor men; and the Earl had to raise +both from his own resources, while the men whom he was fighting found +friends in Henry's council-chamber. Again and again Simon was recalled to +answer charges of tyranny and extortion made by the Gascon nobles and +pressed by his enemies at home on the king. Henry's feeble and impulsive +temper left him open to pressure like this; and though each absence of the +Earl from the province was a signal for fresh outbreaks of disorder which +only his presence repressed, the deputies of its nobles were still admitted +to the council-table and commissions sent over to report on the Seneschal's +administration. The strife came to a head in 1252, when the commissioners +reported that stern as Simon's rule had been the case was one in which +sternness was needful. The English barons supported Simon, and in the face +of their verdict Henry was powerless. But the king was now wholly with his +enemies; and his anger broke out in a violent altercation. The Earl offered +to resign his post if the money he had spent was repaid him, and appealed +to Henry's word. Henry hotly retorted that he was bound by no promise to a +false traitor. Simon at once gave Henry the lie; "and but that thou bearest +the name of king it had been a bad hour for thee when thou utteredst such a +word!" A formal reconciliation was brought about, and the Earl once more +returned to Gascony, but before winter had come he was forced to withdraw +to France. The greatness of his reputation was shown in an offer which its +nobles made him of the regency of their realm during the absence of King +Lewis from the land. But the offer was refused; and Henry, who had himself +undertaken the pacification of Gascony, was glad before the close of 1253 +to recall its old ruler to do the work he had failed to do. + + +[Sidenote: Simon's temper] + +The Earl's character had now thoroughly developed. He inherited the strict +and severe piety of his father; he was assiduous in his attendance on +religious services whether by night or day. In his correspondence with Adam +Marsh we see him finding patience under his Gascon troubles in a perusal of +the Book of Job. His life was pure and singularly temperate; he was noted +for his scant indulgence in meat, drink, or sleep. Socially he was cheerful +and pleasant in talk; but his natural temper was quick and ardent, his +sense of honour keen, his speech rapid and trenchant. His impatience of +contradiction, his fiery temper, were in fact the great stumbling-blocks in +his after career. His best friends marked honestly this fault, and it shows +the greatness of the man that he listened to their remonstrances. "Better +is a patient man," writes honest Friar Adam, "than a strong man, and he who +can rule his own temper than he who storms a city." But the one +characteristic which overmastered all was what men at that time called his +"constancy," the firm immoveable resolve which trampled even death under +foot in its loyalty to the right. The motto which Edward the First chose as +his device, "Keep troth," was far truer as the device of Earl Simon. We see +in his correspondence with what a clear discernment of its difficulties +both at home and abroad he "thought it unbecoming to decline the danger of +so great an exploit" as the reduction of Gascony to peace and order; but +once undertaken, he persevered in spite of the opposition he met with, the +failure of all support or funds from England, and the king's desertion of +his cause, till the work was done. There was the same steadiness of will +and purpose in his patriotism. The letters of Robert Grosseteste show how +early Simon had learned to sympathize with the Bishop in his resistance to +Rome, and at the crisis of the contest he offered him his own support and +that of his associates. But Robert passed away, and as the tide of +misgovernment mounted higher and higher the Earl silently trained himself +for the day of trial. The fruit of his self-discipline was seen when the +crisis came. While other men wavered and faltered and fell away, the +enthusiastic love of the people clung to the grave, stern soldier who +"stood like a pillar," unshaken by promise or threat or fear of death, by +the oath he had sworn. + + +[Sidenote: Matthew Paris] + +While Simon had been warring with Gascon rebels affairs in England had been +going from bad to worse. The scourge of Papal taxation fell heavier on the +clergy. After vain appeals to Rome and to the king, Archbishop Edmund +retired to an exile of despair at Pontigny, and tax-gatherer after +tax-gatherer with powers of excommunication, suspension from orders, and +presentation to benefices, descended on the unhappy priesthood. The +wholesale pillage kindled a wide spirit of resistance. Oxford gave the +signal by hunting a Papal legate out of the city amid cries of "usurer" and +"simoniac" from the mob of students. Fulk Fitz-Warenne in the name of the +barons bade a Papal collector begone out of England. "If you tarry here +three days longer," he added, "you and your company shall be cut to +pieces." For a time Henry himself was swept away by the tide of national +indignation. Letters from the king, the nobles, and the prelates, protested +against the Papal exactions, and orders were given that no money should be +exported from the realm. But the threat of interdict soon drove Henry back +on a policy of spoliation in which he went hand in hand with Rome. The +temper which this oppression begot among even the most sober churchmen has +been preserved for us by an annalist whose pages glow with the new outburst +of patriotic feeling. Matthew Paris is the greatest, as he in reality is +the last, of our monastic historians. The school of St. Alban's survived +indeed till a far later time, but its writers dwindle into mere annalists +whose view is bounded by the abbey precincts and whose work is as +colourless as it is jejune. In Matthew the breadth and precision of the +narrative, the copiousness of his information on topics whether national or +European, the general fairness and justice of his comments, are only +surpassed by the patriotic fire and enthusiasm of the whole. He had +succeeded Roger of Wendover as chronicler at St. Alban's; and the Greater +Chronicle with an abridgement of it which long passed under the name of +Matthew of Westminster, a "History of the English," and the "Lives of the +Earlier Abbots," are only a few among the voluminous works which attest his +prodigious industry. He was an artist as well as an historian, and many of +the manuscripts which are preserved are illustrated by his own hand. A +large circle of correspondents--bishops like Grosseteste, ministers like +Hubert de Burgh, officials like Alexander de Swereford--furnished him with +minute accounts of political and ecclesiastical proceedings. Pilgrims from +the East and Papal agents brought news of foreign events to his scriptorium +at St. Alban's. He had access to and quotes largely from state documents, +charters, and exchequer rolls. The frequency of royal visits to the abbey +brought him a store of political intelligence, and Henry himself +contributed to the great chronicle which has preserved with so terrible a +faithfulness the memory of his weakness and misgovernment. On one solemn +feast-day the king recognized Matthew, and bidding him sit on the middle +step between the floor and the throne begged him to write the story of the +day's proceedings. While on a visit to St. Alban's he invited him to his +table and chamber, and enumerated by name two hundred and fifty of the +English baronies for his information. But all this royal patronage has left +little mark on his work. "The case," as Matthew says, "of historical +writers is hard, for if they tell the truth they provoke men, and if they +write what is false they offend God." With all the fulness of the school of +court historians, such as Benedict and Hoveden, to which in form he +belonged, Matthew Paris combines an independence and patriotism which is +strange to their pages. He denounces with the same unsparing energy the +oppression of the Papacy and of the king. His point of view is neither that +of a courtier nor of a churchman but of an Englishman, and the new national +tone of his chronicle is but the echo of a national sentiment which at last +bound nobles and yeomen and churchmen together into a people resolute to +wrest freedom from the Crown. + + +[Sidenote: Wales] + +The nation was outraged like the Church. Two solemn confirmations of the +Charter failed to bring about any compliance with its provisions. In 1248, +in 1249, and again in 1255 the great Council fruitlessly renewed its demand +for a regular ministry, and the growing resolve of the nobles to enforce +good government was seen in their offer of a grant on condition that the +great officers of the Crown were appointed in the Council of the Baronage. +But Henry refused their offer with scorn and sold his plate to the citizens +of London to find payment for his household. A spirit of mutinous defiance +broke out on the failure of all legal remedy. When the Earl of Norfolk +refused him aid Henry answered with a threat. "I will send reapers and reap +your fields for you," he said. "And I will send you back the heads of your +reapers," replied the Earl. Hampered by the profusion of the court and the +refusal of supplies, the Crown was in fact penniless; and yet never was +money more wanted, for a trouble which had long pressed upon the English +kings had now grown to a height that called for decisive action. Even his +troubles at home could not blind Henry to the need of dealing with the +difficulty of Wales. Of the three Welsh states into which all that remained +unconquered of Britain had been broken by the victories of Deorham and +Chester, two had long ceased to exist. The country between the Clyde and +the Dee had been gradually absorbed by the conquests of Northumbria and the +growth of the Scot monarchy. West Wales, between the British Channel and +the estuary of the Severn, had yielded to the sword of Ecgberht. But a +fiercer resistance prolonged the independence of the great central portion +which alone in modern language preserves the name of Wales. Comprising in +itself the largest and most powerful of the British kingdoms, it was aided +in its struggle against Mercia by the weakness of its assailant, the +youngest and feeblest of the English states, as well as by an internal +warfare which distracted the energies of the invaders. But Mercia had no +sooner risen to supremacy among the English kingdoms than it took the work +of conquest vigorously in hand. Offa tore from Wales the border-land +between the Severn and the Wye; the raids of his successors carried fire +and sword into the heart of the country; and an acknowledgement of the +Mercian overlordship was wrested from the Welsh princes. On the fall of +Mercia this overlordship passed to the West-Saxon kings, and the Laws of +Howel Dda own the payment of a yearly tribute by "the prince of Aberffraw" +to "the King of London." The weakness of England during her long struggle +with the Danes revived the hopes of British independence; it was the +co-operation of the Welsh on which the northmen reckoned in their attack on +the house of Ecgberht. But with the fall of the Danelaw the British princes +were again brought to submission, and when in the midst of the Confessor's +reign the Welsh seized on a quarrel between the houses of Leofric and +Godwine to cross the border and carry their attacks into England itself, +the victories of Harold reasserted the English supremacy. Disembarking on +the coast his light-armed troops he penetrated to the heart of the +mountains, and the successors of the Welsh prince Gruffydd, whose head was +the trophy of the campaign, swore to observe the old fealty and render the +old tribute to the English Crown. + + +[Sidenote: Wales and the Normans] + +A far more desperate struggle began when the wave of Norman conquest broke +on the Welsh frontier. A chain of great earldoms, settled by William along +the border-land, at once bridled the old marauding forays. From his county +palatine of Chester Hugh the Wolf harried Flintshire into a desert, Robert +of Belesme in his earldom of Shrewsbury "slew the Welsh," says a +chronicler, "like sheep, conquered them, enslaved them and flayed them with +nails of iron." The earldom of Gloucester curbed Britain along the lower +Severn. Backed by these greater baronies a horde of lesser adventurers +obtained the royal "licence to make conquest on the Welsh." Monmouth and +Abergavenny were seized and guarded by Norman castellans; Bernard of +Neufmarche won the lordship of Brecknock; Roger of Montgomery raised the +town and fortress in Powysland which still preserves his name. A great +rising of the whole people in the days of the second William won back some +of this Norman spoil. The new castle of Montgomery was burned, Brecknock +and Cardigan were cleared of the invaders, and the Welsh poured ravaging +over the English border. Twice the Red King carried his arms fruitlessly +among the mountains against enemies who took refuge in their fastnesses +till famine and hardship drove his broken host into retreat. The wiser +policy of Henry the First fell back on his father's system of gradual +conquest. A new tide of invasion flowed along the southern coast, where the +land was level and open and accessible from the sea. The attack was aided +by strife in the country itself. Robert Fitz-Hamo, the lord of Gloucester, +was summoned to his aid by a Welsh chieftain; and his defeat of Rhys ap +Tewdor, the last prince under whom Southern Wales was united, produced an +anarchy which enabled Robert to land safely on the coast of Glamorgan, to +conquer the country round, and to divide it among his soldiers. A force of +Flemings and Englishmen followed the Earl of Clare as he landed near +Milford Haven and pushing back the British inhabitants settled a "Little +England" in the present Pembrokeshire. A few daring adventurers accompanied +the Norman Lord of Kemeys into Cardigan, where land might be had for the +winning by any one who would "wage war on the Welsh." + + +[Sidenote: The Welsh Revival] + +It was at this moment, when the utter subjugation of the British race +seemed at hand, that a new outburst of energy rolled back the tide of +invasion and changed the fitful resistance of the separate Welsh provinces +into a national effort to regain independence. To all outer seeming Wales +had become utterly barbarous. Stripped of every vestige of the older Roman +civilization by ages of bitter warfare, of civil strife, of estrangement +from the general culture of Christendom, the unconquered Britons had sunk +into a mass of savage herdsmen, clad in the skins and fed by the milk of +the cattle they tended. Faithless, greedy, and revengeful, retaining no +higher political organization than that of the clan, their strength was +broken by ruthless feuds, and they were united only in battle or in raid +against the stranger. But in the heart of the wild people there still +lingered a spark of the poetic fire which had nerved it four hundred years +before through Aneurin and Llywarch Hen to its struggle with the earliest +Englishmen. At the hour of its lowest degradation the silence of Wales was +suddenly broken by a crowd of singers. The song of the twelfth century +burst forth, not from one bard or another, but from the nation at large. +The Welsh temper indeed was steeped in poetry. "In every house," says the +shrewd Gerald de Barri, "strangers who arrived in the morning were +entertained till eventide with the talk of maidens and the music of the +harp." A romantic literature, which was destined to leaven the fancy of +western Europe, had grown up among this wild people and found an admirable +means of utterance in its tongue. The Welsh language was as real a +developement of the old Celtic language heard by Caesar as the Romance +tongues are developements of Caesar's Latin, but at a far earlier date than +any other language of modern Europe it had attained to definite structure +and to settled literary form. No other mediaeval literature shows at its +outset the same elaborate and completed organization as that of the Welsh. +But within these settled forms the Celtic fancy played with a startling +freedom. In one of the later poems Gwion the Little transforms himself into +a hare, a fish, a bird, a grain of wheat; but he is only the symbol of the +strange shapes in which the Celtic fancy embodies itself in the romantic +tales which reached their highest perfection in the legends of Arthur. + + +[Sidenote: The Welsh Poetry] + +The gay extravagance of these "Mabinogion" flings defiance to all fact, +tradition, probability, and revels in the impossible and unreal. When +Arthur sails into the unknown world it is in a ship of glass. The "descent +into hell," as a Celtic poet paints it, shakes off the mediaeval horror +with the mediaeval reverence, and the knight who achieves the quest spends +his years of infernal durance in hunting and minstrelsy, and in converse +with fair women. The world of the Mabinogion is a world of pure phantasy, +a new earth of marvels and enchantments, of dark forests whose silence is +broken by the hermit's bell and sunny glades where the light plays on the +hero's armour. Each figure as it moves across the poet's canvas is bright +with glancing colour. "The maiden was clothed in a robe of flame-coloured +silk, and about her neck was a collar of ruddy gold in which were precious +emeralds and rubies. Her head was of brighter gold than the flower of the +broom, her skin was whiter than the foam of the wave, and fairer were her +hands and her fingers than the blossoms of the wood-anemone amidst the +spray of the meadow fountain. The eye of the trained hawk, the glance of +the falcon, was not brighter than hers. Her bosom was more snowy than the +breast of the white swan, her cheek was redder than the reddest roses." +Everywhere there is an Oriental profusion of gorgeous imagery, but the +gorgeousness is seldom oppressive. The sensibility of the Celtic temper, +so quick to perceive beauty, so eager in its thirst for life, its +emotions, its adventures, its sorrows, its joys, is tempered by a +passionate melancholy that expresses its revolt against the impossible, by +an instinct of what is noble, by a sentiment that discovers the weird +charm of nature. The wildest extravagance of the tale-teller is relieved +by some graceful play of pure fancy, some tender note of feeling, some +magical touch of beauty. As Kulwch's greyhounds bound from side to side of +their master's steed, they "sport round him like two sea-swallows." His +spear is "swifter than the fall of the dewdrop from the blade of +reed-grass upon the earth when the dew of June is at the heaviest." A +subtle, observant love of nature and natural beauty takes fresh colour +from the passionate human sentiment with which it is imbued. "I love the +birds" sings Gwalchmai "and their sweet voices in the lulling songs of the +wood"; he watches at night beside the fords "among the untrodden grass" to +hear the nightingale and watch the play of the sea-mew. Even patriotism +takes the same picturesque form. The Welsh poet hates the flat and +sluggish land of the Saxon; as he dwells on his own he tells of "its +sea-coast and its mountains, its towns on the forest border, its fair +landscape, its dales, its waters, and its valleys, its white sea-mews, +its beauteous women." Here as everywhere the sentiment of nature passes +swiftly and subtly into the sentiment of a human tenderness: "I love its +fields clothed with tender trefoil" goes on the song; "I love the marches +of Merioneth where my head was pillowed on a snow-white arm." In the +Celtic love of woman there is little of the Teutonic depth and +earnestness, but in its stead a childlike spirit of delicate enjoyment, +a faint distant flush of passion like the rose-light of dawn on a snowy +mountain peak, a playful delight in beauty. "White is my love as the +apple-blossom, as the ocean's spray; her face shines like the pearly dew +on Eryri; the glow of her cheeks is like the light of sunset." The buoyant +and elastic temper of the French trouveur was spiritualized in the Welsh +singers by a more refined poetic feeling. "Whoso beheld her was filled +with her love. Four white trefoils sprang up wherever she trod." A touch +of pure fancy such as this removes its object out of the sphere of passion +into one of delight and reverence. + + +[Sidenote: The Bards] + +It is strange to pass from the world of actual Welsh history into such a +world as this. But side by side with this wayward, fanciful stream of poesy +and romance ran a torrent of intenser song. The spirit of the earlier +bards, their joy in battle, their love of freedom, broke out anew in ode +after ode, in songs extravagant, monotonous, often prosaic, but fused into +poetry by the intense fire of patriotism which glowed within them. Every +fight, every hero had its verse. The names of older singers, of Taliesin, +Aneurin, and Llywarch Hen, were revived in bold forgeries to animate the +national resistance and to prophesy victory. It was in North Wales that the +spirit of patriotism received its strongest inspiration from this burst of +song. Again and again Henry the Second was driven to retreat from the +impregnable fastnesses where the "Lords of Snowdon," the princes of the +house of Gruffydd ap Conan, claimed supremacy over the whole of Wales. Once +in the pass of Consilt a cry arose that the king was slain, Henry of Essex +flung down the royal standard, and the king's desperate efforts could +hardly save his army from utter rout. The bitter satire of the Welsh +singers bade him knight his horse, since its speed had alone saved him from +capture. In a later campaign the invaders were met by storms of rain, and +forced to abandon their baggage in a headlong flight to Chester. The +greatest of the Welsh odes, that known to English readers in Gray's +translation as "The Triumph of Owen," is Gwalchmai's song of victory over +the repulse of an English fleet from Abermenai. + + +[Sidenote: Llewelyn ap Jorwerth] + +The long reign of Llewelyn the son of Jorwerth seemed destined to realize +the hopes of his countrymen. The homage which he succeeded in extorting +from the whole of the Welsh chieftains during a reign which lasted from +1194 to 1246 placed him openly at the head of his race, and gave a new +character to its struggle with the English king. In consolidating his +authority within his own domains, and in the assertion of his lordship over +the princes of the south, Llewelyn ap Jorwerth aimed steadily at securing +the means of striking off the yoke of the Saxon. It was in vain that John +strove to buy his friendship by the hand of his natural daughter Johanna. +Fresh raids on the Marches forced the king to enter Wales in 1211; but +though his army reached Snowdon it fell back like its predecessors, starved +and broken before an enemy it could never reach. A second attack in the +same year had better success. The chieftains of South Wales were drawn from +their new allegiance to join the English forces, and Llewelyn, prisoned in +his fastnesses, was at last driven to submit. But the ink of the treaty was +hardly dry before Wales was again on fire; a common fear of the English +once more united its chieftains, and the war between John and his barons +soon removed all dread of a new invasion. Absolved from his allegiance to +an excommunicated king, and allied with the barons under Fitz-Walter--too +glad to enlist in their cause a prince who could hold in check the nobles +of the border country where the royalist cause was strongest--Llewelyn +seized his opportunity to reduce Shrewsbury, to annex Powys, the central +district of Wales where the English influence had always been powerful, to +clear the royal garrisons from Caermarthen and Cardigan, and to force even +the Flemings of Pembroke to do him homage. + + +[Sidenote: Llewelyn and the Bards] + +England watched these efforts of the subject race with an anger still +mingled with contempt. "Who knows not," exclaims Matthew Paris as he dwells +on the new pretensions of the Welsh ruler, "who knows not that the Prince +of Wales is a petty vassal of the King of England?" But the temper of +Llewelyn's own people was far other than the temper of the English +chronicler. The hopes of Wales rose higher and higher with each triumph of +the Lord of Snowdon. His court was crowded with bardic singers. "He pours," +sings one of them, "his gold into the lap of the bard as the ripe fruit +falls from the trees." Gold however was hardly needed to wake their +enthusiasm. Poet after poet sang of "the Devastator of England," the "Eagle +of men that loves not to lie nor sleep," "towering above the rest of men +with his long red lance," his "red helmet of battle crested with a fierce +wolf." "The sound of his coming is like the roar of the wave as it rushes +to the shore, that can neither be stayed nor hushed." Lesser bards strung +together Llewelyn's victories in rough jingle of rime and hounded him on to +the slaughter. "Be of good courage in the slaughter," sings Elidir, "cling +to thy work, destroy England, and plunder its multitudes." A fierce thirst +for blood runs through the abrupt, passionate verses of the court singers. +"Swansea, that tranquil town, was broken in heaps," bursts out a triumphant +bard; "St. Clears, with its bright white lands, it is not Saxons who hold +it now!" "In Swansea, the key of Lloegria, we made widows of all the +wives." "The dread Eagle is wont to lay corpses in rows, and to feast with +the leader of wolves and with hovering ravens glutted with flesh, butchers +with keen scent of carcases." "Better," closes the song, "better the grave +than the life of man who sighs when the horns call him forth, to the +squares of battle." + + +[Sidenote: The Welsh hopes] + +But even in bardic verse Llewelyn rises high out of the mere mob of +chieftains who live by rapine, and boast as the Hirlas-horn passes from +hand to hand through the hall that "they take and give no quarter." +"Tender-hearted, wise, witty, ingenious," he was "the great Caesar" who was +to gather beneath his sway the broken fragments of the Celtic race. +Mysterious prophecies, the prophecies of Merlin the Wise which floated from +lip to lip and were heard even along the Seine and the Rhine, came home +again to nerve Wales to its last struggle with the stranger. Medrawd and +Arthur, men whispered, would appear once more on earth to fight over again +the fatal battle of Camlan in which the hero-king perished. The last +conqueror of the Celtic race, Cadwallon, still lived to combat for his +people. The supposed verses of Taliesin expressed the undying hope of a +restoration of the Cymry. "In their hands shall be all the land from +Britanny to Man: ... a rumour shall arise that the Germans are moving out +of Britain back again to their fatherland." Gathered up in the strange work +of Geoffry of Monmouth, these predictions had long been making a deep +impression not on Wales only but on its conquerors. It was to meet the +dreams of a yet living Arthur that the grave of the legendary hero-king at +Glastonbury was found and visited by Henry the Second. But neither trick +nor conquest could shake the firm faith of the Celt in the ultimate victory +of his race. "Think you," said Henry to a Welsh chieftain who joined his +host, "that your people of rebels can withstand my army?" "My people," +replied the chieftain, "may be weakened by your might, and even in great +part destroyed, but unless the wrath of God be on the side of its foe it +will not perish utterly. Nor deem I that other race or other tongue will +answer for this corner of the world before the Judge of all at the last day +save this people and tongue of Wales." So ran the popular rime, "Their Lord +they will praise, their speech they shall keep, their land they shall +lose--except wild Wales." + + +[Sidenote: The Provisions of Oxford] + +Faith and prophecy seemed justified by the growing strength of the British +people. The weakness and dissensions which characterized the reign of Henry +the Third enabled Llewelyn ap Jorwerth to preserve a practical independence +till the close of his life, when a fresh acknowledgement of the English +supremacy was wrested from him by Archbishop Edmund. But the triumphs of +his arms were renewed by Llewelyn the son of Gruffydd, who followed him in +1246. The raids of the new chieftain swept the border to the very gates of +Chester, while his conquest of Glamorgan seemed to bind the whole people +together in a power strong enough to meet any attack from the stranger. So +pressing was the danger that it called the king's eldest son, Edward, to +the field; but his first appearance in arms ended in a crushing defeat. The +defeat however remained unavenged. Henry's dreams were of mightier +enterprises than the reduction of the Welsh. The Popes were still fighting +their weary battle against the House of Hohenstaufen, and were offering its +kingdom of Sicily, which they regarded as a forfeited fief of the Holy See, +to any power that would aid them in the struggle. In 1254 it was offered to +the king's second son, Edmund. With imbecile pride Henry accepted the +offer, prepared to send an army across the Alps, and pledged England to +repay the sums which the Pope was borrowing for the purposes of his war. In +a Parliament at the opening of 1257 he demanded an aid and a tenth from the +clergy. A fresh demand was made in 1258. But the patience of the realm was +at last exhausted. Earl Simon had returned in 1253 from his government of +Gascony, and the fruit of his meditations during the four years of his +quiet stay at home, a quiet broken only by short embassies to France and +Scotland which showed there was as yet no open quarrel with Henry, was seen +in a league of the baronage and in their adoption of a new and startling +policy. The past half-century had shown both the strength and weakness of +the Charter: its strength as a rallying-point for the baronage and a +definite assertion of rights which the king could be made to acknowledge; +its weakness in providing no means for the enforcement of its own +stipulations. Henry had sworn again and again to observe the Charter and +his oath was no sooner taken than it was unscrupulously broken. The barons +had secured the freedom of the realm; the secret of their long patience +during the reign of Henry lay in the difficulty of securing its right +administration. It was this difficulty which Earl Simon was prepared to +solve when action was forced on him by the stir of the realm. A great +famine added to the sense of danger from Wales and from Scotland and to the +irritation at the new demands from both Henry and Rome with which the year +1258 opened. It was to arrange for a campaign against Wales that Henry +called a parliament in April. But the baronage appeared in arms with +Gloucester and Leicester at their head. The king was forced to consent to +the appointment of a committee of twenty-four to draw up terms for the +reform of the state. The Twenty-four again met the Parliament at Oxford in +June, and although half the committee consisted of royal ministers and +favourites it was impossible to resist the tide of popular feeling. Hugh +Bigod, one of the firmest adherents of the two Earls, was chosen as +Justiciar. The claim to elect this great officer was in fact the leading +point in the baronial policy. But further measures were needed to hold in +check such arbitrary misgovernment as had prevailed during the last twenty +years. By the "Provisions of Oxford" it was agreed that the Great Council +should assemble thrice in the year, whether summoned by the king or no; and +on each occasion "the Commonalty shall elect twelve honest men who shall +come to the Parliaments, and at other times when occasion shall be when the +King and his Council shall send for them, to treat of the wants of the king +and of his kingdom. And the Commonalty shall hold as established that which +these Twelve shall do." Three permanent committees of barons and prelates +were named to carry out the work of reform and administration. The reform +of the Church was left to the original Twenty-four; a second Twenty-four +negotiated the financial aids; a Permanent Council of Fifteen advised the +king in the ordinary work of government. The complexity of such an +arrangement was relieved by the fact that the members of each of these +committees were in great part the same persons. The Justiciar, Chancellor, +and the guardians of the king's castles swore to act only with the advice +and assent of the Permanent Council, and the first two great officers, with +the Treasurer, were to give account of their proceedings to it at the end +of the year. Sheriffs were to be appointed for a single year only, no doubt +by the Council, from among the chief tenants of the county, and no undue +fees were to be exacted for the administration of justice in their court. + + +[Sidenote: Government of the Barons] + +A royal proclamation in the English tongue, the first in that tongue since +the Conquest which has reached us, ordered the observance of these +Provisions. The king was in fact helpless, and resistance came only from +the foreign favourites, who refused to surrender the castles and honours +which had been granted to them. But the Twenty-four were resolute in their +action; and an armed demonstration of the barons drove the foreigners in +flight over sea. The whole royal power was now in fact in the hands of the +committees appointed by the Great Council. But the measures of the barons +showed little of the wisdom and energy which the country had hoped for. In +October 1259 the knighthood complained that the barons had done nothing but +seek their own advantage in the recent changes. This protest produced the +Provisions of Westminster, which gave protection to tenants against their +feudal lords, regulated legal procedure in the feudal courts, appointed +four knights in each shire to watch the justice of the sheriffs, and made +other temporary enactments for the furtherance of justice. But these +Provisions brought little fruit, and a tendency to mere feudal privilege +showed itself in an exemption of all nobles and prelates from attendance at +the Sheriff's courts. Their foreign policy was more vigorous and +successful. All further payment to Rome, whether secular or ecclesiastical, +was prohibited, formal notice was given to the Pope of England's withdrawal +from the Sicilian enterprise, peace put an end to the incursions of the +Welsh, and negotiations on the footing of a formal abandonment of the +king's claim to Normandy, Anjou, Maine, Touraine, and Poitou ended in +October 1259 in a peace with France. + + +[Sidenote: Simon and the Baronage] + +This peace, the triumph of that English policy which had been struggling +ever since the days of Hubert de Burgh with the Continental policy of Henry +and his foreign advisers, was the work of the Earl of Leicester. The +revolution had doubtless been mainly Simon's doing. In the summer of 1258, +while the great change was going on, a thunderstorm drove the king as he +passed along the river to the house of the Bishop of Durham where the Earl +was then sojourning. Simon bade Henry take shelter with him and have no +fear of the storm. The king refused with petulant wit. "If I fear the +thunder, I fear you, Sir Earl, more than all the thunder in the world." But +Simon had probably small faith in the cumbrous system of government which +the Barons devised, and it was with reluctance that he was brought to swear +to the Provisions of Oxford which embodied it. With their home government +he had little to do, for from the autumn of 1258 to that of 1259 he was +chiefly busied in negotiation in France. But already his breach with +Gloucester and the bulk of his fellow councillors was marked. In the Lent +Parliament of 1259 he had reproached them, and Gloucester above all, with +faithlessness to their trust. "The things we are treating of," he cried, +"we have sworn to carry out. With such feeble and faithless men I care not +to have ought to do!" The peace with France was hardly signed when his +distrust of his colleagues was verified. Henry's withdrawal to the French +court at the close of the year for the formal signature of the treaty was +the signal for a reactionary movement. From France the king forbade the +summoning of a Lent Parliament in 1260 and announced his resumption of the +enterprise against Sicily. Both acts were distinct breaches of the +Provisions of Oxford, but Henry trusted to the divisions of the +Twenty-four. Gloucester was in open feud with Leicester; the Justiciar, +Hugh Bigod, resigned his office in the spring; and both of these leaders +drew cautiously to the king. Roger Mortimer and the Earls of Hereford and +Norfolk more openly espoused the royal cause, and in February 1260 Henry +had gained confidence enough to announce that as the barons had failed to +keep their part of the Provisions he should not keep his. + + +[Sidenote: The Counter Revolution] + +Earl Simon almost alone remained unshaken. But his growing influence was +seen in the appointment of his supporter, Hugh Despenser, as Justiciar in +Bigod's place, while his strength was doubled by the accession of the +King's son Edward to his side. In the moment of the revolution Edward had +vehemently supported the party of the foreigners. But he had sworn to +observe the Provisions, and the fidelity to his pledge which remained +throughout his life the chief note of his temper at once showed itself. +Like Simon he protested against the faithlessness of the barons in the +carrying out of their reforms, and it was his strenuous support of the +petition of the knighthood that brought about the additional Provisions of +1259. He had been brought up with Earl Simon's sons, and with the Earl +himself his relations remained friendly even at the later time of their +fatal hostilities. But as yet he seems to have had no distrust of Simon's +purposes or policy. His adhesion to the Earl recalled Henry from France; +and the king was at once joined by Gloucester in London while Edward and +Simon remained without the walls. But the love of father and son proved too +strong to bear political severance, and Edward's reconciliation foiled the +Earl's plans. He withdrew to the Welsh border, where fresh troubles were +breaking out, while Henry prepared to deal his final blow at the government +which, tottering as it was, still held him in check. Rome had resented the +measures which had put an end to her extortions, and it was to Rome that +Henry looked for a formal absolution from his oath to observe the +Provisions. In June 1261 he produced a Bull annulling the Provisions and +freeing him from his oath in a Parliament at Winchester. The suddenness of +the blow forbade open protest and Henry quickly followed up his victory. +Hugh Bigod, who had surrendered the Tower and Dover in the spring, +surrendered the other castles he held in the autumn. Hugh Despenser was +deposed from the Justiciarship and a royalist, Philip Basset, appointed in +his place. + + +[Sidenote: Simon's rising] + +The news of this counter-revolution reunited for a moment the barons. +Gloucester joined Earl Simon in calling an autumn Parliament at St. +Alban's, and in summoning to it three knights from every shire south of +Trent. But the union was a brief one. Gloucester consented to refer the +quarrel with the king to arbitration and the Earl of Leicester withdrew in +August to France. He saw that for the while there was no means of +withstanding Henry, even in his open defiance of the Provisions. Foreign +soldiers were brought into the land; the king won back again the +appointment of sheriffs. For eighteen months of this new rule Simon could +do nothing but wait. But his long absence lulled the old jealousies against +him. The confusion of the realm and a fresh outbreak of troubles in Wales +renewed the disgust at Henry's government, while his unswerving +faithfulness to the Provisions fixed the eyes of all Englishmen upon the +Earl as their natural leader. The death of Gloucester in the summer of 1262 +removed the one barrier to action; and in the spring of 1263 Simon landed +again in England as the unquestioned head of the baronial party. What +immediately forced him to action was a march of Edward with a body of +foreign troops against Llewelyn, who was probably by this time in +communication if not in actual alliance with the Earl. The chief opponents +of Llewelyn among the Marcher Lords were ardent supporters of Henry's +misgovernment, and when a common hostility drew the Prince and Earl +together, the constitutional position of Llewelyn as an English noble gave +formal justification for co-operation with him. At Whitsuntide the barons +met Simon at Oxford and finally summoned Henry to observe the Provisions. +His refusal was met by an appeal to arms. Throughout the country the +younger nobles flocked to Simon's standard, and the young Earl of +Gloucester, Gilbert of Clare, became his warmest supporter. His rapid +movements foiled all opposition. While Henry vainly strove to raise money +and men, Simon swept the Welsh border, marched through Reading on Dover, +and finally appeared before London. + + +[Sidenote: Mise of Amiens] + +The Earl's triumph was complete. Edward after a brief attempt at resistance +was forced to surrender Windsor and disband his foreign troops. The rising +of London in the cause of the barons left Henry helpless. But at the moment +of triumph the Earl saw himself anew forsaken. The bulk of the nobles again +drew towards the king; only six of the twelve barons who had formed the +patriot half of the committee of 1258, only four of the twelve +representatives of the community at that date, were now with the Earl. The +dread too of civil war gave strength to the cry for a compromise, and at +the end of the year it was agreed that the strife should be left to the +arbitration of the French king, Lewis the Ninth. But saint and just ruler +as he was, the royal power was in the conception of Lewis a divine thing, +which no human power could limit or fetter, and his decision, which was +given in January 1264, annulled the whole of the Provisions. Only the +Charters granted before the Provisions were to be observed. The appointment +and removal of all officers of state was to be wholly with the king, and he +was suffered to call aliens to his councils if he would. The Mise of Amiens +was at once confirmed by the Pope, and, crushing blow as it was, the barons +felt themselves bound by the award. It was only the exclusion of aliens--a +point which they had not purposed to submit to arbitration--which they +refused to concede. Luckily Henry was as inflexible on this point as on the +rest, and the mutual distrust prevented any real accommodation. + + +[Sidenote: Battle of Lewes] + +But Henry had to reckon on more than the baronage. Deserted as he was by +the greater nobles, Simon was far from standing alone. Throughout the +recent struggle the new city governments of the craft-gilds, which were +known by the name of "Communes," had shown an enthusiastic devotion to his +cause. The queen was stopped in her attempt to escape from the Tower by an +angry mob, who drove her back with stones and foul words. When Henry +attempted to surprise Leicester in his quarters at Southwark, the Londoners +burst the gates which had been locked by the richer burghers against him, +and rescued him by a welcome into the city. The clergy and the universities +went in sympathy with the towns, and in spite of the taunts of the +royalists, who accused him of seeking allies against the nobility in the +common people, the popular enthusiasm gave a strength to the Earl which +sustained him even in this darkest hour of the struggle. He at once +resolved on resistance. The French award had luckily reserved the rights of +Englishmen to the liberties they had enjoyed before the Provisions of +Oxford, and it was easy for Simon to prove that the arbitrary power it gave +to the Crown was as contrary to the Charter as to the Provisions +themselves. London was the first to reject the decision; in March 1264 its +citizens mustered at the call of the town-bell at Saint Paul's, seized the +royal officials, and plundered the royal parks. But an army had already +mustered in great force at the king's summons, while Leicester found +himself deserted by the bulk of the baronage. Every day brought news of +ill. A detachment from Scotland joined Henry's forces. The younger De +Montfort was taken prisoner. Northampton was captured, the king raised the +siege of Rochester, and a rapid march of Earl Simon's only saved London +itself from a surprise by Edward. But, betrayed as he was, the Earl +remained firm to the cause. He would fight to the end, he said, even were +he and his sons left to fight alone. With an army reinforced by 15,000 +Londoners, he marched in May to the relief of the Cinque Ports which were +now threatened by the king. Even on the march he was forsaken by many of +the nobles who followed him. Halting at Fletching in Sussex, a few miles +from Lewes, where the royal army was encamped, Earl Simon with the young +Earl of Gloucester offered the king compensation for all damage if he would +observe the Provisions. Henry's answer was one of defiance, and though +numbers were against him, the Earl resolved on battle. His skill as a +soldier reversed the advantages of the ground; marching at dawn on the 14th +of May he seized the heights eastward of the town, and moved down these +slopes to an attack. His men with white crosses on back and breast knelt in +prayer before the battle opened, and all but reached the town before their +approach was perceived. Edward however opened the fight by a furious charge +which broke the Londoners on Leicester's left. In the bitterness of his +hatred for the insult to his mother he pursued them for four miles, +slaughtering three thousand men. But he returned to find the battle lost. +Crowded in the narrow space between the heights and the river Ouse, a space +broken by marshes and by the long street of the town, the royalist centre +and left were crushed by Earl Simon. The Earl of Cornwall, now King of the +Romans, who, as the mocking song of the victors ran, "makede him a castel +of a mulne post" ("he weened that the mill-sails were mangonels" goes on +the sarcastic verse), was taken prisoner, and Henry himself captured. +Edward cut his way into the Priory only to join in his father's surrender. + + +[Sidenote: Simon's rule] + +The victory of Lewes placed Earl Simon at the head of the state. "Now +England breathes in the hope of liberty," sang a poet of the time; "the +English were despised like dogs, but now they have lifted up their head and +their foes are vanquished." But the moderation of the terms agreed upon in +the Mise of Lewes, a convention between the king and his captors, shows +Simon's sense of the difficulties of his position. The question of the +Provisions was again to be submitted to arbitration; and a parliament in +June, to which four knights were summoned from every county, placed the +administration till this arbitration was complete in the hands of a new +council of nine to be nominated by the Earls of Leicester and Gloucester +and the patriotic Bishop of Chichester. Responsibility to the community was +provided for by the declaration of a right in the body of barons and +prelates to remove either of the Three Electors, who in turn could displace +or appoint the members of the Council. Such a constitution was of a +different order from the cumbrous and oligarchical committees of 1258. But +it had little time to work in. The plans for a fresh arbitration broke +down. Lewis refused to review his decision, and all schemes for setting +fresh judges between the king and his people were defeated by a formal +condemnation of the barons' cause issued by the Pope. Triumphant as he was +indeed Earl Simon's difficulties thickened every day. The queen with +Archbishop Boniface gathered an army in France for an invasion; Roger +Mortimer with the border barons was still in arms and only held in check by +Llewelyn. It was impossible to make binding terms with an imprisoned king, +yet to release Henry without terms was to renew the war. The imprisonment +too gave a shock to public feeling which thinned the Earl's ranks. In the +new Parliament which he called at the opening of 1265 the weakness of the +patriotic party among the baronage was shown in the fact that only +twenty-three earls and barons could be found to sit beside the hundred and +twenty ecclesiastics. + + +[Sidenote: Summons of the Commons] + +But it was just this sense of his weakness which prompted the Earl to an +act that has done more than any incident of this struggle to immortalize +his name. Had the strife been simply a strife for power between the king +and the baronage the victory of either would have been equally fatal in its +results. The success of the one would have doomed England to a royal +despotism, that of the other to a feudal aristocracy. Fortunately for our +freedom the English baronage had been brought too low by the policy of the +kings to be able to withstand the crown single-handed. From the first +moment of the contest it had been forced to make its cause a national one. +The summons of two knights from each county, elected in its county court, +to a Parliament in 1254, even before the opening of the struggle, was a +recognition of the political weight of the country gentry which was +confirmed by the summons of four knights from every county to the +Parliament assembled after the battle of Lewes. The Provisions of Oxford, +in stipulating for attendance and counsel on the part of twelve delegates +of the "commonalty," gave the first indication of a yet wider appeal to the +people at large. But it was the weakness of his party among the baronage at +this great crisis which drove Earl Simon to a constitutional change of +mighty issue in our history. As before, he summoned two knights from every +county. But he created a new force in English politics when he summoned to +sit beside them two citizens from every borough. The attendance of +delegates from the towns had long been usual in the county courts when any +matter respecting their interests was in question; but it was the writ +issued by Earl Simon that first summoned the merchant and the trader to sit +beside the knight of the shire, the baron, and the bishop in the parliament +of the realm. + + +[Sidenote: Simon's difficulties] + +It is only this great event however which enables us to understand the +large and prescient nature of Earl Simon's designs. Hardly a few months had +passed away since the victory of Lewes when the burghers took their seats +at Westminster, yet his government was tottering to its fall. We know +little of the Parliament's acts. It seems to have chosen Simon as Justiciar +and to have provided for Edward's liberation, though he was still to live +under surveillance at Hereford and to surrender his earldom of Chester to +Simon, who was thus able to communicate with his Welsh allies. The Earl met +the dangers from without with complete success. In September 1264 a general +muster of the national forces on Barham Down and a contrary wind put an end +to the projects of invasion entertained by the mercenaries whom the queen +had collected in Flanders; the threats of France died away into +negotiations; the Papal Legate was forbidden to cross the Channel, and his +bulls of excommunication were flung into the sea. But the difficulties at +home grew more formidable every day. The restraint upon Henry and Edward +jarred against the national feeling of loyalty, and estranged the mass of +Englishmen who always side with the weak. Small as the patriotic party +among the barons had been from the first, it grew smaller as dissensions +broke out over the spoils of victory. The Earl's justice and resolve to +secure the public peace told heavily against him. John Giffard left him +because he refused to allow him to exact ransom from a prisoner, contrary +to the agreement made after Lewes. A greater danger opened when the young +Earl of Gloucester, though enriched with the estates of the foreigners, +held himself aloof from the Justiciar, and resented Leicester's prohibition +of a tournament, his naming the wardens of the royal castles by his own +authority, his holding Edward's fortresses on the Welsh marches by his own +garrisons. + + +[Sidenote: Edward and Gloucester] + +Gloucester's later conduct proves the wisdom of Leicester's precautions. In +the spring Parliament of 1265 he openly charged the Earl with violating the +Mise of Lewes, with tyranny, and with aiming at the crown. Before its close +he withdrew to his own lands in the west and secretly allied himself with +Roger Mortimer and the Marcher Barons. Earl Simon soon followed him to the +west, taking with him the king and Edward. He moved along the Severn, +securing its towns, advanced westward to Hereford, and was marching at the +end of May along bad roads into the heart of South Wales to attack the +fortresses of Earl Gilbert in Glamorgan when Edward suddenly made his +escape from Hereford and joined Gloucester at Ludlow. The moment had been +skilfully chosen, and Edward showed a rare ability in the movements by +which he took advantage of the Earl's position. Moving rapidly along the +Severn he seized Gloucester and the bridges across the river, destroyed the +ships by which Leicester strove to escape across the Channel to Bristol, +and cut him off altogether from England. By this movement too he placed +himself between the Earl and his son Simon, who was advancing from the east +to his father's relief. Turning rapidly on this second force Edward +surprised it at Kenilworth and drove it with heavy loss within the walls of +the castle. But the success was more than compensated by the opportunity +which his absence gave to the Earl of breaking the line of the Severn. +Taken by surprise and isolated as he was, Simon had been forced to seek for +aid and troops in an avowed alliance with Llewelyn, and it was with Welsh +reinforcements that he turned to the east. But the seizure of his ships and +of the bridges of the Severn held him a prisoner in Edward's grasp, and a +fierce attack drove him back, with broken and starving forces, into the +Welsh hills. In utter despair he struck northward to Hereford; but the +absence of Edward now enabled him on the 2nd of August to throw his troops +in boats across the Severn below Worcester. The news drew Edward quickly +back in a fruitless counter-march to the river, for the Earl had already +reached Evesham by a long night march on the morning of the 4th, while his +son, relieved in turn by Edward's counter-march, had pushed in the same +night to the little town of Alcester. The two armies were now but some ten +miles apart, and their junction seemed secured. But both were spent with +long marching, and while the Earl, listening reluctantly to the request of +the King who accompanied him, halted at Evesham for mass and dinner, the +army of the younger Simon halted for the same purpose at Alcester. + + +[Sidenote: Battle of Evesham] + +"Those two dinners doleful were, alas!" sings Robert of Gloucester; for +through the same memorable night Edward was hurrying back from the Severn +by country cross-lanes to seize the fatal gap that lay between them. As +morning broke his army lay across the road that led northward from Evesham +to Alcester. Evesham lies in a loop of the river Avon where it bends to the +south; and a height on which Edward ranged his troops closed the one outlet +from it save across the river. But a force had been thrown over the river +under Mortimer to seize the bridges, and all retreat was thus finally cut +off. The approach of Edward's army called Simon to the front, and for the +moment he took it for his son's. Though the hope soon died away a touch of +soldierly pride moved him as he recognised in the orderly advance of his +enemies a proof of his own training. "By the arm of St. James," he cried, +"they come on in wise fashion, but it was from me that they learnt it." A +glance however satisfied him of the hopelessness of a struggle; it was +impossible for a handful of horsemen with a mob of half-armed Welshmen to +resist the disciplined knighthood of the royal army. "Let us commend our +souls to God," Simon said to the little group around him, "for our bodies +are the foe's." He bade Hugh Despenser and the rest of his comrades fly +from the field. "If he died," was the noble answer, "they had no will to +live." In three hours the butchery was over. The Welsh fled at the first +onset like sheep, and were cut ruthlessly down in the cornfields and +gardens where they sought refuge. The little group of knights around Simon +fought desperately, falling one by one till the Earl was left alone. So +terrible were his sword-strokes that he had all but gained the hill-top +when a lance-thrust brought his horse to the ground, but Simon still +rejected the summons to yield till a blow from behind felled him mortally +wounded to the ground. Then with a last cry of "It is God's grace," the +soul of the great patriot passed away. + + +[Sidenote: The Royalist reaction] + +The triumphant blare of trumpets which welcomed the rescued king into +Evesham, "his men weeping for joy," rang out in bitter contrast to the +mourning of the realm. It sounded like the announcement of a reign of +terror. The rights and laws for which men had toiled and fought so long +seemed to have been swept away in an hour. Every town which had supported +Earl Simon was held to be at the king's mercy, its franchises to be +forfeited. The Charter of Lynn was annulled; London was marked out as the +special object of Henry's vengeance, and the farms and merchandise of its +citizens were seized as first-fruits of its plunder. The darkness which on +that fatal morning hid their books from the monks of Evesham as they sang +in choir was but a presage of the gloom which fell on the religious houses. +From Ramsey, from Evesham, from St. Alban's rose the same cry of havoc and +rapine. But the plunder of monk and burgess was little to the vast sentence +of confiscation which the mere fact of rebellion was held to have passed on +all the adherents of Earl Simon. To "disinherit" these of their lands was +to confiscate half the estates of the landed gentry of England; but the +hotter royalists declared them disinherited, and Henry was quick to lavish +their lands away on favourites and foreigners. The very chroniclers of +their party recall the pillage with shame. But all thought of resistance +lay hushed in a general terror. Even the younger Simon "saw no other rede" +than to release his prisoners. His army, after finishing its meal, was +again on its march to join the Earl when the news of his defeat met it, +heralded by a strange darkness that, rising suddenly in the north-west and +following as it were on Edward's track, served to shroud the mutilations +and horrors of the battle-field. The news was soon fatally confirmed. Simon +himself could see from afar his father's head borne off on a spear-point to +be mocked at Wigmore. But the pursuit streamed away southward and westward +through the streets of Tewkesbury, heaped with corpses of the panic-struck +Welshmen whom the townsmen slaughtered without pity; and there was no +attack as the little force fell back through the darkness and big +thunder-drops in despair upon Kenilworth. "I may hang up my axe," are the +bitter words which a poet attributes to their leader, "for feebly have I +gone"; and once within the castle he gave way to a wild sorrow, day after +day tasting neither meat nor drink. + + +[Sidenote: Edward] + +He was roused into action again by news of the shameful indignities which +the Marcher Lords had offered to the body of the great Earl before whom +they had trembled so long. The knights around him broke out at the tidings +in a passionate burst of fury, and clamoured for the blood of Richard of +Cornwall and his son, who were prisoners in the castle. But Simon had +enough nobleness left to interpose. "To God and him alone was it owing" +Richard owned afterwards, "that I was snatched from death." The captives +were not only saved, but set free. A Parliament had been called at +Winchester at the opening of September, and its mere assembly promised an +end to the reign of utter lawlessness. A powerful party, too, was known to +exist in the royal camp which, hostile as it had shown itself to Earl +Simon, shared his love for English liberties, and the liberation of Richard +was sure to aid its efforts. At the head of this party stood the young Earl +of Gloucester, Gilbert of Clare, to whose action above all the Earl's +overthrow was due. And with Gilbert stood Edward himself. The passion for +law, the instinct of good government, which were to make his reign so +memorable in our history, had declared themselves from the first. He had +sided with the barons at the outset of their struggle with Henry; he had +striven to keep his father true to the Provisions of Oxford. It was only +when the figure of Earl Simon seemed to tower above that of Henry himself, +when the Crown seemed falling into bondage, that Edward passed to the royal +side; and now that the danger which he dreaded was over he returned to his +older attitude. In the first flush of victory, while the doom of Simon was +as yet unknown, Edward had stood alone in desiring his captivity against +the cry of the Marcher Lords for his blood. When all was done he wept over +the corpse of his cousin and playfellow, Henry de Montfort, and followed +the Earl's body to the tomb. But great as was Edward's position after the +victory of Evesham, his moderate counsels were as yet of little avail. His +efforts in fact were met by those of Henry's second son, Edmund, who had +received the lands and earldom of Earl Simon, and whom the dread of any +restoration of the house of De Montfort set at the head of the +ultra-royalists. Nor was any hope of moderation to be found in the +Parliament which met in September 1265. It met in the usual temper of a +restoration-Parliament to legalize the outrages of the previous month. The +prisoners who had been released from the dungeons of the barons poured into +Winchester to add fresh violence to the demands of the Marchers. The wives +of the captive loyalists and the widows of the slain were summoned to give +fresh impulse to the reaction. Their place of meeting added fuel to the +fiery passions of the throng, for Winchester was fresh from its pillage by +the younger Simon on his way to Kenilworth, and its stubborn loyalty must +have been fanned into a flame by the losses it had endured. In such an +assembly no voice of moderation could find a hearing. The four bishops who +favoured the national cause, the bishops of London and Lincoln, of +Worcester and Chichester, were excluded from it, and the heads of the +religious houses were summoned for the mere purpose of extortion. Its +measures were but a confirmation of the violence which had been wrought. +All grants made during the king's "captivity" were revoked. The house of De +Montfort was banished from the realm. The charter of London was annulled. +The adherents of Earl Simon were disinherited and seizin of their lands was +given to the king. + + +[Sidenote: Simon's Miracles] + +Henry at once appointed commissioners to survey and take possession of his +spoil while he moved to Windsor to triumph in the humiliation of London. +Its mayor and forty of its chief citizens waited in the castle yard only to +be thrown into prison in spite of a safe-conduct, and Henry entered his +capital in triumph as into an enemy's city. The surrender of Dover came to +fill his cup of joy, for Richard and Amaury of Montfort had sailed with the +Earl's treasure to enlist foreign mercenaries, and it was by this port that +their force was destined to land. But a rising of the prisoners detained +there compelled its surrender in October, and the success of the royalists +seemed complete. In reality their difficulties were but beginning. Their +triumph over Earl Simon had been a triumph over the religious sentiment of +the time, and religion avenged itself in its own way. Everywhere the Earl's +death was looked upon as a martyrdom; and monk and friar united in praying +for the souls of the men who fell at Evesham as for soldiers of Christ. It +was soon whispered that heaven was attesting the sanctity of De Montfort by +miracles at his tomb. How great was the effect of this belief was seen in +the efforts of King and Pope to suppress the miracles, and in their +continuance not only through the reign of Edward the First but even in the +days of his successor. But its immediate result was a sudden revival of +hope. "Sighs are changed into songs of praise," breaks out a monk of the +time, "and the greatness of our former joy has come to life again!" Nor was +it in miracles alone that the "faithful," as they proudly styled +themselves, began to look for relief "from the oppression of the +malignants." A monk of St. Alban's who was penning a eulogy of Earl Simon +in the midst of this uproar saw the rise of a new spirit of resistance in +the streets of the little town. In dread of war it was guarded and strongly +closed with bolts and bars, and refused entrance to all strangers, and +above all to horsemen, who wished to pass through. The Constable of +Hertford, an old foe of the townsmen, boasted that spite of bolts and bars +he would enter the place and carry off four of the best villeins captive. +He contrived to make his way in; but as he loitered idly about a butcher +who passed by heard him ask his men how the wind stood. The butcher guessed +his design to burn the town, and felled him to the ground. The blow roused +the townsmen. They secured the Constable and his followers, struck off +their heads, and fixed them at the four corners of the borough. + + +[Sidenote: The Younger Simon] + +The popular reaction gave fresh heart to the younger Simon. Quitting +Kenilworth, he joined in November John D'Eyvill and Baldewin Wake in the +Isle of Axholme where the Disinherited were gathering in arms. So fast did +horse and foot flow in to him that Edward himself hurried into Lincolnshire +to meet this new danger. He saw that the old strife was just breaking out +again. The garrison of Kenilworth scoured the country; the men of the +Cinque Ports, putting wives and children on board their barks, swept the +Channel and harried the coasts; while Llewelyn, who had brought about the +dissolution of Parliament by a raid upon Chester, butchered the forces sent +against him and was master of the border. The one thing needed to link the +forces of resistance together was a head, and such a head the appearance of +Simon at Axholme seemed to promise. But Edward was resolute in his plan of +conciliation. Arriving before the camp at the close of 1265, he at once +entered into negotiations with his cousin, and prevailed on him to quit the +island and appear before the king. Richard of Cornwall welcomed Simon at +the court, he presented him to Henry as the saviour of his life, and on his +promise to surrender Kenilworth Henry gave him the kiss of peace. In spite +of the opposition of Roger Mortimer and the Marcher Lords success seemed to +be crowning this bold stroke of the peace party when the Earl of Gloucester +interposed. Desirous as he was of peace, the blood of De Montfort lay +between him and the Earl's sons, and the safety of the one lay in the ruin +of the other. In the face of this danger Earl Gilbert threw his weight into +the scale of the ultra-royalists, and peace became impossible. The question +of restitution was shelved by a reference to arbitrators; and Simon, +detained in spite of a safe-conduct, moved in Henry's train at Christmas to +witness the surrender of Kenilworth which had been stipulated as the price +of his full reconciliation with the king. But hot blood was now stirred +again on both sides. The garrison replied to the royal summons by a refusal +to surrender. They had received ward of the castle, they said, not from +Simon but from the Countess, and to none but her would they give it up. The +refusal was not likely to make Simon's position an easier one. On his +return to London the award of the arbitrators bound him to quit the realm +and not to return save with the assent of king and baronage when all were +at peace. He remained for a while in free custody at London; but warnings +that he was doomed to lifelong imprisonment drove him to flight, and he +finally sought a refuge over sea. + + +[Sidenote: Ban of Kenilworth] + +His escape set England again on fire. Llewelyn wasted the border; the +Cinque Ports held the sea; the garrison of Kenilworth pushed their raids as +far as Oxford; Baldewin Wake with a band of the Disinherited threw himself +into the woods and harried the eastern counties; Sir Adam Gurdon, a knight +of gigantic size and renowned prowess, wasted with a smaller party the +shires of the south. In almost every county bands of outlaws were seeking a +livelihood in rapine and devastation, while the royal treasury stood empty +and the enormous fine imposed upon London had been swept into the coffers +of French usurers. But a stronger hand than the king's was now at the head +of affairs, and Edward met his assailants with untiring energy. King +Richard's son, Henry of Almaine, was sent with a large force to the north; +Mortimer hurried to hold the Welsh border; Edmund was despatched to Warwick +to hold Kenilworth in check; while Edward himself marched at the opening of +March to the south. The Berkshire woods were soon cleared, and at +Whitsuntide Edward succeeded in dispersing Adam Gurdon's band and in +capturing its renowned leader in single combat. The last blow was already +given to the rising in the north, where Henry of Almaine surprised the +Disinherited at Chesterfield and took their leader, the Earl of Derby, in +his bed. Though Edmund had done little but hold the Kenilworth knights in +check, the submission of the rest of the country now enabled the royal army +to besiege it in force. But the king was penniless, and the Parliament +which he called to replenish his treasury in August showed the resolve of +the nation that the strife should cease. They would first establish peace, +if peace were possible, they said, and then answer the king's demand. +Twelve commissioners, with Earl Gilbert at their head, were appointed on +Henry's assent to arrange terms on reconciliation. They at once decided +that none should be utterly disinherited for their part in the troubles, +but that liberty of redemption should be left open to all. Furious at the +prospect of being forced to disgorge their spoil, Mortimer and the +ultra-royalists broke out in mad threats of violence, even against the life +of the Papal legate who had pressed for the reconciliation. But the power +of the ultra-royalists was over. The general resolve was not to be shaken +by the clamour of a faction, and Mortimer's rout at Brecknock by Llewelyn, +the one defeat that chequered the tide of success, had damaged that +leader's influence. Backed by Edward and Earl Gilbert, the legate met their +opposition with a threat of excommunication, and Mortimer withdrew sullenly +from the camp. Fresh trouble in the country and the seizure of the Isle of +Ely by a band of the Disinherited quickened the labours of the Twelve. At +the close of September they pronounced their award, restoring the lands to +all who made submission on a graduated scale of redemption, promising +indemnity for all wrong done during the troubles, and leaving the +restoration of the house of De Montfort to the royal will. But to these +provisions was added an emphatic demand that "the king fully keep and +observe those liberties of the Church, charters of liberties, and forest +charters, which he is expressly and by his own mouth bound to preserve and +keep." "Let the King," they add, "establish on a lasting foundation those +concessions which he has hitherto made of his own will and not on +compulsion, and those needful ordinances which have been devised by his +subjects and by his own good pleasure." + + +[Sidenote: Close of the Struggle] + +With this Award the struggle came to an end. The garrison of Kenilworth +held out indeed till November, and the full benefit of the Ban was only +secured when Earl Gilbert in the opening of the following year suddenly +appeared in arms and occupied London. But the Earl was satisfied, the +Disinherited were at last driven from Ely, and Llewelyn was brought to +submission by the appearance of an army at Shrewsbury. All was over by the +close of 1267. His father's age and weakness, his own brilliant military +successes, left Edward practically in possession of the royal power; and +his influence at once made itself felt. There was no attempt to return to +the misrule of Henry's reign, to his projects of continental aggrandizement +or internal despotism. The constitutional system of government for which +the Barons had fought was finally adopted by the Crown, and the Parliament +of Marlborough which assembled in November 1267 renewed the provisions by +which the baronage had remedied the chief abuses of the time in their +Provisions of Oxford and Westminster. The appointment of all officers of +state indeed was jealously reserved to the crown. But the royal expenditure +was brought within bounds. Taxation was only imposed with the assent of the +Great Council. So utterly was the land at rest that Edward felt himself +free to take the cross in 1268 and to join the Crusade which was being +undertaken by St. Lewis of France. He reached Tunis only to find Lewis dead +and his enterprise a failure, wintered in Sicily, made his way to Acre in +the spring of 1271, and spent more than a year in exploits which want of +force prevented from growing into a serious campaign. He was already on his +way home when the death of Henry the Third in November 1272 called him to +the throne. + + + + + +CHAPTER IV +EDWARD THE FIRST +1272-1307 + + + +[Sidenote: Edward's Temper] + +In his own day and among his own subjects Edward the First was the object +of an almost boundless admiration. He was in the truest sense a national +king. At the moment when the last trace of foreign conquest passed away, +when the descendants of those who won and those who lost at Senlac blended +for ever into an English people, England saw in her ruler no stranger but +an Englishman. The national tradition returned in more than the golden hair +or the English name which linked him to our earlier kings. Edward's very +temper was English to the core. In good as in evil he stands out as the +typical representative of the race he ruled, like them wilful and +imperious, tenacious of his rights, indomitable in his pride, dogged, +stubborn, slow of apprehension, narrow in sympathy, but like them, too, +just in the main, unselfish, laborious, conscientious, haughtily observant +of truth and self-respect, temperate, reverent of duty, religious. It is +this oneness with the character of his people which parts the temper of +Edward from what had till now been the temper of his house. He inherited +indeed from the Angevins their fierce and passionate wrath; his +punishments, when he punished in anger, were without pity; and a priest who +ventured at a moment of storm into his presence with a remonstrance dropped +dead from sheer fright at his feet. But his nature had nothing of the hard +selfishness, the vindictive obstinacy which had so long characterized the +house of Anjou. His wrath passed as quickly as it gathered; and for the +most part his conduct was that of an impulsive, generous man, trustful, +averse from cruelty, prone to forgive. "No man ever asked mercy of me," he +said in his old age, "and was refused." The rough soldierly nobleness of +his nature broke out in incidents like that at Falkirk where he lay on the +bare ground among his men, or in his refusal during a Welsh campaign to +drink of the one cask of wine which had been saved from marauders. "It is I +who have brought you into this strait," he said to his thirsty +fellow-soldiers, "and I will have no advantage of you in meat or drink." +Beneath the stern imperiousness of his outer bearing lay in fact a strange +tenderness and sensitiveness to affection. Every subject throughout his +realm was drawn closer to the king who wept bitterly at the news of his +father's death though it gave him a crown, whose fiercest burst of +vengeance was called out by an insult to his mother, whose crosses rose as +memorials of his love and sorrow at every spot where his wife's bier +rested. "I loved her tenderly in her lifetime," wrote Edward to Eleanor's +friend, the Abbot of Cluny; "I do not cease to love her now she is dead." +And as it was with mother and wife, so it was with his people at large. All +the self-concentrated isolation of the foreign kings disappeared in Edward. +He was the first English ruler since the Conquest who loved his people with +a personal love and craved for their love back again. To his trust in them +we owe our Parliament, to his care for them the great statutes which stand +in the forefront of our laws. Even in his struggles with her England +understood a temper which was so perfectly her own, and the quarrels +between king and people during his reign are quarrels where, doggedly as +they fought, neither disputant doubted for a moment the worth or affection +of the other. Few scenes in our history are more touching than a scene +during the long contest over the Charter, when Edward stood face to face +with his people in Westminster Hall, and with a sudden burst of tears owned +himself frankly in the wrong. + + +[Sidenote: Influence of Chivalry] + +But it was just this sensitiveness, this openness to outer impressions and +outer influences, that led to the strange contradictions which meet us in +Edward's career. His reign was a time in which a foreign, influence told +strongly on our manners, our literature, our national spirit, for the +sudden rise of France into a compact and organized monarchy was now making +its influence dominant in Western Europe. The "chivalry" so familiar to us +in the pages of Froissart, that picturesque mimicry of high sentiment, of +heroism, love, and courtesy before which all depth and reality of nobleness +disappeared to make room for the coarsest profligacy, the narrowest +caste-spirit, and a brutal indifference to human suffering, was specially +of French creation. There was a nobleness in Edward's nature from which the +baser influences of this chivalry fell away. His life was pure, his piety, +save when it stooped to the superstition of the time, manly and sincere, +while his high sense of duty saved him from the frivolous self-indulgence +of his successors. But he was far from being wholly free from the taint of +his age. His passionate desire was to be a model of the fashionable +chivalry of his day. His frame was that of a born soldier--tall, +deep-chested, long of limb, capable alike of endurance or action, and he +shared to the full his people's love of venture and hard fighting. When he +encountered Adam Gurdon after Evesham he forced him single-handed to beg +for mercy. At the opening of his reign he saved his life by sheer fighting +in a tournament at Challon. It was this love of adventure which lent itself +to the frivolous unreality of the new chivalry. His fame as a general +seemed a small thing to Edward when compared with his fame as a knight. At +his "Round Table of Kenilworth" a hundred lords and ladies, "clad all in +silk," renewed the faded glories of Arthur's Court. The false air of +romance which was soon to turn the gravest political resolutions into +outbursts of sentimental feeling appeared in his "Vow of the Swan," when +rising at the royal board he swore on the dish before him to avenge on +Scotland the murder of Comyn. Chivalry exerted on him a yet more fatal +influence in its narrowing of his sympathy to the noble class and in its +exclusion of the peasant and the craftsman from all claim to pity. "Knight +without reproach" as he was, he looked calmly on at the massacre of the +burghers of Berwick, and saw in William Wallace nothing but a common +robber. + + +[Sidenote: Influence of Legality] + +The French notion of chivalry had hardly more power over Edward's mind than +the French conception of kingship, feudality, and law. The rise of a lawyer +class was everywhere hardening customary into written rights, allegiance +into subjection, loose ties such as commendation into a definite vassalage. +But it was specially through French influence, the influence of St. Lewis +and his successors, that the imperial theories of the Roman Law were +brought to bear upon this natural tendency of the time. When the "sacred +majesty" of the Caesars was transferred by a legal fiction to the royal +head of a feudal baronage every constitutional relation was changed. The +"defiance" by which a vassal renounced service to his lord became treason, +his after resistance "sacrilege." That Edward could appreciate what was +sound and noble in the legal spirit around him was shown in his reforms of +our judicature and our Parliament; but there was something as congenial to +his mind in its definiteness, its rigidity, its narrow technicalities. He +was never wilfully unjust, but he was too often captious in his justice, +fond of legal chicanery, prompt to take advantage of the letter of the law. +The high conception of royalty which he borrowed from St. Lewis united with +this legal turn of mind in the worst acts of his reign. Of rights or +liberties unregistered in charter or roll Edward would know nothing, while +his own good sense was overpowered by the majesty of his crown. It was +incredible to him that Scotland should revolt against a legal bargain which +made her national independence conditional on the terms extorted from a +claimant of her throne; nor could he view in any other light but as treason +the resistance of his own baronage to an arbitrary taxation which their +fathers had borne. + + +[Sidenote: His Moral Grandeur] + +It is in the anomalies of such a character as this, in its strange mingling +of justice and wrong-doing, of grandeur and littleness, that we must look +for any fair explanation of much that has since been bitterly blamed in +Edward's conduct and policy. But what none of these anomalies can hide from +us is the height of moral temper which shows itself in the tenor of his +rule. Edward was every inch a king; but his notion of kingship was a lofty +and a noble one. He loved power; he believed in his sovereign rights and +clung to them with a stubborn tenacity. But his main end in clinging to +them was the welfare of his people. Nothing better proves the self-command +which he drew from the purpose he set before him than his freedom from the +common sin of great rulers--the lust of military glory. He was the first of +our kings since William the Conqueror who combined military genius with +political capacity; but of the warrior's temper, of the temper that finds +delight in war, he had little or none. His freedom from it was the more +remarkable that Edward was a great soldier. His strategy in the campaign +before Evesham marked him as a consummate general. Earl Simon was forced to +admire the skill of his advance on the fatal field, and the operations by +which he met the risings that followed it were a model of rapidity and +military grasp. In his Welsh campaigns he was soon to show a tenacity and +force of will which wrested victory out of the midst of defeat. He could +head a furious charge of horse as at Lewes, or organize a commissariat +which enabled him to move army after army across the harried Lowlands. In +his old age he was quick to discover the value of the English archery and +to employ it as a means of victory at Falkirk. But master as he was of the +art of war, and forced from time to time to show his mastery in great +campaigns, in no single instance was he the assailant. He fought only when +he was forced to fight; and when fighting was over he turned back quietly +to the work of administration and the making of laws. + + +[Sidenote: His Political Genius] + +War in fact was with Edward simply a means of carrying out the ends of +statesmanship, and it was in the character of his statesmanship that his +real greatness made itself felt. His policy was an English policy; he was +firm to retain what was left of the French dominion of his race, but he +abandoned from the first all dreams of recovering the wider dominions which +his grandfather had lost. His mind was not on that side of the Channel, but +on this. He concentrated his energies on the consolidation and good +government of England itself. We can only fairly judge the annexation of +Wales or his attempt to annex Scotland if we look on his efforts in either +quarter as parts of the same scheme of national administration to which we +owe his final establishment of our judicature, our legislation, our +parliament. The character of his action was no doubt determined in great +part by the general mood of his age, an age whose special task and aim +seemed to be that of reducing to distinct form the principles which had +sprung into a new and vigorous life during the age which preceded it. As +the opening of the thirteenth century had been an age of founders, +creators, discoverers, so its close was an age of lawyers, of rulers such +as St. Lewis of France or Alfonso the Wise of Castille, organizers, +administrators, framers of laws and institutions. It was to this class that +Edward himself belonged. He had little of creative genius, of political +originality, but he possessed in a high degree the passion for order and +good government, the faculty of organization, and a love of law which broke +out even in the legal chicanery to which he sometimes stooped. In the +judicial reforms to which so much of his attention was directed he showed +himself, if not an "English Justinian," at any rate a clear-sighted and +judicious man of business, developing, reforming, bringing into a shape +which has borne the test of five centuries' experience the institutions of +his predecessors. If the excellence of a statesman's work is to be measured +by its duration and the faculty it has shown of adapting itself to the +growth and developement of a nation, then the work of Edward rises to the +highest standard of excellence. Our law courts preserve to this very day +the form which he gave them. Mighty as has been the growth of our +Parliament, it has grown on the lines which he laid down. The great roll of +English Statutes reaches back in unbroken series to the Statutes of Edward. +The routine of the first Henry, the administrative changes which had been +imposed on the nation by the clear head and imperious will of the second, +were transformed under Edward into a political organization with +carefully-defined limits, directed not by the king's will alone but by the +political impulse of the people at large. His social legislation was based +in the same fashion on principles which had already been brought into +practical working by Henry the Second. It was no doubt in great measure +owing to this practical sense of its financial and administrative value +rather than to any foresight of its political importance that we owe +Edward's organization of our Parliament. But if the institutions which we +commonly associate with his name owe their origin to others, they owe their +form and their perpetuity to him. + + +[Sidenote: Constitutional Aspect of his Reign] + +The king's English policy, like his English name, was in fact the sign of a +new epoch. England was made. The long period of national formation had come +practically to an end. With the reign of Edward begins the constitutional +England in which we live. It is not that any chasm separates our history +before it from our history after it as the chasm of the Revolution divides +the history of France, for we have traced the rudiments of our constitution +to the first moment of the English settlement in Britain. But it is with +these as with our language. The tongue of AElfred is the very tongue we +speak, but in spite of its identity with modern English it has to be +learned like the tongue of a stranger. On the other hand, the English of +Chaucer is almost as intelligible as our own. In the first the historian +and philologer can study the origin and developement of our national +speech, in the last a schoolboy can enjoy the story of Troilus and Cressida +or listen to the gay chat of the Canterbury Pilgrims. In precisely the same +way a knowledge of our earliest laws is indispensable for the right +understanding of later legislation, its origin and its developement, while +the principles of our Parliamentary system must necessarily be studied in +the Meetings of Wise Men before the Conquest or the Great Council of barons +after it. But the Parliaments which Edward gathered at the close of his +reign are not merely illustrative of the history of later Parliaments, they +are absolutely identical with those which still sit at St. Stephen's. At +the close of his reign King, Lords, Commons, the Courts of Justice, the +forms of public administration, the relations of Church and State, all +local divisions and provincial jurisdictions, in great measure the +framework of society itself, have taken the shape which they essentially +retain. In a word the long struggle of the constitution for actual +existence has come to an end. The contests which follow are not contests +that tell, like those that preceded them, on the actual fabric of our +institutions; they are simply stages in the rough discipline by which +England has learned and is still learning how best to use and how wisely to +develope the latent powers of its national life, how to adjust the balance +of its social and political forces, how to adapt its constitutional forms +to the varying conditions of the time. + + +[Sidenote: The Earlier Finance] + +The news of his father's death found Edward at Capua in the opening of +1273; but the quiet of his realm under a regency of which Roger Mortimer +was the practical head left him free to move slowly homewards. Two of his +acts while thus journeying through Italy show that his mind was already +dwelling on the state of English finance and of English law. His visit to +the Pope at Orvieto was with a view of gaining permission to levy from the +clergy a tenth of their income for the three coming years, while he drew +from Bologna its most eminent jurist, Francesco Accursi, to aid in the task +of legal reform. At Paris he did homage to Philip the Third for his French +possessions, and then turning southward he devoted a year to the ordering +of Gascony. It was not till the summer of 1274 that the king reached +England. But he had already planned the work he had to do, and the measures +which he laid before the Parliament of 1275 were signs of the spirit in +which he was to set about it. The First Statute of Westminster was rather a +code than a statute. It contained no less than fifty-one clauses, and was +an attempt to summarize a number of previous enactments contained in the +Great Charter, the Provisions of Oxford, and the Statute of Marlborough, as +well as to embody some of the administrative measures of Henry the Second +and his son. But a more pressing need than that of a codification of the +law was the need of a reorganization of finance. While the necessities of +the Crown were growing with the widening of its range of administrative +action, the revenues of the Crown admitted of no corresponding expansion. +In the earliest times of our history the outgoings of the Crown were as +small as its income. All local expenses, whether for justice or road-making +or fortress-building, were paid by local funds; and the national "fyrd" +served at its own cost in the field. The produce of a king's private +estates with the provisions due to him from the public lands scattered over +each county, whether gathered by the king himself as he moved over his +realm, or as in later days fixed at a stated rate and collected by his +sheriff, were sufficient to defray the mere expenses of the Court. The +Danish wars gave the first shock to this simple system. To raise a ransom +which freed the land from the invader, the first land-tax, under the name +of the Danegeld, was laid on every hide of ground; and to this national +taxation the Norman kings added the feudal burthens of the new military +estates created by the Conquest, reliefs paid on inheritance, profits of +marriages and wardship, and the three feudal aids. But foreign warfare soon +exhausted these means of revenue; the barons and bishops in their Great +Council were called on at each emergency for a grant from their lands, and +at each grant a corresponding demand was made by the king as a landlord on +the towns, as lying for the most part in the royal demesne. The cessation +of Danegeld under Henry the Second and his levy of scutage made little +change in the general incidence of taxation: it still fell wholly on the +land, for even the townsmen paid as holders of their tenements. But a new +principle of taxation was disclosed in the tithe levied for a Crusade at +the close of Henry's reign. Land was no longer the only source of wealth. +The growth of national prosperity, of trade and commerce, was creating a +mass of personal property which offered irresistible temptations to the +Angevin financiers. The old revenue from landed property was restricted and +lessened by usage and compositions. Scutage was only due for foreign +campaigns: the feudal aids only on rare and stated occasions: and though +the fines from the shire-courts grew with the growth of society the dues +from the public lands were fixed and incapable of developement. But no +usage fettered the Crown in dealing with personal property, and its growth +in value promised a growing revenue. From the close of Henry the Second's +reign therefore this became the most common form of taxation. Grants of +from a seventh to a thirtieth of moveables, household-property, and stock +were demanded; and it was the necessity of procuring their assent to these +demands which enabled the baronage through the reign of Henry the Third to +bring a financial pressure to bear on the Crown. + + +[Sidenote: Indirect Taxation] + +But in addition to these two forms of direct taxation indirect taxation +also was coming more and more to the front. The right of the king to grant +licences to bring goods into or to trade within the realm, a right +springing from the need for his protection felt by the strangers who came +there for purposes of traffic, laid the foundation of our taxes on imports. +Those on exports were only a part of the general system of taxing personal +property which we have already noticed. How tempting this source of revenue +was proving we see from a provision of the Great Charter which forbids the +levy of more than the ancient customs on merchants entering or leaving the +realm. Commerce was in fact growing with the growing wealth of the people. +The crowd of civil and ecclesiastical buildings which date from this period +shows the prosperity of the country. Christian architecture reached its +highest beauty in the opening of Edward's reign; a reign marked by the +completion of the abbey church of Westminster and of the cathedral church +at Salisbury. An English noble was proud to be styled "an incomparable +builder," while some traces of the art which was rising into life across +the Alps flowed in, it may be, with the Italian ecclesiastics whom the +Papacy forced on the English Church. The shrine of the Confessor at +Westminster, the mosaic pavement beside the altar of the abbey, the +paintings on the walls of its chapterhouse remind us of the schools which +were springing up under Giotto and the Pisans. But the wealth which this +art progress shows drew trade to English shores. England was as yet simply +an agricultural country. Gascony sent her wines; her linens were furnished +by the looms of Ghent and Liege; Genoese vessels brought to her fairs the +silks, the velvets, the glass of Italy. In the barks of the Hanse merchants +came fur and amber from the Baltic, herrings, pitch, timber, and naval +stores from the countries of the north. Spain sent us iron and war-horses. +Milan sent armour. The great Venetian merchant-galleys touched the southern +coasts and left in our ports the dates of Egypt, the figs and currants of +Greece, the silk of Sicily, the sugar of Cyprus and Crete, the spices of +the Eastern seas. Capital too came from abroad. The bankers of Florence and +Lucca were busy with loans to the court or vast contracts with the +wool-growers. The bankers of Cahors had already dealt a death-blow to the +usury of the Jew. Against all this England had few exports to set. The lead +supplied by the mines of Derbyshire, the salt of the Worcestershire +springs, the iron of the Weald, were almost wholly consumed at home. The +one metal export of any worth was that of tin from the tin-mines of +Cornwall. But the production of wool was fast becoming a main element of +the nation's wealth. Flanders, the great manufacturing country of the time, +lay fronting our eastern coast; and with this market close at hand the +pastures of England found more and more profit in the supply of wool. The +Cistercian order which possessed vast ranges of moorland in Yorkshire +became famous as wool-growers; and their wool had been seized for Richard's +ransom. The Florentine merchants were developing this trade by their +immense contracts; we find a single company of merchants contracting for +the purchase of the Cistercian wool throughout the year. It was after +counsel with the Italian bankers that Edward devised his scheme for drawing +a permanent revenue from this source. In the Parliament of 1275 he obtained +the grant of half a mark, or six shillings and eightpence, on each sack of +wool exported; and this grant, a grant memorable as forming the first legal +foundation of our customs-revenue, at once relieved the necessities of the +Crown. + + +[Sidenote: Welsh Campaign] + +The grant of the wool tax enabled Edward in fact to deal with the great +difficulty of his realm. The troubles of the Barons' war, the need which +Earl Simon felt of Llewelyn's alliance to hold in check the Marcher Barons, +had all but shaken off from Wales the last traces of dependence. Even at +the close of the war the threat of an attack from the now united kingdom +only forced Llewelyn to submission on a practical acknowledgement of his +sovereignty. Although the title which Llewelyn ap Jorwerth claimed of +Prince of North Wales was recognized by the English court in the earlier +days of Henry the Third, it was withdrawn after 1229 and its claimant known +only as Prince of Aberffraw. But the loftier title of Prince of Wales which +Llewelyn ap Gruffydd assumed in 1256 was formally conceded to him in 1267, +and his right to receive homage from the other nobles of his principality +was formally sanctioned. Near however as he seemed to the final realization +of his aims, Llewelyn was still a vassal of the English Crown, and the +accession of Edward to the throne was at once followed by the demand of +homage. But the summons was fruitless; and the next two years were wasted +in as fruitless negotiation. The kingdom, however, was now well in hand. +The royal treasury was filled again, and in 1277 Edward marched on North +Wales. The fabric of Welsh greatness fell at a single blow. The chieftains +who had so lately sworn fealty to Llewelyn in the southern and central +parts of the country deserted him to join his English enemies in their +attack; an English fleet reduced Anglesea; and the Prince was cooped up in +his mountain fastnesses and forced to throw himself on Edward's mercy. With +characteristic moderation the conqueror contented himself with adding to +the English dominions the coast-district as far as Conway and with +providing that the title of Prince of Wales should cease at Llewelyn's +death. A heavy fine which he had incurred by his refusal to do homage was +remitted; and Eleanor, a daughter of Earl Simon of Montfort whom he had +sought as his wife but who had been arrested on her way to him, was wedded +to the Prince at Edward's court. + + +[Sidenote: Judicial Reforms] + +For four years all was quiet across the Welsh Marches, and Edward was able +again to turn his attention to the work of internal reconstruction. It is +probably to this time, certainly to the earlier years of his reign, that we +may attribute his modification of our judicial system. The King's Court was +divided into three distinct tribunals, the Court of Exchequer which took +cognizance of all causes in which the royal revenue was concerned; the +Court of Common Pleas for suits between private persons; and the King's +Bench, which had jurisdiction in all matters that affected the sovereign as +well as in "pleas of the crown" or criminal causes expressly reserved for +his decision. Each court was now provided with a distinct staff of judges. + +Of yet greater importance than this change, which was in effect but the +completion of a process of severance that had long been going on, was the +establishment of an equitable jurisdiction side by side with that of the +common law. In his reform of 1178 Henry the Second broke up the older +King's Court, which had till then served as the final Court of Appeal, by +the severance of the purely legal judges who had been gradually added to it +from the general body of his councillors. The judges thus severed from the +Council retained the name and the ordinary jurisdiction of "the King's +Court," but the mere fact of their severance changed in an essential way +the character of the justice they dispensed. The King in Council wielded a +power which was not only judicial but executive; his decisions though based +upon custom were not fettered by it, they wore the expressions of his will, +and it was as his will that they were carried out by officers of the Crown. +But the separate bench of judges had no longer this unlimited power at +their command. They had not the king's right as representative of the +community to make the law for the redress of a wrong. They professed simply +to declare what the existing law was, even if it was insufficient for the +full purpose of redress. The authority of their decision rested mainly on +their adhesion to ancient custom or as it was styled the "common law" which +had grown up in the past. They could enforce their decisions only by +directions to an independent officer, the sheriff, and here again their +right was soon rigidly bounded by set form and custom. These bonds in fact +became tighter every day, for their decisions were now beginning to be +reported, and the cases decided by one bench of judges became authorities +for their successors. It is plain that such a state of things has the +utmost value in many ways, whether in creating in men's minds that +impersonal notion of a sovereign law which exercises its imaginative force +on human action, or in furnishing by the accumulation and sacredness of +precedents a barrier against the invasion of arbitrary power. But it threw +a terrible obstacle in the way of the actual redress of wrong. The +increasing complexity of human action as civilization advanced outstripped +the efforts of the law. Sometimes ancient custom furnished no redress for a +wrong which sprang from modern circumstances. Sometimes the very pedantry +and inflexibility of the law itself became in individual cases the highest +injustice. + + +[Sidenote: Equitable Jurisdiction] + +It was the consciousness of this that made men cling even from the first +moment of the independent existence of these courts to the judicial power +which still remained inherent in the Crown itself. If his courts fell short +in any matter the duty of the king to do justice to all still remained, and +it was this obligation which was recognized in the provision of Henry the +Second by which all cases in which his judges failed to do justice were +reserved for the special cognizance of the royal Council itself. To this +final jurisdiction of the King in Council Edward gave a wide developement. +His assembly of the ministers, the higher permanent officials, and the law +officers of the Crown for the first time reserved to itself in its judicial +capacity the correction of all breaches of the law which the lower courts +had failed to repress, whether from weakness, partiality, or corruption, +and especially of those lawless outbreaks of the more powerful baronage +which defied the common authority of the judges. Such powers were of course +capable of terrible abuse, and it shows what real need there was felt to be +for their exercise that though regarded with jealousy by Parliament the +jurisdiction of the royal Council appears to have been steadily put into +force through the two centuries which followed. In the reign of Henry the +Seventh it took legal and statutory form in the shape of the Court of Star +Chamber, and its powers are still exercised in our own day by the Judicial +Committee of the Privy Council. But the same duty of the Crown to do +justice where its courts fell short of giving due redress for wrong +expressed itself in the jurisdiction of the Chancellor. This great officer +of State, who had perhaps originally acted only as President of the Council +when discharging its judicial functions, acquired at a very early date an +independent judicial position of the same nature. It is by remembering this +origin of the Court of Chancery that we understand the nature of the powers +it gradually acquired. All grievances of the subject, especially those +which sprang from the misconduct of government officials or of powerful +oppressors, fell within its cognizance as they fell within that of the +Royal Council, and to these were added disputes respecting the wardship of +infants, dower, rent-charges, or tithes. Its equitable jurisdiction sprang +from the defective nature and the technical and unbending rules of the +common law. As the Council had given redress in cases where law became +injustice, so the Court of Chancery interfered without regard to the rules +of procedure adopted by the common law courts on the petition of a party +for whose grievance the common law provided no adequate remedy. An +analogous extension of his powers enabled the Chancellor to afford relief +in cases of fraud, accident, or abuse of trust, and this side of his +jurisdiction was largely extended at a later time by the results of +legislation on the tenure of land by ecclesiastical bodies. The separate +powers of the Chancellor, whatever was the original date at which they were +first exercised, seem to have been thoroughly established under Edward the +First. + + +[Sidenote: Law and the Baronage] + +What reconciled the nation to the exercise of powers such as these by the +Crown and its council was the need which was still to exist for centuries +of an effective means of bringing the baronage within the reach of the law. +Constitutionally the position of the English nobles had now become +established. A king could no longer make laws or levy taxes or even make +war without their assent. The nation reposed in them an unwavering trust, +for they were no longer the brutal foreigners from whose violence the +strong hand of a Norman ruler had been needed to protect his subjects; they +were as English as the peasant or the trader. They had won English liberty +by their swords, and the tradition of their order bound them to look on +themselves as its natural guardians. The close of the Barons' War solved +the problem which had so long troubled the realm, the problem how to ensure +the government of the realm in accordance with the provisions of the Great +Charter, by the transfer of the business of administration into the hands +of a standing committee of the greater barons and prelates, acting as chief +officers of state in conjunction with specially appointed ministers of the +Crown. The body thus composed was known as the Continual Council; and the +quiet government of the kingdom by this body in the long interval between +the death of Henry the Third and his son's return shows how effective this +rule of the nobles was. It is significant of the new relation which they +were to strive to establish between themselves and the Crown that in the +brief which announced Edward's accession the Council asserted that the new +monarch mounted his throne "by the will of the peers." But while the +political influence of the baronage as a leading element in the whole +nation thus steadily mounted, the personal and purely feudal power of each +individual baron on his own estates as steadily fell. The hold which the +Crown gained on every noble family by its rights of wardship and marriage, +the circuits of the royal judges, the ever-narrowing bounds within which +baronial justice saw itself circumscribed, the blow dealt by scutage at +their military power, the prompt intervention of the Council in their +feuds, lowered the nobles more and more to the common level of their fellow +subjects. Much yet remained to be done; for within the general body of the +baronage there existed side by side with the nobles whose aims were purely +national nobles who saw in the overthrow of the royal despotism simply a +chance of setting up again their feudal privileges; and different as the +English baronage, taken as a whole, was from a feudal _noblesse_ like that +of Germany or France there is in every military class a natural drift +towards violence and lawlessness. Throughout Edward's reign his strong hand +was needed to enforce order on warring nobles. Great earls, such as those +of Gloucester and Hereford, carried on private war; in Shropshire the Earl +of Arundel waged his feud with Fulk Fitz Warine. To the lesser and poorer +nobles the wealth of the trader, the long wain of goods as it passed along +the highway, remained a tempting prey. Once, under cover of a mock +tournament of monks against canons, a band of country gentlemen succeeded +in introducing themselves into the great merchant fair at Boston; at +nightfall every booth was on fire, the merchants robbed and slaughtered, +and the booty carried off to ships which lay ready at the quay. Streams of +gold and silver, ran the tale of popular horror, flowed melted down the +gutters to the sea; "all the money in England could hardly make good the +loss." Even at the close of Edward's reign lawless bands of +"trail-bastons," or club-men, maintained themselves by general outrage, +aided the country nobles in their feuds, and wrested money and goods from +the great tradesmen. + + +[Sidenote: Edward and the Baronage] + +The king was strong enough to face and imprison the warring earls, to hang +the chiefs of the Boston marauders, and to suppress the outlaws by rigorous +commissions. But the repression of baronial outrage was only a part of +Edward's policy in relation to the Baronage. Here, as elsewhere, he had to +carry out the political policy of his house, a policy defined by the great +measures of Henry the Second, his institution of scutage, his general +assize of arms, his extension of the itinerant judicature of the royal +judges. Forced by the first to an exact discharge of their military duties +to the Crown, set by the second in the midst of a people trained equally +with the nobles to arms, their judicial tyranny curbed and subjected to the +king's justice by the third, the barons had been forced from their old +standpoint of an isolated class to the new and nobler position of a +people's leaders. Edward watched jealously over the ground which the Crown +had gained. Immediately after his landing he appointed a commission of +enquiry into the judicial franchises then existing, and on its report (of +which the existing "Hundred-Rolls" are the result) itinerant justices were +sent in 1278 to discover by what right these franchises were held. The +writs of "quo warranto" were roughly met here and there. Earl Warenne bared +a rusty sword and flung it on the justices' table. "This, sirs," he said, +"is my warrant. By the sword our fathers won their lands when they came +over with the Conqueror, and by the sword we will keep them." But the king +was far from limiting himself to the mere carrying out of the plans of +Henry the Second. Henry had aimed simply at lowering the power of the great +feudatories; Edward aimed rather at neutralizing their power by raising the +whole body of landowners to the same level. We shall see at a later time +the measures which were the issues of this policy, but in the very opening +of his reign a significant step pointed to the king's drift. In the summer +of 1278 a royal writ ordered all freeholders who held lands to the value of +twenty pounds to receive knighthood at the king's hands. + + +[Sidenote: Edward and the Church] + +Acts as significant announced Edward's purpose of carrying out another side +of Henry's policy, that of limiting in the same way the independent +jurisdiction of the Church. He was resolute to force it to become +thoroughly national by bearing its due part of the common national +burthens, and to break its growing dependence upon Rome. But the +ecclesiastical body was jealous of its position as a power distinct from +the power of the Crown, and Edward's policy had hardly declared itself when +in 1279 Archbishop Peckham obtained a canon from the clergy by which copies +of the Great Charter, with its provisions in favour of the liberties of the +Church, were to be affixed to the doors of churches. The step was meant as +a defiant protest against all interference, and it was promptly forbidden. +An order issued by the Primate to the clergy to declare to their flocks the +sentences of excommunication directed against all who obtained royal writs +to obstruct suits in church courts, or who, whether royal officers or no, +neglected to enforce their sentences, was answered in a yet more emphatic +way. By falling into the "dead hand" or "mortmain" of the Church land +ceased to render its feudal services; and in 1279 the Statute "de +Religiosis," or as it is commonly called "of Mortmain," forbade any further +alienation of land to religious bodies in such wise that it should cease to +render its due service to the king. The restriction was probably no +beneficial one to the country at large, for Churchmen were the best +landlords, and it was soon evaded by the ingenuity of the clerical lawyers; +but it marked the growing jealousy of any attempt to set aside what was +national from serving the general need and profit of the nation. Its +immediate effect was to stir the clergy to a bitter resentment. But Edward +remained firm, and when the bishops proposed to restrict the royal courts +from dealing with cases of patronage or causes which touched the chattels +of Churchmen he met their proposals by an instant prohibition. + + +[Sidenote: Conquest of Wales] + +The resentment of the clergy had soon the means of showing itself during a +new struggle with Wales. The persuasions of his brother David, who had +deserted him in the previous war but who deemed his desertion +insufficiently rewarded by an English lordship, roused Llewelyn to a fresh +revolt. A prophecy of Merlin was said to promise that when English money +became round a Prince of Wales should be crowned in London; and at this +moment a new coinage of copper money, coupled with a prohibition to break +the silver penny into halves and quarters, as had been commonly done, was +supposed to fulfil the prediction. In 1282 Edward marched in overpowering +strength into the heart of Wales. But Llewelyn held out in Snowdon with the +stubbornness of despair, and the rout of an English force which had crossed +into Anglesea prolonged the contest into the winter. The cost of the war +fell on the king's treasury. Edward had called for but one general grant +through the past eight years of his reign; but he was now forced to appeal +to his people, and by an expedient hitherto without precedent two +provincial Councils were called for this purpose. That for Southern England +met at Northampton, that for Northern at York; and clergy and laity were +summoned, though in separate session, to both. Two knights came from every +shire, two burgesses from every borough, while the bishops brought their +archdeacons, abbots, and the proctors of their cathedral clergy. The grant +of the laity was quick and liberal. But both at York and Northampton the +clergy showed their grudge at Edward's measures by long delays in supplying +his treasury. Pinched however as were his resources and terrible as were +the sufferings of his army through the winter Edward's firmness remained +unbroken; and rejecting all suggestions of retreat he issued orders for the +formation of a new army at Caermarthen to complete the circle of investment +round Llewelyn. But the war came suddenly to an end. The Prince sallied +from his mountain hold for a raid upon Radnorshire and fell in a petty +skirmish on the banks of the Wye. With him died the independence of his +race. After six months of flight his brother David was made prisoner; and a +Parliament summoned at Shrewsbury in the autumn of 1283, to which each +county again sent its two knights and twenty boroughs their two burgesses, +sentenced him to a traitor's death. The submission of the lesser chieftains +soon followed: and the country was secured by the building of strong +castles at Conway and Caernarvon, and the settlement of English barons on +the confiscated soil. The Statute of Wales which Edward promulgated at +Rhuddlan in 1284 proposed to introduce English law and the English +administration of justice and government into Wales. But little came of the +attempt; and it was not till the time of Henry the Eighth that the country +was actually incorporated with England and represented in the English +Parliament. What Edward had really done was to break the Welsh resistance. +The policy with which he followed up his victory (for the "massacre of the +bards" is a mere fable) accomplished its end, and though two later +rebellions and a ceaseless strife of the natives with the English towns in +their midst showed that the country was still far from being reconciled to +its conquest, it ceased to be any serious danger to England for a hundred +years. + + +[Sidenote: New Legislation] + +From the work of conquest Edward again turned to the work of legislation. +In the midst of his struggle with Wales he had shown his care for the +commercial classes by a Statute of Merchants in 1283, which provided for +the registration of the debts of leaders and for their recovery by +distraint of the debtor's goods and the imprisonment of his person. The +close of the war saw two measures of even greater importance. The second +Statute of Westminster which appeared in 1285 is a code of the same sort as +the first, amending the Statutes of Mortmain, of Merton, and of Gloucester, +as well as the laws of dower and advowson, remodelling the system of +justices of assize, and curbing the abuses of manorial jurisdiction. In the +same year appeared the greatest of Edward's measures for the enforcement of +public order. The Statute of Winchester revived and reorganized the old +institutions of national police and national defence. It regulated the +action of the hundred, the duty of watch and ward, and the gathering of the +fyrd or militia of the realm as Henry the Second had moulded it into form +in his Assize of Arms. Every man was bound to hold himself in readiness, +duly armed, for the king's service in case of invasion or revolt, and to +pursue felons when hue and cry was made after them. Every district was held +responsible for crimes committed within its bounds; the gates of each town +were to be shut at nightfall; and all strangers were required to give an +account of themselves to the magistrates of any borough which they entered. +By a provision which illustrates at once the social and physical condition +of the country at the time all brushwood was ordered to be destroyed within +a space of two hundred feet on either side of the public highway as a +security for travellers against sudden attacks from robbers. To enforce the +observance of this act knights were appointed in every shire under the name +of Conservators of the Peace, a name which as the benefit of these local +magistrates was more sensibly felt and their powers were more largely +extended was changed into that which they still retain of Justices of the +Peace. So orderly however was the realm that Edward was able in 1286 to +pass over sea to his foreign dominions, and to spend the next three years +in reforming their government. But the want of his guiding hand was at last +felt; and the Parliament of 1289 refused a new tax till the king came home +again. + + +[Sidenote: "Quia Emptores"] + +He returned to find the Earls of Gloucester and Hereford at war, and his +judges charged with violence and corruption. The two Earls were brought to +peace, and Earl Gilbert allied closely to the royal house by a marriage +with the king's daughter Johanna. After a careful investigation the +judicial abuses were recognized and amended. Two of the chief justices were +banished from the realm and their colleagues imprisoned and fined. But +these administrative measures were only preludes to a great legislative act +which appeared in 1290. The Third Statute of Westminster, or, to use the +name by which it is more commonly known, the Statute "Quia Emptores," is +one of those legislative efforts which mark the progress of a wide social +revolution in the country at large. The number of the greater barons was +diminishing every day, while the number of the country gentry and of the +more substantial yeomanry was increasing with the increase of the national +wealth. The increase showed itself in a growing desire to become +proprietors of land. Tenants of the barons received under-tenants on +condition of their rendering them similar services to those which they +themselves rendered to their lords; and the baronage, while duly receiving +the services in compensation for which they had originally granted their +lands in fee, saw with jealousy the feudal profits of these new +under-tenants, the profits of wardships or of reliefs and the like, in a +word the whole increase in the value of the estate consequent on its +subdivision and higher cultivation, passing into other hands than their +own. The purpose of the statute "Quia Emptores" was to check this process +by providing that in any case of alienation the sub-tenant should +henceforth hold, not of the tenant, but directly of the superior lord. But +its result was to promote instead of hindering the transfer and subdivision +of land. The tenant who was compelled before the passing of the statute to +retain in any case so much of the estate as enabled him to discharge his +feudal services to the overlord of whom he held it, was now enabled by a +process analogous to the modern sale of "tenant-right," to transfer both +land and services to new holders. However small the estates thus created +might be, the bulk were held directly of the Crown; and this class of +lesser gentry and freeholders grew steadily from this time in numbers and +importance. + + +[Sidenote: The Crown and the Jews] + +The year which saw "Quia Emptores" saw a step which remains the great blot +upon Edward's reign. The work abroad had exhausted the royal treasury, and +he bought a grant from his Parliament by listening to their wishes in the +matter of the Jews. Jewish traders had followed William the Conqueror from +Normandy, and had been enabled by his protection to establish themselves in +separate quarters or "Jewries" in all larger English towns. The Jew had no +right or citizenship in the land. The Jewry in which he lived was exempt +from the common law. He was simply the king's chattel, and his life and +goods were at the king's mercy. But he was too valuable a possession to be +lightly thrown away. If the Jewish merchant had no standing-ground in the +local court the king enabled him to sue before a special justiciary; his +bonds were deposited for safety in a chamber of the royal palace at +Westminster; he was protected against the popular hatred in the free +exercise of his religion and allowed to build synagogues and to manage his +own ecclesiastical affairs by means of a chief rabbi. The royal protection +was dictated by no spirit of tolerance or mercy. To the kings the Jew was a +mere engine of finance. The wealth which he accumulated was wrung from him +whenever the crown had need, and torture and imprisonment were resorted to +when milder means failed. It was the gold of the Jew that filled the royal +treasury at the outbreak of war or of revolt. It was in the Hebrew coffers +that the foreign kings found strength, to hold their baronage at bay. + + +[Sidenote: Popular Hatred of the Jews] + +That the presence of the Jew was, at least in the earlier years of his +settlement, beneficial to the nation at large there can be little doubt. +His arrival was the arrival of a capitalist; and heavy as was the usury he +necessarily exacted in the general insecurity of the time his loans gave an +impulse to industry. The century which followed the Conquest witnessed an +outburst of architectural energy which covered the land with castles and +cathedrals; but castle and cathedral alike owed their erection to the loans +of the Jew. His own example gave a new vigour to domestic architecture. The +buildings which, as at Lincoln and Bury St. Edmund's, still retain their +name of "Jews' Houses" were almost the first houses of stone which +superseded the mere hovels of the English burghers. Nor was their influence +simply industrial. Through their connexion with the Jewish schools in Spain +and the East they opened a way for the revival of physical sciences. A +Jewish medical school seems to have existed at Oxford; Roger Bacon himself +studied under English rabbis. But the general progress of civilization now +drew little help from the Jew, while the coming of the Cahorsine and +Italian bankers drove him from the field of commercial finance. He fell +back on the petty usury of loans to the poor, a trade necessarily +accompanied with much of extortion and which roused into fiercer life the +religious hatred against their race. Wild stories floated about of children +carried off to be circumcised or crucified, and a Lincoln boy who was found +slain in a Jewish house was canonized by popular reverence as "St. Hugh." +The first work of the Friars was to settle in the Jewish quarters and +attempt their conversion, but the popular fury rose too fast for these +gentler means of reconciliation. When the Franciscans saved seventy Jews +from hanging by their prayer to Henry the Third the populace angrily +refused the brethren alms. + + +[Sidenote: The Jewish Defiance] + +But all this growing hate was met with a bold defiance. The picture which +is commonly drawn of the Jew as timid, silent, crouching under oppression, +however truly it may represent the general position of his race throughout +mediaeval Europe, is far from being borne out by historical fact on this +side the Channel. In England the attitude of the Jew, almost to the very +end, was an attitude of proud and even insolent defiance. He knew that the +royal policy exempted him from the common taxation, the common justice, the +common obligations of Englishmen. Usurer, extortioner as the realm held him +to be, the royal justice would secure him the repayment of his bonds. A +royal commission visited with heavy penalties any outbreak of violence +against the king's "chattels." The Red King actually forbade the conversion +of a Jew to the Christian faith; it was a poor exchange, he said, that +would rid him of a valuable property and give him only a subject. We see in +such a case as that of Oxford the insolence that grew out of this +consciousness of the royal protection. Here as elsewhere the Jewry was a +town within a town, with its own language, its own religion and law, its +peculiar commerce, its peculiar dress. No city bailiff could penetrate into +the square of little alleys which lay behind the present Town Hall; the +Church itself was powerless to prevent a synagogue from rising in haughty +rivalry over against the cloister of St. Frideswide. Prior Philip of St. +Frideswide complains bitterly of a certain Hebrew who stood at his door as +the procession of the saint passed by, mocking at the miracles which were +said to be wrought at her shrine. Halting and then walking firmly on his +feet, showing his hands clenched as if with palsy and then flinging open +his fingers, the Jew claimed gifts and oblations from the crowd that +flocked to St. Frideswide's shrine on the ground that such recoveries of +life and limb were quite as real as any that Frideswide ever wrought. +Sickness and death in the prior's story avenge the saint on her blasphemer, +but no earthly power, ecclesiastical or civil, seems to have ventured to +deal with him. A more daring act of fanaticism showed the temper of the +Jews even at the close of Henry the Third's reign. As the usual procession +of scholars and citizens returned from St. Frideswide's on the Ascension +Day of 1268 a Jew suddenly burst from a group of his comrades in front of +the synagogue, and wrenching the crucifix from its bearer trod it under +foot. But even in presence of such an outrage as this the terror of the +Crown sheltered the Oxford Jews from any burst of popular vengeance. The +sentence of the king condemned them to set up a cross of marble on the spot +where the crime was committed, but even this sentence was in part remitted, +and a less offensive place was found for the cross in an open plot by +Merton College. + + +[Sidenote: Expulsion of the Jews] + +Up to Edward's day indeed the royal protection had never wavered. Henry the +Second granted the Jews a right of burial outside every city where they +dwelt. Richard punished heavily a massacre of the Jews at York, and +organized a mixed court of Jews and Christians for the registration of +their contracts. John suffered none to plunder them save himself, though he +once wrested from them a sum equal to a year's revenue of his realm. The +troubles of the next reign brought in a harvest greater than even the royal +greed could reap; the Jews grew wealthy enough to acquire estates; and only +a burst of popular feeling prevented a legal decision which would have +enabled them to own freeholds. But the sack of Jewry after Jewry showed the +popular hatred during the Barons' war, and at its close fell on the Jews +the more terrible persecution of the law. To the cry against usury and the +religious fanaticism which threatened them was now added the jealousy with +which the nation that had grown up round the Charter regarded all +exceptional jurisdictions or exemptions from the common law and the common +burthens of the realm. As Edward looked on the privileges of the Church or +the baronage, so his people looked on the privileges of the Jews. The +growing weight of the Parliament told against them. Statute after statute +hemmed them in. They were forbidden to hold real property, to employ +Christian servants, to move through the streets without the two white +tablets of wool on their breasts which distinguished their race. They were +prohibited from building new synagogues or eating with Christians or acting +as physicians to them. Their trade, already crippled by the rivalry of the +bankers of Cahors, was annihilated by a royal order which bade them +renounce usury under pain of death. At last persecution could do no more, +and Edward, eager at the moment to find supplies for his treasury and +himself swayed by the fanaticism of his subjects, bought the grant of a +fifteenth from clergy and laity by consenting to drive the Jews from his +realm. No share of the enormities which accompanied this expulsion can fall +upon the king, for he not only suffered the fugitives to take their +personal wealth with them but punished with the halter those who plundered +them at sea. But the expulsion was none the less cruel. Of the sixteen +thousand who preferred exile to apostasy few reached the shores of France. +Many were wrecked, others robbed and flung overboard. One shipmaster turned +out a crew of wealthy merchants on to a sandbank and bade them call a new +Moses to save them from the sea. + +[Illustration: Scotland in 1290 (v2-map-1t.jpg)] + + +[Sidenote: Scotland] + +From the expulsion of the Jews, as from his nobler schemes of legal and +administrative reforms, Edward was suddenly called away to face complex +questions which awaited him in the North. At the moment which we have +reached the kingdom of the Scots was still an aggregate of four distinct +countries, each with its different people, its different tongue, its +different history. The old Pictish kingdom across the Firth of Forth, the +original Scot kingdom in Argyle, the district of Cumbria or Strathclyde, +and the Lowlands which stretched from the Firth of Forth to the English +border, had become united under the kings of the Scots; Pictland by +inheritance, Cumbria by a grant from the English king Eadmund, the Lowlands +by conquest, confirmed as English tradition alleged by a grant from Cnut. +The shadowy claim of dependence on the English Crown which dated from the +days when a Scotch king "commended" himself and his people to AElfred's son +Eadward, a claim strengthened by the grant of Cumbria to Malcolm as a +"fellow worker" of the English sovereign "by sea and land," may have been +made more real through this last convention. But whatever change the +acquisition of the Lowlands made in the relation of the Scot kings to the +English sovereigns, it certainly affected in a very marked way their +relation both to England and to their own realm. Its first result was the +fixing of the royal residence in their new southern dominion at Edinburgh; +and the English civilization which surrounded them from the moment of this +settlement on what was purely English ground changed the Scot kings in all +but blood into Englishmen. The marriage of King Malcolm with Margaret, the +sister of Eadgar AEtheling, not only hastened this change but opened a way +to the English crown. Their children were regarded by a large party within +England as representatives of the older royal race and as claimants of the +throne, and this danger grew as William's devastation of the North not only +drove fresh multitudes of Englishmen to settle in the Lowlands but filled +the Scotch court with English nobles who fled thither for refuge. So +formidable indeed became the pretensions of the Scot kings that they forced +the ablest of our Norman sovereigns into a complete change of policy. The +Conqueror and William the Red had met the threats of the Scot sovereigns by +invasions which ended again and again in an illusory homage, but the +marriage of Henry the First with the Scottish Matilda robbed the claims of +the Scottish line of much of their force while it enabled him to draw their +kings into far closer relations with the Norman throne. King David not only +abandoned the ambitious dreams of his predecessors to place himself at the +head of his niece Matilda's party in her contest with Stephen, but as +Henry's brother-in-law he figured as the first noble of the English Court +and found English models and English support in the work of organization +which he attempted within his own dominions. As the marriage with Margaret +had changed Malcolm from a Celtic chieftain into an English king, so that +of Matilda brought about the conversion of David into a Norman and feudal +sovereign. His court was filled with Norman nobles from the South, such as +the Balliols and Bruces who were destined to play so great a part +afterwards but who now for the first time obtained fiefs in the Scottish +realm, and a feudal jurisprudence modelled on that of England was +introduced into the Lowlands. + + +[Sidenote: Scotch and English Crowns] + +A fresh connexion between Scotland and the English sovereigns began with +the grant of lordships within England itself to the Scot kings or their +sons. The Earldom of Northumberland was held by David's son Henry, that of +Huntingdon by David, brother of William the Lion. Homage was sometimes +rendered, whether for these lordships, for the Lowlands, or for the whole +Scottish realm, but it was the capture of William the Lion during the +revolt of the English baronage which first suggested to the ambition of +Henry the Second the project of a closer dependence of Scotland on the +English Crown. To gain his freedom William consented to hold his kingdom of +Henry and his heirs. The prelates and lords of Scotland did homage to Henry +as to their direct lord, and a right of appeal in all Scotch causes was +allowed to the superior court of the English suzerain. From this bondage +however Scotland was freed by the prodigality of Richard who allowed her to +buy back the freedom she had forfeited. Both sides fell into their old +position, but both were ceasing gradually to remember the distinctions +between the various relations in which the Scot king stood for his +different provinces to the English Crown. Scotland had come to be thought +of as a single country; and the court of London transferred to the whole of +it those claims of direct feudal suzerainty which at most applied only to +Strathclyde, while the court of Edinburgh looked on the English Lowlands as +holding no closer relation to England than the Pictish lands beyond the +Forth. Any difficulties which arose were evaded by a legal compromise. The +Scot kings repeatedly did homage to the English sovereign but with a +reservation of rights which were prudently left unspecified. The English +king accepted the homage on the assumption that it was rendered to him as +overlord of the Scottish realm, and this assumption was neither granted nor +denied. For nearly a hundred years the relations of the two countries were +thus kept peaceful and friendly, and the death of Alexander the Third +seemed destined to remove even the necessity of protests by a closer union +of the two kingdoms. Alexander had wedded his only daughter to the King of +Norway, and after long negotiation the Scotch Parliament proposed the +marriage of Margaret, "The Maid of Norway," the girl who was the only issue +of this marriage and so heiress of the kingdom, with the son of Edward the +First. It was however carefully provided in the marriage treaty which was +concluded at Brigham in 1290 that Scotland should remain a separate and +free kingdom, and that its laws and customs should be preserved inviolate. +No military aid was to be claimed by the English king, no Scotch appeal to +be carried to an English court. But this project was abruptly frustrated by +the child's death during her voyage to Scotland in the following October, +and with the rise of claimant after claimant of the vacant throne Edward +was drawn into far other relations to the Scottish realm. + + +[Sidenote: The Scotch Succession] + +Of the thirteen pretenders to the throne of Scotland only three could be +regarded as serious claimants. By the extinction of the line of William the +Lion the right of succession passed to the daughters of his brother David. +The claim of John Balliol, Lord of Galloway, rested on his descent from the +elder of these; that of Robert Bruce, Lord of Annandale, on his descent +from the second; that of John Hastings, Lord of Abergavenny, on his descent +from the third. It is clear that at this crisis every one in Scotland or +out of it recognized some sort of overlordship in Edward, for the Norwegian +king, the Primate of St. Andrews, and seven of the Scotch Earls had already +appealed to him before Margaret's death; and her death was followed by the +consent both of the claimants and the Council of Regency to refer the +question of the succession to his decision in a Parliament at Norham. But +the overlordship which the Scots acknowledged was something far less direct +and definite than the superiority which Edward claimed at the opening of +this conference in May 1291. His claim was supported by excerpts from +monastic chronicles and by the slow advance of an English army; while the +Scotch lords, taken by surprise, found little help in the delay which was +granted them. At the opening of June therefore in common with nine of the +claimants they formally admitted Edward's direct suzerainty. To the nobles +in fact the concession must have seemed a small one, for like the principal +claimants they were for the most part Norman in blood, with estates in both +countries, and looking for honours and pensions from the English Court. +From the Commons who were gathered with the nobles at Norham no such +admission of Edward's claims could be extorted; but in Scotland, feudalized +as it had been by David, the Commons were as yet of little weight and their +opposition was quietly passed by. All the rights of a feudal suzerain were +at once assumed by the English king; he entered into the possession of the +country as into that of a disputed fief to be held by its overlord till the +dispute was settled, his peace was sworn throughout the land, its castles +delivered into his charge, while its bishops and nobles swore homage to him +directly as their lord superior. Scotland was thus reduced to the +subjection which she had experienced under Henry the Second; but the full +discussion which followed over the various claims to the throne showed that +while exacting to the full what he believed to be his right Edward desired +to do justice to the country itself. The body of commissioners which the +king named to report on the claims to the throne were mainly Scotch. A +proposal for the partition of the realm among the claimants was rejected as +contrary to Scotch law. On the report of the commissioners after a +twelvemonth's investigation in favour of Balliol as representative of the +elder branch at the close of the year 1292, his homage was accepted for the +whole kingdom of Scotland with a full acknowledgement of the services due +from him to its overlord. The castles were at once delivered to the new +monarch, and for a time there was peace. + + +[Sidenote: Edward and Scotland] + +With the accession of Balliol and the rendering of his homage for the +Scottish realm the greatness of Edward reached its height. He was lord of +Britain as no English king had been before. The last traces of Welsh +independence were trodden under foot. The shadowy claims of supremacy over +Scotland were changed into a direct overlordship. Across the one sea Edward +was lord of Guienne, across the other of Ireland, and in England itself a +wise and generous policy had knit the whole nation round his throne. Firmly +as he still clung to prerogatives which the baronage were as firm not to +own, the main struggle for the Charter was over. Justice and good +government were secured. The personal despotism which John had striven to +build up, the imperial autocracy which had haunted the imagination of Henry +the Third, were alike set aside. The rule of Edward, vigorous and effective +as it was, was a rule of law, and of law enacted not by the royal will, but +by the common council of the realm. Never had English ruler reached a +greater height of power, nor was there any sign to warn the king of the +troubles which awaited him. France, jealous as it was of his greatness and +covetous of his Gascon possessions, he could hold at bay. Wales was growing +tranquil. Scotland gave few signs of discontent or restlessness in the +first year that followed the homage of its king. Under John Balliol it had +simply fallen back into the position of dependence which it held under +William the Lion; and Edward had no purpose of pushing further his rights +as suzerain than Henry the Second had done. One claim of the English Crown +indeed was soon a subject of dispute between the lawyers of the Scotch and +of the English Council boards. Edward would have granted as freely as +Balliol himself that though Scotland was a dependent kingdom it was far +from being an ordinary fief of the English Crown. By feudal custom a +distinction had always been held to exist between the relations of a +dependent king to a superior lord and those of a vassal noble to his +sovereign. At Balliol's homage indeed Edward had disclaimed any right to +the ordinary feudal incidents of a fief, those of wardship or marriage, and +in this disclaimer he was only repeating the reservations of the marriage +treaty of Brigham. There were other customs of the Scotch realm as +incontestable as these. Even after the treaty of Falaise the Scotch king +had not been held bound to attend the council of the English baronage, to +do service in English warfare, or to contribute on the part of his Scotch +realm to English aids. If no express acknowledgement of these rights had +been made by Edward, for some time after his acceptance of Balliol's homage +they were practically observed. The claim of independent justice was more +doubtful, as it was of higher import than these. The judicial independence +of Scotland had been expressly reserved in the marriage treaty. It was +certain that no appeal from a Scotch King's Court to that of his overlord +had been allowed since the days of William the Lion. But in the +jurisprudence of the feudal lawyers the right of ultimate appeal was the +test of sovereignty, and Edward regarded Balliol's homage as having placed +him precisely in the position of William the Lion and subjected his +decisions to those of his overlord. He was resolute therefore to assert the +supremacy of his court and to receive Scotch appeals. + + +[Sidenote: The French Attack] + +Even here however the quarrel seemed likely to end only in legal bickering. +Balliol at first gave way, and it was not till 1293 that he alleged himself +forced by the resentment both of his Baronage and his people to take up an +attitude of resistance. While appearing therefore formally at Westminster +he refused to answer an appeal before the English courts save by advice of +his Council. But real as the resentment of his barons may have been, it was +not Scotland which really spurred Balliol to this defiance. His wounded +pride had made him the tool of a power beyond the sea. The keenness with +which France had watched every step of Edward's success in the north sprang +not merely from a natural jealousy of his greatness but from its bearing on +a great object of French ambition. One fragment of Eleanor's inheritance +still remained to her descendants, Guienne and Gascony, the fair lands +along the Garonne and the territory which stretched south of that river to +the Pyrenees. It was this territory that now tempted the greed of Philip +the Fair, and it was in feeding the strife between England and the Scotch +king that Philip saw an opening for winning it. French envoys therefore +brought promises of aid to the Scotch Court; and no sooner had these +intrigues moved Balliol to resent the claims of his overlord than Philip +found a pretext for open quarrel with Edward in the frays which went +constantly on in the Channel between the mariners of Normandy and those of +the Cinque Ports. They culminated at this moment in a great sea-fight which +proved fatal to eight thousand Frenchmen, and for this Philip haughtily +demanded redress. Edward saw at once the danger of his position. He did his +best to allay the storm by promise of satisfaction to France, and by +addressing threats of punishment to the English seamen. But Philip still +clung to his wrong, while the national passion which was to prove for a +hundred years to come strong enough to hold down the royal policy of peace +showed itself in a characteristic defiance with which the seamen of the +Cinque Ports met Edward's menaces. "Be the King's Council well advised," +ran this remonstrance, "that if wrong or grievance be done them in any +fashion against right, they will sooner forsake wives, children, and all +that they have, and go seek through the seas where they shall think to make +their profit." In spite therefore of Edward's efforts the contest +continued, and Philip found in it an opportunity to cite the king before +his court at Paris for wrongs done to him as suzerain. It was hard for +Edward to dispute the summons without weakening the position which his own +sovereign courts had taken up towards the Scotch king, and in a final +effort to avert the conflict the king submitted to a legal decision of the +question, and to a formal cession of Guienne into Philip's hands for forty +days in acknowledgement of his supremacy. Bitter as the sacrifice must have +been it failed to win peace. The forty days had no sooner passed than +Philip refused to restore the fortresses which had been left in pledge. In +February 1294 he declared the English king contumacious, and in May +declared his fiefs forfeited to the French Crown. Edward was driven to take +up arms, but a revolt in Wales deferred the expedition to the following +year. No sooner however was it again taken in hand than it became clear +that a double danger had to be met. The summons which Edward addressed to +the Scotch barons to follow him in arms to Guienne was disregarded. It was +in truth, as we have seen, a breach of customary law, and was probably +meant to force Scotland into an open declaration of its connexion with +France. A second summons was followed by a more formal refusal. The +greatness of the danger threw Edward on England itself. For a war in +Guienne and the north he needed supplies; but he needed yet more the firm +support of his people in a struggle which, little as he foresaw its +ultimate results, would plainly be one of great difficulty and danger. In +1295 he called a Parliament to counsel with him on the affairs of the +realm, but with the large statesmanship which distinguished him he took +this occasion of giving the Parliament a shape and organization which has +left its assembly the most important event in English history. + + +[Sidenote: The Great Council] + +To realize its importance we must briefly review the changes by which the +Great Council of the Norman kings had been gradually transforming itself +into what was henceforth to be known as the English Parliament. Neither the +Meeting of the Wise Men before the Conquest nor the Great Council of the +Barons after it had been in any legal or formal way representative bodies. +The first theoretically included all free holders of land, but it shrank at +an early time into a gathering of earls, higher nobles, and bishops, with +the officers and thegns of the royal household. Little change was made in +the composition of this assembly by the Conquest, for the Great Council of +the Norman kings was supposed to include all tenants who held directly of +the Crown, the bishops and greater abbots (whose character as independent +spiritual members tended more and more to merge in their position as +barons), and the high officers of the Court. But though its composition +remained the same, the character of the assembly was essentially altered; +from a free gathering of "Wise Men" it sank to a Royal Court of feudal +vassals. Its functions too seem to have become almost nominal and its +powers to have been restricted to the sanctioning, without debate or +possibility of refusal, all grants demanded from it by the Crown. But +nominal as such a sanction might be, the "counsel and consent" of the Great +Council was necessary for the legal validity of every considerable fiscal +or political measure. Its existence therefore remained an effectual protest +against the imperial theories advanced by the lawyers of Henry the Second +which declared all legislative power to reside wholly in the sovereign. It +was in fact under Henry that these assemblies became more regular, and +their functions more important. The reforms which marked his reign were +issued in the Great Council, and even financial matters were suffered to be +debated there. But it was not till the grant of the Great Charter that the +powers of this assembly over taxation were formally recognized, and the +principle established that no burthen beyond the customary feudal aids +might be imposed "save by the Common Council of the Realm." + + +[Sidenote: Greater and Lesser Barons] + +The same document first expressly regulated its form. In theory, as we have +seen, the Great Council consisted of all who held land directly of the +Crown. But the same causes which restricted attendance at the Witenagemot +to the greater nobles told on the actual composition of the Council of +Barons. While the attendance of the ordinary tenants in chief, the Knights +or "Lesser Barons" as they were called, was burthensome from its expense to +themselves, their numbers and their dependence on the higher nobles made +the assembly of these knights dangerous to the Crown. As early therefore as +the time of Henry the First we find a distinction recognized between the +"Greater Barons," of whom the Council was usually composed, and the "Lesser +Barons" who formed the bulk of the tenants of the Crown. But though the +attendance of the latter had become rare their right of attendance remained +intact. While enacting that the prelates and greater barons should be +summoned by special writs to each gathering of the Council a remarkable +provision of the Great Charter orders a general summons to be issued +through the Sheriff to all direct tenants of the Crown. The provision was +probably intended to rouse the lesser Baronage to the exercise of rights +which had practically passed into desuetude, but as the clause is omitted +in later issues of the Charter we may doubt whether the principle it +embodied ever received more than a very limited application. There are +traces of the attendance of a few of the lesser knighthood, gentry perhaps +of the neighbourhood where the assembly was held, in some of its meetings +under Henry the Third, but till a late period in the reign of his successor +the Great Council practically remained a gathering of the greater barons, +the prelates, and the high officers of the Crown. + + +[Sidenote: Constitutional Influence of Finance] + +The change which the Great Charter had failed to accomplish was now however +brought about by the social circumstances of the time. One of the most +remarkable of these was a steady decrease in the number of the greater +nobles. The bulk of the earldoms had already lapsed to the Crown through +the extinction of the families of their possessors; of the greater +baronies, many had practically ceased to exist by their division among +female co-heiresses, many through the constant struggle of the poorer +nobles to rid themselves of their rank by a disclaimer so as to escape the +burthen of higher taxation and attendance in Parliament which it involved. +How far this diminution had gone we may see from the fact that hardly more +than a hundred barons sat in the earlier Councils of Edward's reign. But +while the number of those who actually exercised the privilege of assisting +in Parliament was rapidly diminishing, the numbers and wealth of the +"lesser baronage," whose right of attendance had become a mere +constitutional tradition, was as rapidly increasing. The long peace and +prosperity of the realm, the extension of its commerce and the increased +export of wool, were swelling the ranks and incomes of the country gentry +as well as of the freeholders and substantial yeomanry. We have already +noticed the effects of the increase of wealth in begetting a passion for +the possession of land which makes this reign so critical a period in the +history of the English freeholder; but the same tendency had to some extent +existed in the preceding century, and it was a consciousness of the growing +importance of this class of rural proprietors which induced the barons at +the moment of the Great Charter to make their fruitless attempt to induce +them to take part in the deliberations of the Great Council. But while the +barons desired their presence as an aid against the Crown, the Crown itself +desired it as a means of rendering taxation more efficient. So long as the +Great Council remained a mere assembly of magnates it was necessary for the +King's ministers to treat separately with the other orders of the state as +to the amount and assessment of their contributions. The grant made in the +Great Council was binding only on the barons and prelates who made it; but +before the aids of the boroughs, the Church, or the shires could reach the +royal treasury, a separate negotiation had to be conducted by the officers +of the Exchequer with the reeves of each town, the sheriff and shire-court +of each county, and the archdeacons of each diocese. Bargains of this sort +would be the more tedious and disappointing as the necessities of the Crown +increased in the later years of Edward, and it became a matter of fiscal +expediency to obtain the sanction of any proposed taxation through the +presence of these classes in the Great Council itself. + +The effort however to revive the old personal attendance of the lesser +baronage which had broken down half a century before could hardly be +renewed at a time when the increase of their numbers made it more +impracticable than ever; but a means of escape from this difficulty was +fortunately suggested by the very nature of the court through which alone a +summons could be addressed to the landed knighthood. Amidst the many +judicial reforms of Henry or Edward the Shire Court remained unchanged. The +haunted mound or the immemorial oak round which the assembly gathered (for +the court was often held in the open air) were the relics of a time before +the free kingdom had sunk into a shire and its Meetings of the Wise into a +County Court. But save that the king's reeve had taken the place of the +king and that the Norman legislation had displaced the Bishop and set four +Coroners by the Sheriff's side, the gathering of the freeholders remained +much as of old. The local knighthood, the yeomanry, the husbandmen of the +county, were all represented in the crowd that gathered round the Sheriff, +as guarded by his liveried followers he published the king's writs, +announced his demand of aids, received the presentment of criminals and the +inquest of the local jurors, assessed the taxation of each district, or +listened solemnly to appeals for justice, civil and criminal, from all who +held themselves oppressed in the lesser courts of the hundred or the soke. +It was in the County Court alone that the Sheriff could legally summon the +lesser baronage to attend the Great Council, and it was in the actual +constitution of this assembly that the Crown found a solution of the +difficulty which we have stated. For the principle of representation by +which it was finally solved was coeval with the Shire Court itself. In all +cases of civil or criminal justice the twelve sworn assessors of the +Sheriff, as members of a class, though not formally deputed for that +purpose, practically represented the judicial opinion of the county at +large. From every hundred came groups of twelve sworn deputies, the +"jurors" through whom the presentments of the district were made to the +royal officer and with whom the assessment of its share in the general +taxation was arranged. The husbandmen on the outskirts of the crowd, clad +in the brown smock frock which still lingers in the garb of our carters and +ploughmen, were broken up into little knots of five, a reeve and four +assistants, each of which knots formed the representative of a rural +township. If in fact we regard the Shire Courts as lineally the descendants +of our earliest English Witenagemots, we may justly claim the principle of +parliamentary representation as among the oldest of our institutions. + + +[Sidenote: Knights of the Shire] + +It was easy to give this principle a further extension by the choice of +representatives of the lesser barons in the shire courts to which they were +summoned; but it was only slowly and tentatively that this process was +applied to the reconstitution of the Great Council. As early as the close +of John's reign there are indications of the approaching change in the +summons of "four discreet knights" from every county. Fresh need of local +support was felt by both parties in the conflict of the succeeding reign, +and Henry and his barons alike summoned knights from each shire "to meet on +the common business of the realm." It was no doubt with the same purpose +that the writs of Earl Simon ordered the choice of knights in each shire +for his famous Parliament of 1265. Something like a continuous attendance +may be dated from the accession of Edward, but it was long before the +knights were regarded as more than local deputies for the assessment of +taxation or admitted to a share in the general business of the Great +Council. The statute "Quia Emptores," for instance, was passed in it before +the knights who had been summoned could attend. Their participation in the +deliberative power of Parliament, as well as their regular and continuous +attendance, dates only from the Parliament of 1295. But a far greater +constitutional change in their position had already taken place through the +extension of electoral rights to the freeholders at large. The one class +entitled to a seat in the Great Council was, as we have seen, that of the +lesser baronage; and it was of the lesser baronage alone that the knights +were in theory the representatives. But the necessity of holding their +election in the County Court rendered any restriction of the electoral body +physically impossible. The court was composed of the whole body of +freeholders, and no sheriff could distinguish the "aye, aye" of the yeoman +from the "aye, aye" of the lesser baron. From the first moment therefore of +their attendance we find the knights regarded not as mere representatives +of the baronage but as knights of the shire, and by this silent revolution +the whole body of the rural freeholders were admitted to a share in the +government of the realm. + + +[Sidenote: Boroughs and the Crown] + +The financial difficulties of the Crown led to a far more radical +revolution in the admission into the Great Council of representatives from +the boroughs. The presence of knights from each shire was the recognition +of an older right, but no right of attendance or share in the national +"counsel and assent" could be pleaded for the burgesses of the towns. On +the other hand the rapid developement of their wealth made them every day +more important as elements in the national taxation. From all payment of +the dues or fines exacted by the king as the original lord of the soil on +which they had in most cases grown up the towns had long since freed +themselves by what was called the purchase of the "farm of the borough"; in +other words, by the commutation of these uncertain dues for a fixed sum +paid annually to the Crown and apportioned by their own magistrates among +the general body of the burghers. All that the king legally retained was +the right enjoyed by every great proprietor of levying a corresponding +taxation on his tenants in demesne under the name of "a free aid" whenever +a grant was made for the national necessities by the barons of the Great +Council. But the temptation of appropriating the growing wealth of the +mercantile class proved stronger than legal restrictions, and we find both +Henry the Third and his son assuming a right of imposing taxes at pleasure +and without any authority from the Council even over London itself. The +burgesses could refuse indeed the invitation to contribute to the "free +aids" demanded by the royal officers, but the suspension of their markets +or trading privileges brought them in the end to submission. Each of these +"free aids" however had to be extorted after a long wrangle between the +borough and the officers of the Exchequer; and if the towns were driven to +comply with what they considered an extortion they could generally force +the Crown by evasions and delays to a compromise and abatement of its +original demands. + + +[Sidenote: Burgesses in Parliament] + +The same financial reasons therefore existed for desiring the presence of +borough representatives in the Great Council as existed in the case of the +shires; but it was the genius of Earl Simon which first broke through the +older constitutional tradition and summoned two burgesses from each town to +the Parliament of 1265. Time had indeed to pass before the large and +statesmanlike conception of the great patriot could meet with full +acceptance. Through the earlier part of Edward's reign we find a few +instances of the presence of representatives from the towns, but their +scanty numbers and the irregularity of their attendance show that they were +summoned rather to afford financial information to the Great Council than +as representatives in it of an Estate of the Realm. But every year pleaded +stronger and stronger for their inclusion, and in the Parliament of 1295 +that of 1265 found itself at last reproduced. "It was from me that he +learnt it," Earl Simon had cried, as he recognized the military skill of +Edward's onset at Evesham; "it was from me that he learnt it," his spirit +might have exclaimed as he saw the king gathering at last two burgesses +"from every city, borough, and leading town" within his realm to sit side +by side with the knights, nobles, and barons of the Great Council. To the +Crown the change was from the first an advantageous one. The grants of +subsidies by the burgesses in Parliament proved more profitable than the +previous extortions of the Exchequer. The proportions of their grant +generally exceeded that of the other estates. Their representatives too +proved far more compliant with the royal will than the barons or knights of +the shire; only on one occasion during Edward's reign did the burgesses +waver from their general support of the Crown. + + +[Sidenote: Reluctance to attend] + +It was easy indeed to control them, for the selection of boroughs to be +represented remained wholly in the king's hands, and their numbers could be +increased or diminished at the king's pleasure. The determination was left +to the sheriff, and at a hint from the royal Council a sheriff of Wilts +would cut down the number of represented boroughs in his shire from eleven +to three, or a sheriff of Bucks declare he could find but a single borough, +that of Wycombe, within the bounds of his county. Nor was this exercise of +the prerogative hampered by any anxiety on the part of the towns to claim +representative privileges. It was hard to suspect that a power before which +the Crown would have to bow lay in the ranks of soberly-clad traders, +summoned only to assess the contributions of their boroughs, and whose +attendance was as difficult to secure as it seemed burthensome to +themselves and the towns who sent them. The mass of citizens took little or +no part in their choice, for they were elected in the county court by a few +of the principal burghers deputed for the purpose; but the cost of their +maintenance, the two shillings a day paid to the burgess by his town as +four were paid to the knight by his county, was a burden from which the +boroughs made desperate efforts to escape. Some persisted in making no +return to the sheriff. Some bought charters of exemption from the +troublesome privilege. Of the 165 who were summoned by Edward the First +more than a third ceased to send representatives after a single compliance +with the royal summons. During the whole time from the reign of Edward the +Third to the reign of Henry the Sixth the sheriff of Lancashire declined to +return the names of any boroughs at all within that county "on account of +their poverty." Nor were the representatives themselves more anxious to +appear than their boroughs to send them. The busy country squire and the +thrifty trader were equally reluctant to undergo the trouble and expense of +a journey to Westminster. Legal measures were often necessary to ensure +their presence. Writs still exist in abundance such as that by which Walter +le Rous is "held to bail in eight oxen and four cart-horses to come before +the King on the day specified" for attendance in Parliament. But in spite +of obstacles such as these the presence of representatives from the +boroughs may be regarded as continuous from the Parliament of 1295. As the +representation of the lesser barons had widened through a silent change +into that of the shire, so that of the boroughs--restricted in theory to +those in the royal demesne--seems practically from Edward's time to have +been extended to all who were in a condition to pay the cost of their +representatives' support. By a change as silent within the Parliament +itself the burgess, originally summoned to take part only in matters of +taxation, was at last admitted to a full share in the deliberations and +authority of the other orders of the State. + + +[Sidenote: Parliament and the Clergy] + +The admission of the burgesses and knights of the shire to the assembly of +1295 completed the fabric of our representative constitution. The Great +Council of the Barons became the Parliament of the Realm. Every order of +the state found itself represented in this assembly, and took part in the +grant of supplies, the work of legislation, and in the end the control of +government. But though in all essential points the character of Parliament +has remained the same from that time to this, there were some remarkable +particulars in which the assembly of 1295 differed widely from the present +Parliament at St. Stephen's. Some of these differences, such as those which +sprang from the increased powers and changed relations of the different +orders among themselves, we shall have occasion to consider at a later +time. But a difference of a far more startling kind than these lay in the +presence of the clergy. If there is any part in the parliamentary scheme of +Edward the First which can be regarded as especially his own, it is his +project for the representation of the ecclesiastical order. The King had +twice at least summoned its "proctors" to Great Councils before 1295, but +it was then only that the complete representation of the Church was +definitely organized by the insertion of a clause in the writ which +summoned a bishop to Parliament requiring the personal attendance of all +archdeacons, deans, or priors of cathedral churches, of a proctor for each +cathedral chapter, and two for the clergy within his diocese. The clause is +repeated in the writs of the present day, but its practical effect was +foiled almost from the first by the resolute opposition of those to whom it +was addressed. What the towns failed in doing the clergy actually did. Even +when forced to comply with the royal summons, as they seem to have been +forced during Edward's reign, they sat jealously by themselves, and their +refusal to vote supplies in any but their own provincial assemblies, or +convocations, of Canterbury and York left the Crown without a motive for +insisting on their continued attendance. Their presence indeed, though +still at times granted on some solemn occasions, became so pure a formality +that by the end of the fifteenth century it had sunk wholly into desuetude. +In their anxiety to preserve their existence as an isolated and privileged +order the clergy flung away a power which, had they retained it, would have +ruinously hampered the healthy developement of the state. To take a single +instance, it is difficult to see how the great changes of the Reformation +could have been brought about had a good half of the House of Commons +consisted purely of churchmen, whose numbers would have been backed by the +weight of their property as possessors of a third of the landed estates of +the realm. + + +[Sidenote: Parliament at Westminster] + +A hardly less important difference may be found in the gradual restriction +of the meetings of Parliament to Westminster. The names of Edward's +statutes remind us of its convocation at the most various quarters, at +Winchester, Acton Burnell, Northampton. It was at a later time that +Parliament became settled in the straggling village which had grown up in +the marshy swamp of the Isle of Thorns beside the palace whose embattled +pile towered over the Thames and the new Westminster which was still rising +in Edward's day on the site of the older church of the Confessor. It is +possible that, while contributing greatly to its constitutional importance, +this settlement of the Parliament may have helped to throw into the +background its character as a supreme court of appeal. The proclamation by +which it was called together invited "all who had any grace to demand of +the King in Parliament, or any plaint to make of matters which could not be +redressed or determined by ordinary course of law, or who had been in any +way aggrieved by any of the King's ministers or justices or sheriffs, or +their bailiffs, or any other officer, or have been unduly assessed, rated, +charged, or surcharged to aids, subsidies, or taxes," to deliver their +petitions to receivers who sat in the Great Hall of the Palace of +Westminster. The petitions were forwarded to the King's Council, and it was +probably the extension of the jurisdiction of that body and the rise of the +Court of Chancery which reduced this ancient right of the subject to the +formal election of "Triers of Petitions" at the opening of every new +Parliament by the House of Lords, a usage which is still continued. But it +must have been owing to some memory of the older custom that the subject +always looked for redress against injuries from the Crown or its ministers +to the Parliament of the realm. + + +[Sidenote: Conquest of Scotland] + +The subsidies granted by the Parliament of 1295 furnished the king with the +means of warfare with both Scotland and France while they assured him of +the sympathy of his people in the contest. But from the first the +reluctance of Edward to enter on the double war was strongly marked. The +refusal of the Scotch baronage to obey his summons had been followed on +Balliol's part by two secret steps which made a struggle inevitable, by a +request to Rome for absolution from his oath of fealty and by a treaty of +alliance with Philip the Fair. As yet however no open breach had taken +place, and while Edward in 1296 summoned his knighthood to meet him in the +north he called a Parliament at Newcastle in the hope of bringing about an +accommodation with the Scot king. But all thought of accommodation was +roughly ended by the refusal of Balliol to attend the Parliament, by the +rout of a small body of English troops, and by the Scotch investment of +Carlisle. Taken as he was by surprise, Edward showed at once the vigour and +rapidity of his temper. His army marched upon Berwick. The town was a rich +and well-peopled one, and although a wooden stockade furnished its only +rampart the serried ranks of citizens behind it gave little hope of an easy +conquest. Their taunts indeed stung the king to the quick. As his engineers +threw up rough entrenchments for the besieging army the burghers bade him +wait till he won the town before he began digging round it. "Kynge Edward," +they shouted, "waune thou havest Berwick, pike thee; waune thou havest +geten, dike thee." But the stockade was stormed with the loss of a single +knight, nearly eight thousand of the citizens were mown down in a ruthless +carnage, and a handful of Flemish traders who held the town-hall stoutly +against all assailants were burned alive in it. The massacre only ceased +when a procession of priests bore the host to the king's presence, praying +for mercy. Edward with a sudden and characteristic burst of tears called +off his troops; but the town was ruined for ever, and the greatest merchant +city of northern Britain sank from that time into a petty seaport. + +At Berwick Edward received Balliol's formal defiance. "Has the fool done +this folly?" the king cried in haughty scorn; "if he will not come to us, +we will come to him." The terrible slaughter however had done its work, and +his march northward was a triumphal progress. Edinburgh, Stirling, and +Perth opened their gates, Bruce joined the English army, and Balliol +himself surrendered and passed without a blow from his throne to an English +prison. No further punishment however was exacted from the prostrate realm. +Edward simply treated it as a fief, and declared its forfeiture to be the +legal consequence of Balliol's treason. It lapsed in fact to its suzerain; +and its earls, barons, and gentry swore homage in Parliament at Berwick to +Edward as their king. The sacred stone on which its older sovereigns had +been installed, an oblong block of limestone which legend asserted to have +been the pillow of Jacob as angels ascended and descended upon him, was +removed from Scone and placed in Westminster by the shrine of the +Confessor. It was enclosed by Edward's order in a stately seat, which +became from that hour the coronation chair of English kings. To the king +himself the whole business must have seemed another and easier conquest of +Wales, and the mercy and just government which had followed his first +success followed his second also. The government of the new dependency was +entrusted to John of Warenne, Earl of Surrey, at the head of an English +Council of Regency. Pardon was freely extended to all who had resisted the +invasion, and order and public peace were rigidly enforced. + + +[Sidenote: Confirmation of the Charters] + +But the triumph, rapid and complete as it was, had more than exhausted the +aids granted by the Parliament. The treasury was utterly drained. The +struggle indeed widened as every month went on; the costly fight with the +French in Gascony called for supplies, while Edward was planning a yet +costlier attack on northern France with the aid of Flanders. Need drove him +on his return from Scotland in 1297 to measures of tyrannical extortion +which seemed to recall the times of John. His first blow fell on the +Church. At the close of 1294 he had already demanded half their annual +income from the clergy, and so terrible was his wrath at their resistance +that the Dean of St. Paul's, who stood forth to remonstrate, dropped dead +of sheer terror at his feet. "If any oppose the King's demand," said a +royal envoy in the midst of the Convocation, "let him stand up that he may +be noted as an enemy to the King's peace." The outraged Churchmen fell back +on an untenable plea that their aid was due solely to Rome, and alleged the +bull of "Clericis Laicos," issued by Boniface the Eighth at this moment, a +bull which forbade the clergy to pay secular taxes from their +ecclesiastical revenues, as a ground for refusing to comply with further +taxation. In 1297 Archbishop Winchelsey refused on the ground of this bull +to make any grant, and Edward met his refusal by a general outlawry of the +whole order. The King's Courts were closed, and all justice denied to those +who refused the king aid. By their actual plea the clergy had put +themselves formally in the wrong, and the outlawry soon forced them to +submission; but their aid did little to recruit the exhausted treasury. The +pressure of the war steadily increased, and far wider measures of arbitrary +taxation were needful to equip an expedition which Edward prepared to lead +in person to Flanders. The country gentlemen were compelled to take up +knighthood or to compound for exemption from the burthensome honour, and +forced contributions of cattle and corn were demanded from the counties. +Edward no doubt purposed to pay honestly for these supplies, but his +exactions from the merchant class rested on a deliberate theory of his +royal rights. He looked on the customs as levied absolutely at his +pleasure, and the export duty on wool--now the staple produce of the +country--was raised to six times its former amount. Although he infringed +no positive provision of charter or statute in his action, it was plain +that his course really undid all that had been gained by the Barons' war. +But the blow had no sooner been struck than Edward found stout resistance +within his realm. The barons drew together and called a meeting for the +redress of their grievances. The two greatest of the English nobles, +Humfrey de Bohun, Earl of Hereford, and Roger Bigod, Earl of Norfolk, +placed themselves at the head of the opposition. The first was Constable, +the second Earl Marshal, and Edward bade them lead a force to Gascony as +his lieutenants while he himself sailed to Flanders. Their departure would +have left the Baronage without leaders, and the two earls availed +themselves of a plea that they were not bound to foreign service save in +attendance on the king to refuse obedience to the royal orders. "By God, +Sir Earl," swore the king to the Earl Marshal, "you shall either go or +hang!" "By God, Sir King," was the cool reply, "I will neither go nor +hang!" Both parties separated in bitter anger; the king to seize fresh +wool, to outlaw the clergy, and to call an army to his aid; the barons to +gather in arms, backed by the excommunication of the Primate. But the +strife went no further than words. Ere the Parliament he had convened could +meet, Edward had discovered his own powerlessness; Winchelsey offered his +mediation; and Edward confirmed the Great Charter and the Charter of +Forests as the price of a grant from the clergy and a subsidy from the +Commons. With one of those sudden revulsions of feeling of which his nature +was capable the king stood before his people in Westminster Hall and owned +with a burst of tears that he had taken their substance without due warrant +of law. His passionate appeal to their loyalty wrested a reluctant assent +to the prosecution, of the war, and in August Edward sailed for Flanders, +leaving his son regent of the realm. But the crisis had taught the need of +further securities against the royal power, and as Edward was about to +embark the barons demanded his acceptance of additional articles to the +Charter, expressly renouncing his right of taxing the nation without its +own consent. The king sailed without complying, but Winchelsey joined the +two earls and the citizens of London in forbidding any levy of supplies +till the Great Charter with these clauses was again confirmed, and the +trouble in Scotland as well as the still pending strife with France left +Edward helpless in the barons' hands. The Great Charter and the Charter of +the Forests were solemnly confirmed by him at Ghent in November; and formal +pardon was issued to the Earls of Hereford and Norfolk. + + +[Sidenote: Revolt of Scotland] + +The confirmation of the Charter, the renunciation of any right to the +exactions by which the people were aggrieved, the pledge that the king +would no more take "such aids, tasks, and prizes but by common assent of +the realm," the promise not to impose on wool any heavy customs or +"maltote" without the same assent, was the close of the great struggle +which had begun at Runnymede. The clauses so soon removed from the Great +Charter were now restored; and, evade them as they might, the kings were +never able to free themselves from the obligation to seek aid solely from +the general consent of their subjects. It was Scotland which had won this +victory for English freedom. At the moment when Edward and the earls stood +face to face the king saw his work in the north suddenly undone. Both the +justice and injustice of the new rule proved fatal to it. The wrath of the +Scots, already kindled by the intrusion of English priests into Scotch +livings and by the grant of lands across the border to English barons, was +fanned to fury by the strict administration of law and the repression of +feuds and cattle-lifting. The disbanding too of troops, which was caused by +the penury of the royal exchequer, united with the licence of the soldiery +who remained to quicken the national sense of wrong. The disgraceful +submission of their leaders brought the people themselves to the front. In +spite of a hundred years of peace the farmer of Fife or the Lowlands and +the artizan of the towns remained stout-hearted Northumbrian Englishmen. +They had never consented to Edward's supremacy, and their blood rose +against the insolent rule of the stranger. The genius of an outlaw knight, +William Wallace, saw in their smouldering discontent a hope of freedom for +his country, and his daring raids on outlying parties of the English +soldiery roused the country at last into revolt. + + +[Sidenote: Wallace] + +Of Wallace himself, of his life or temper, we know little or nothing; the +very traditions of his gigantic stature and enormous strength are dim and +unhistorical. But the instinct of the Scotch people has guided it aright in +choosing him for its national hero. He was the first to assert freedom as a +national birthright, and amidst the despair of nobles and priests to call +the people itself to arms. At the head of an army drawn principally from +the coast districts north of the Tay, which were inhabited by a population +of the same blood as that of the Lowlands, Wallace in September 1297 +encamped near Stirling, the pass between the north and the south, and +awaited the English advance. It was here that he was found by the English +army. The offers of John of Warenne were scornfully rejected: "We have +come," said the Scottish leader, "not to make peace, but to free our +country." The position of Wallace behind a loop of Forth was in fact chosen +with consummate skill. The one bridge which crossed the river was only +broad enough to admit two horsemen abreast; and though the English army had +been passing from daybreak but half its force was across at noon when +Wallace closed on it and cut it after a short combat to pieces in sight of +its comrades. The retreat of the Earl of Surrey over the border left +Wallace head of the country he had freed, and for a few months he acted as +"Guardian of the Realm" in Balliol's name, and headed a wild foray into +Northumberland in which the barbarous cruelties of his men left a bitter +hatred behind them which was to wreak its vengeance in the later bloodshed +of the war. His reduction of Stirling Castle at last called Edward to the +field. In the spring of 1298 the king's diplomacy had at last wrung a truce +for two years from Philip the Fair; and he at once returned to England to +face the troubles in Scotland. Marching northward with a larger host than +had ever followed his banner, he was enabled by treachery to surprise +Wallace as he fell back to avoid an engagement, and to force him on the +twenty-second of July to battle near Falkirk. The Scotch force consisted +almost wholly of foot, and Wallace drew up his spearmen in four great +hollow circles or squares, the outer ranks kneeling and the whole supported +by bowmen within, while a small force of horse were drawn up as a reserve +in the rear. It was the formation of Waterloo, the first appearance in our +history since the day of Senlac of "that unconquerable British infantry" +before which chivalry was destined to go down. For a moment it had all +Waterloo's success. "I have brought you to the ring, hop (dance) if you +can," are words of rough humour that reveal the very soul of the patriot +leader, and the serried ranks answered well to his appeal. The Bishop of +Durham who led the English van shrank wisely from the look of the squares. +"Back to your mass, Bishop," shouted the reckless knights behind him, but +the body of horse dashed itself vainly on the wall of spears. Terror spread +through the English army, and its Welsh auxiliaries drew off in a body from +the field. But the generalship of Wallace was met by that of the king. +Drawing his bowmen to the front, Edward riddled the Scottish ranks with +arrows and then hurled his cavalry afresh on the wavering line. In a moment +all was over, the maddened knights rode in and out of the broken ranks, +slaying without mercy. Thousands fell on the field, and Wallace himself +escaped with difficulty, followed by a handful of men. + + +[Sidenote: Second Conquest of Scotland] + +But ruined as the cause of freedom seemed, his work was done. He had roused +Scotland into life, and even a defeat like Falkirk left her unconquered. +Edward remained master only of the ground he stood on: want of supplies +forced him at last to retreat; and in the summer of the following year, +1299, when Balliol, released from his English prison, withdrew into France, +a regency of the Scotch nobles under Robert Bruce and John Comyn continued +the struggle for independence. Troubles at home and danger from abroad +stayed Edward's hand. The barons still distrusted his sincerity, and though +at their demand he renewed the Confirmation in the spring of 1299, his +attempt to add an evasive clause saving the right of the Crown proved the +justice of their distrust. In spite of a fresh and unconditional renewal of +it a strife over the Forest Charter went on till the opening of 1301 when a +new gathering of the barons in arms with the support of Archbishop +Winchelsey wrested from him its full execution. What aided freedom within +was as of old the peril without. France was still menacing, and a claim +advanced by Pope Boniface the Eighth at its suggestion to the feudal +superiority over Scotland arrested a new advance of the king across the +border. A quarrel however which broke out between Philip le Bel and the +Papacy removed all obstacles. It enabled Edward to defy Boniface and to +wring from France a treaty in which Scotland was abandoned. In 1304 he +resumed the work of invasion, and again the nobles flung down their arms as +he marched to the North. Comyn, at the head of the Regency, acknowledged +his sovereignty, and the surrender of Stirling completed the conquest of +Scotland. But the triumph of Edward was only the prelude to the carrying +out of his designs for knitting the two countries together by a generosity +and wisdom which reveal the greatness of his statesmanship. A general +amnesty was extended to all who had shared in the resistance. Wallace, who +refused to avail himself of Edward's mercy, was captured and condemned to +death at Westminster on charges of treason, sacrilege, and robbery. The +head of the great patriot, crowned in mockery with a circlet of laurel, was +placed upon London Bridge. But the execution of Wallace was the one blot on +Edward's clemency. With a masterly boldness he entrusted the government of +the country to a council of Scotch nobles, many of whom were freshly +pardoned for their share in the war, and anticipated the policy of Cromwell +by allotting ten representatives to Scotland in the Common Parliament of +his realm. A Convocation was summoned at Perth for the election of these +representatives, and a great judicial scheme which was promulgated in this +assembly adopted the amended laws of King David as the base of a new +legislation, and divided the country for judicial purposes into four +districts, Lothian, Galloway, the Highlands, and the land between the +Highlands and the Forth, at the head of each of which were placed two +justiciaries, the one English and the other Scotch. + + +[Sidenote: Rising of Bruce] + +With the conquest and settlement of Scotland the glory of Edward seemed +again complete. The bitterness of his humiliation at home indeed still +preyed upon him, and in measure after measure we see his purpose of +renewing the strife with the baronage. In 1303 he found a means of evading +his pledge to levy no new taxes on merchandise save by assent of the realm +in a consent of the foreign merchants, whether procured by royal pressure +or no, to purchase by stated payments certain privileges of trading. In +this "New Custom" lay the origin of our import duties. A formal absolution +from his promises which he obtained from Pope Clement the Fifth in 1305 +showed that he looked on his triumph in the North as enabling him to reopen +the questions which he had yielded. But again Scotland stayed his hand. +Only four months had passed since its submission, and he was preparing for +a joint Parliament of the two nations at Carlisle, when the conquered +country suddenly sprang again to arms. Its new leader was Robert Bruce, a +grandson of one of the original claimants of the crown. The Norman house of +Bruce formed a part of the Yorkshire baronage, but it had acquired through +intermarriages the Earldom of Carrick and the Lordship of Annandale. Both +the claimant and his son had been pretty steadily on the English side in +the contest with Balliol and Wallace, and Robert had himself been trained +in the English court and stood high in the king's favour. But the +withdrawal of Balliol gave a new force to his claims upon the crown, and +the discovery of an intrigue which he had set on foot with the Bishop of +St. Andrews so roused Edward's jealousy that Bruce fled for his life across +the border. Early in 1306 he met Comyn, the Lord of Badenoch, to whose +treachery he attributed the disclosure of his plans, in the church of the +Grey Friars at Dumfries, and after the interchange of a few hot words +struck him with his dagger to the ground. It was an outrage that admitted +of no forgiveness, and Bruce for very safety was forced to assume the crown +six weeks after in the Abbey of Scone. The news roused Scotland again to +arms, and summoned Edward to a fresh contest with his unconquerable foe. +But the murder of Comyn had changed the king's mood to a terrible +pitilessness. He threatened death against all concerned in the outrage, and +exposed the Countess of Buchan, who had set the crown on Bruce's head, in a +cage or open chamber built for the purpose in one of the towers of Berwick. +At the solemn feast which celebrated his son's knighthood Edward vowed on +the swan which formed the chief dish at the banquet to devote the rest of +his days to exact vengeance from the murderer himself. But even at the +moment of the vow Bruce was already flying for his life to the western +islands. "Henceforth" he said to his wife at their coronation "thou art +Queen of Scotland and I King." "I fear" replied Mary Bruce "we are only +playing at royalty like children in their games." The play was soon turned +into bitter earnest. A small English force under Aymer de Valence sufficed +to rout the disorderly levies which gathered round the new monarch, and the +flight of Bruce left his followers at Edward's mercy. Noble after noble was +sent to the block. The Earl of Athole pleaded kindred with royalty. "His +only privilege," burst forth the king, "shall be that of being hanged on a +higher gallows than the rest." Knights and priests were strung up side by +side by the English justiciaries; while the wife and daughters of Robert +Bruce were flung into Edward's prisons. Bruce himself had offered to +capitulate to Prince Edward. But the offer only roused the old king to +fury. "Who is so bold," he cried, "as to treat with our traitors without +our knowledge?" and rising from his sick-bed he led his army northwards in +the summer of 1307 to complete the conquest. But the hand of death was upon +him, and in the very sight of Scotland the old man breathed his last at +Burgh-upon-Sands. + + + + + +BOOK IV +THE PARLIAMENT +1307-1461 + + +AUTHORITIES FOR BOOK IV + + +For Edward the Second we have three important contemporaries: Thomas de la +More, Trokelowe's Annals, and the life by a monk of Malmesbury printed by +Hearne. The sympathies of the first are with the King, those of the last +two with the Barons. Murimuth's short Chronicle is also contemporary. John +Barbour's "Bruce," the great legendary storehouse for his hero's +adventures, is historically worthless. + +Important as it is, the reign of Edward the Third is by no means fortunate +in its annalists. The concluding part of the Chronicle of Walter of +Hemingford or Heminburgh seems to have been jotted down as news of the +passing events reached its author: it ends at the battle of Crecy. Hearne +has published another contemporary account, that of Robert of Avesbury, +which closes in 1356. A third account by Knyghton, a canon of Leicester, +will be found in the collection of Twysden. At the end of this century and +the beginning of the next the annals which had been carried on in the Abbey +of St. Albans were thrown together by Walsingham in the "Historia +Anglicana" which bears his name, a compilation whose history may be found +in the prefaces to the "Chronica Monasterii S. Albani" issued in the Rolls +Series. An anonymous chronicler whose work is printed in the 22nd volume of +the "Archaeologia" has given us the story of the Good Parliament, another +account is preserved in the "Chronica Angliae from 1328 to 1388," published +in the Rolls Series, and fresh light has been recently thrown on the time +by the publication of a Chronicle by Adam of Usk which extends from 1377 to +1404. Fortunately the scantiness of historical narrative is compensated by +the growing fulness and abundance of our State papers. Rymer's Foedera is +rich in diplomatic and other documents for this period, and from this time +we have a storehouse of political and social information in the +Parliamentary Rolls. + +For the French war itself our primary authority is the Chronicle of Jehan +le Bel, a canon of the church of St. Lambert of Liege, who himself served +in Edward's campaign against the Scots and spent the rest of his life at +the court of John of Hainault. Up to the Treaty of Bretigny, where it +closes, Froissart has done little more than copy this work, making however +large additions from his own enquiries, especially in the Flemish and +Breton campaigns and in the account of Crecy. Froissart was himself a +Hainaulter of Valenciennes; he held a post in Queen Philippa's household +from 1361 to 1369, and under this influence produced in 1373 the first +edition of his well-known Chronicle. A later edition is far less English in +tone, and a third version, begun by him in his old age after long absence +from England, is distinctly French in its sympathies. Froissart's vivacity +and picturesqueness blind us to the inaccuracy of his details; as an +historical authority he is of little value. The "Fasciculi Zizaniorum" in +the Rolls Series with the documents appended to it is a work of primary +authority for the history of Wyclif and his followers: a selection from his +English tracts has been made by Mr. T. Arnold for the University of Oxford, +which has also published his "Trias." The version of the Bible that bears +his name has been edited with a valuable preface by the Rev. J. Forshall +and Sir F. Madden. William Langland's poem, "The Complaint of Piers the +Ploughman" (edited by Mr. Skeat for the Early English Text Society), throws +a flood of light on the social state of England after the Treaty of +Bretigny. + +The "Annals of Richard the Second and Henry the Fourth," now published by +the Master of the Rolls, are our main authority for the period which +follows Edward's death. They serve as the basis of the St. Albans +compilation which bears the name of Walsingham, and from which the "Life of +Richard" by a monk of Evesham is for the most part derived. The same +violent Lancastrian sympathy runs through Walsingham and the fifth book of +Knyghton's Chronicle. The French authorities on the other hand are +vehemently on Richard's side. Froissart, who ends at this time, is +supplemented by the metrical history of Creton ("Archaeologia," vol. xx.), +and by the "Chronique de la Traison et Mort de Richart" (English Historical +Society), both works of French authors and published in France in the time +of Henry the Fourth, probably with the aim of arousing French feeling +against the House of Lancaster and the war-policy which it had revived. The +popular feeling in England may be seen in "Political Songs from Edward III. +to Richard III." (Rolls Series). A poem on "The Deposition of Richard II." +which has been published by the Camden Society is now ascribed to William +Langland. + +With Henry the Fifth our historic materials become more abundant. We have +the "Gesta Henrici Quinti" by Titus Livius, a chaplain in the royal army; a +life by Elmham, prior of Lenton, simpler in style but identical in +arrangement and facts with the former work; a biography by Robert Redman; a +metrical chronicle by Elmham (published in Rolls Series in "Memorials of +Henry the Fifth"); and the meagre chronicles of Hardyng and Otterbourne. +The King's Norman campaigns may be studied in M. Puiseux's "Siege de Rouen" +(Caen, 1867). The "Wars of the English in France" and Blondel's work "De +Reductione Normanniae" (both in Rolls Series) give ample information on the +military side of this and the next reign. But with the accession of Henry +the Sixth we again enter on a period of singular dearth in its historical +authorities. The "Proces de Jeanne d'Arc" (published by the Societe de +l'Histoire de France) is the only real authority for her history. For +English affairs we are reduced to the meagre accounts of William of +Worcester, of the Continuator of the Crowland Chronicle, and of Fabyan. +Fabyan is a London alderman with a strong bias in favour of the House of +Lancaster, and his work is useful for London only. The Continuator is one +of the best of his class; and though connected with the house of York, the +date of his work, which appeared soon after Bosworth Field, makes him +fairly impartial; but he is sketchy and deficient in information. The more +copious narrative of Polydore Vergil is far superior to these in literary +ability, but of later date, and strongly Lancastrian in tone. For the +struggle between Edward and Warwick, the valuable narrative of "The Arrival +of Edward the Fourth" (Camden Society) may be taken as the official account +on the royal side. The Paston Letters are the first instance in English +history of a family correspondence, and throw great light on the social +condition of the time. + + + + + +CHAPTER I +EDWARD II +1307-1327 + + + +[Sidenote: Parliament and the Kings] + +In his calling together the estates of the realm Edward the First +determined the course of English history. From the first moment of its +appearance the Parliament became the centre of English affairs. The hundred +years indeed which follow its assembly at Westminster saw its rise into a +power which checked and overawed the Crown. + +Of the kings in whose reigns the Parliament gathered this mighty strength +not one was likely to look with indifference on the growth of a rival +authority, and the bulk of them were men who in other times would have +roughly checked it. What held their hand was the need of the Crown. The +century and a half that followed the gathering of the estates at +Westminster was a time of almost continual war, and of the financial +pressure that springs from war. It was indeed war that had gathered them. +In calling his Parliament Edward the First sought mainly an effective means +of procuring supplies for that policy of national consolidation which had +triumphed in Wales and which seemed to be triumphing in Scotland. But the +triumph in Scotland soon proved a delusive one, and the strife brought +wider strifes in its train. When Edward wrung from Balliol an +acknowledgement of his suzerainty he foresaw little of the war with France, +the war with Spain, the quarrel with the Papacy, the upgrowth of social, of +political, of religious revolution within England itself, of which that +acknowledgement was to be the prelude. But the thicker troubles gathered +round England the more the royal treasury was drained, and now that +arbitrary taxation was impossible the one means of filling it lay in a +summons of the Houses. The Crown was chained to the Parliament by a tie of +absolute need. From the first moment of parliamentary existence the life +and power of the estates assembled at Westminster hung on the question of +supplies. So long as war went on no ruler could dispense with the grants +which fed the war and which Parliament alone could afford. But it was +impossible to procure supplies save by redressing the grievances of which +Parliament complained and by granting the powers which Parliament demanded. +It was in vain that king after king, conscious that war bound them to the +Parliament, strove to rid themselves of the war. So far was the ambition of +our rulers from being the cause of the long struggle that, save in the one +case of Henry the Fifth, the desperate effort of every ruler was to arrive +at peace. Forced as they were to fight, their restless diplomacy strove to +draw from victory as from defeat a means of escape from the strife that was +enslaving the Crown. The royal Council, the royal favourites, were always +on the side of peace. But fortunately for English freedom peace was +impossible. The pride of the English people, the greed of France, foiled +every attempt at accommodation. The wisest ministers sacrificed themselves +in vain. King after king patched up truces which never grew into treaties, +and concluded marriages which brought fresh discord instead of peace. War +went ceaselessly on, and with the march of war went on the ceaseless growth +of the Parliament. + + +[Sidenote: Robert Bruce] + +The death of Edward the First arrested only for a moment the advance of his +army to the north. The Earl of Pembroke led it across the border, and found +himself master of the country without a blow. Bruce's career became that of +a desperate adventurer, for even the Highland chiefs in whose fastnesses he +found shelter were bitterly hostile to one who claimed to be king of their +foes in the Lowlands. It was this adversity that transformed the murderer +of Comyn into the noble leader of a nation's cause. Strong and of +commanding presence, brave and genial in temper, Bruce bore the hardships +of his career with a courage and hopefulness that never failed. In the +legends that clustered round his name we see him listening in Highland +glens to the bay of the bloodhounds on his track, or holding a pass +single-handed against a crowd of savage clansmen. Sometimes the small band +which clung to him were forced to support themselves by hunting and +fishing, sometimes to break up for safety as their enemies tracked them to +their lair. Bruce himself had more than once to fling off his coat-of-mail +and scramble barefoot for very life up the crags. Little by little, +however, the dark sky cleared. The English pressure relaxed. James Douglas, +the darling of Scottish story, was the first of the Lowland Barons to rally +to the Bruce, and his daring gave heart to the king's cause. Once he +surprised his own house, which had been given to an Englishman, ate the +dinner which was prepared for its new owner, slew his captives, and tossed +their bodies on to a pile of wood at the castle gate. Then he staved in the +wine-vats that the wine might mingle with their blood, and set house and +wood-pile on fire. + + +[Sidenote: Edward the Second] + +A ferocity like this degraded everywhere the work of freedom; but the +revival of the country went steadily on. Pembroke and the English forces +were in fact paralyzed by a strife which had broken out in England between +the new king and his baronage. The moral purpose which had raised his +father to grandeur was wholly wanting in Edward the Second; he was showy, +idle, and stubborn in temper; but he was far from being destitute of the +intellectual quickness which seemed inborn in the Plantagenets. He had no +love for his father, but he had seen him in the later years of his reign +struggling against the pressure of the baronage, evading his pledges as to +taxation, and procuring absolution from his promise to observe the clauses +added to the Charter. The son's purpose was the same, that of throwing off +what he looked on as the yoke of the baronage; but the means by which he +designed to bring about his purpose was the choice of a minister wholly +dependent on the Crown. We have already noticed the change by which the +"clerks of the King's chapel," who had been the ministers of arbitrary +government under the Norman and Angevin sovereigns, had been quietly +superseded by the prelates and lords of the Continual Council. At the close +of the late reign a direct demand on the part of the barons to nominate the +great officers of state had been curtly rejected, but the royal choice had +been practically limited in the selection of its ministers to the class of +prelates and nobles, and however closely connected with royalty they might +be such officers always to a great extent shared the feelings and opinions +of their order. The aim of the young king seems to have been to undo the +change which had been silently brought about, and to imitate the policy of +the contemporary sovereigns of France by choosing as his ministers men of +an inferior position, wholly dependent on the Crown for their power, and +representatives of nothing but the policy and interests of their master. +Piers Gaveston, a foreigner sprung from a family of Guienne, had been his +friend and companion during his father's reign, at the close of which he +had been banished from the realm for his share in intrigues which divided +Edward from his son. At the accession of the new king he was at once +recalled, created Earl of Cornwall, and placed at the head of the +administration. When Edward crossed the sea to wed Isabella of France, the +daughter of Philip the Fair, a marriage planned by his father to provide +against any further intervention of France in his difficulties with +Scotland, the new minister was left as Regent in his room. The offence +given by this rapid promotion was embittered by his personal temper. Gay, +genial, thriftless, Gaveston showed in his first acts the quickness and +audacity of Southern Gaul. The older ministers were dismissed, all claims +of precedence or inheritance were set aside in the distribution of offices +at the coronation, while taunts and defiances goaded the proud baronage to +fury. The favourite was a fine soldier, and his lance unhorsed his +opponents in tourney after tourney. His reckless wit flung nicknames about +the Court, the Earl of Lancaster was "the Actor," Pembroke "the Jew," +Warwick "the Black Dog." But taunt and defiance broke helplessly against +the iron mass of the baronage. After a few months of power the formal +demand of the Parliament for his dismissal could not be resisted, and in +May 1308 Gaveston was formally banished from the realm. + + +[Sidenote: Thomas of Lancaster] + +But Edward was far from abandoning his favourite. In Ireland he was +unfettered by the baronage, and here Gaveston found a refuge as the King's +Lieutenant while Edward sought to obtain his recall by the intervention of +France and the Papacy. But the financial pressure of the Scotch war again +brought the king and his Parliament together in the spring of 1309. It was +only by conceding the rights which his father had sought to establish of +imposing import duties on the merchants by their own assent that he +procured a subsidy. The firmness of the baronage sprang from their having +found a head. In no point had the policy of Henry the Third more utterly +broken down than in his attempt to weaken the power of the nobles by +filling the great earldoms with kinsmen of the royal house. He had made +Simon of Montfort his brother-in-law only to furnish a leader to the nation +in the Barons' war. In loading his second son, Edmund Crouchback, with +honours and estates he raised a family to greatness which overawed the +Crown. Edmund had been created Earl of Lancaster; after Evesham he had +received the forfeited Earldom of Leicester; he had been made Earl of Derby +on the extinction of the house of Ferrers. His son, Thomas of Lancaster, +was the son-in-law of Henry de Lacy, and was soon to add to these lordships +the Earldom of Lincoln. And to the weight of these great baronies was added +his royal blood. The father of Thomas had been a titular king of Sicily. +His mother was dowager queen of Navarre. His half-sister by the mother's +side was wife of the French king Philip le Bel and mother of the English +queen Isabella. He was himself a grandson of Henry the Third and not far +from the succession to the throne. Had Earl Thomas been a wiser and a +nobler man, his adhesion to the cause of the baronage might have guided the +king into a really national policy. As it was his weight proved +irresistible. When Edward at the close of the Parliament recalled Gaveston +the Earl of Lancaster withdrew from the royal Council, and a Parliament +which met in the spring of 1310 resolved that the affairs of the realm +should be entrusted for a year to a body of twenty-one "Ordainers" with +Archbishop Winchelsey at their head. + + +[Sidenote: Edward and the Ordainers] + +Edward with Gaveston withdrew sullenly to the North. A triumph in Scotland +would have given him strength to baffle the Ordainers, but he had little of +his father's military skill, the wasted country made it hard to keep an +army together, and after a fruitless campaign he fell back to his southern +realm to meet the Parliament of 1311 and the "Ordinances" which the +twenty-one laid before it. By this long and important statute Gaveston was +banished, other advisers were driven from the Council, and the Florentine +bankers whose loans had enabled Edward to hold the baronage at bay sent out +of the realm. The customs duties imposed by Edward the First were declared +to be illegal. Its administrative provisions showed the relations which the +barons sought to establish between the new Parliament and the Crown. +Parliaments were to be called every year, and in these assemblies the +king's servants were to be brought, if need were, to justice. The great +officers of state were to be appointed with the counsel and consent of the +baronage, and to be sworn in Parliament. The same consent of the barons in +Parliament was to be needful ere the king could declare war or absent +himself from the realm. As the Ordinances show, the baronage still looked +on Parliament rather as a political organization of the nobles than as a +gathering of the three Estates of the realm. The lower clergy pass +unnoticed; the Commons are regarded as mere taxpayers whose part was still +confined to the presentation of petitions of grievances and the grant of +money. But even in this imperfect fashion the Parliament was a real +representation of the country. The barons no longer depended for their +force on the rise of some active leader, or gathered in exceptional +assemblies to wrest reforms from the Crown by threat of war. Their action +was made regular and legal. Even if the Commons took little part in forming +decisions, their force when formed hung on the assent of the knights and +burgesses to them; and the grant which alone could purchase from the Crown +the concessions which the Baronage demanded lay absolutely within the +control of the Third Estate. It was this which made the king's struggles so +fruitless. He assented to the Ordinances, and then withdrawing to the North +recalled Gaveston and annulled them. But Winchelsey excommunicated the +favourite, and the barons, gathering in arms, besieged him in Scarborough. +His surrender in May 1312 ended the strife. The "Black Dog" of Warwick had +sworn that the favourite should feel his teeth; and Gaveston flung himself +in vain at the feet of the Earl of Lancaster, praying for pity "from his +gentle lord." In defiance of the terms of his capitulation he was beheaded +on Blacklow Hill. + + +[Sidenote: Bannockburn] + +The king's burst of grief was as fruitless as his threats of vengeance; a +feigned submission of the conquerors completed the royal humiliation, and +the barons knelt before Edward in Westminster Hall to receive a pardon +which seemed the deathblow of the royal power. But if Edward was powerless +to conquer the baronage he could still by evading the observance of the +Ordinances throw the whole realm into confusion. The two years that follow +Gaveston's death are among the darkest in our history. A terrible +succession of famines intensified the suffering which sprang from the utter +absence of all rule as dissension raged between the barons and the king. At +last a common peril drew both parties together. The Scots had profited by +the English troubles, and Bruce's "harrying of Buchan" after his defeat of +its Earl, who had joined the English army, fairly turned the tide of +success in his favour. Edinburgh, Roxburgh, Perth, and most of the Scotch +fortresses fell one by one into King Robert's hands. The clergy met in +council and owned him as their lawful lord. Gradually the Scotch barons who +still held to the English cause were coerced into submission, and Bruce +found himself strong enough to invest Stirling, the last and the most +important of the Scotch fortresses which held out for Edward. Stirling was +in fact the key of Scotland, and its danger roused England out of its civil +strife to an effort for the recovery of its prey. At the close of 1313 +Edward recognized the Ordinances, and a liberal grant from the Parliament +enabled him to take the field. Lancaster indeed still held aloof on the +ground that the king had not sought the assent of Parliament to the war, +but thirty thousand men followed Edward to the North, and a host of wild +marauders were summoned from Ireland and Wales. The army which Bruce +gathered to oppose this inroad was formed almost wholly of footmen, and was +stationed to the south of Stirling on a rising ground flanked by a little +brook, the Bannockburn, which gave its name to the engagement. The battle +took place on the twenty-fourth of June 1314. Again two systems of warfare +were brought face to face as they had been brought at Falkirk, for Robert +like Wallace drew up his forces in hollow squares or circles of spearmen. +The English were dispirited at the very outset by the failure of an attempt +to relieve Stirling and by the issue of a single combat between Bruce and +Henry de Bohun, a knight who bore down upon him as he was riding peacefully +along the front of his army. Robert was mounted on a small hackney and held +only a light battle-axe in his hand, but warding off his opponent's spear +he cleft his skull with so terrible a blow that the handle of his axe was +shattered in his grasp. At the opening of the battle the English archers +were thrown forward to rake the Scottish squares, but they were without +support and were easily dispersed by a handful of horse whom Bruce held in +reserve for the purpose. The body of men-at-arms next flung themselves on +the Scottish front, but their charge was embarrassed by the narrow space +along which the line was forced to move, and the steady resistance of the +squares soon threw the knighthood into disorder. "The horses that were +stickit," says an exulting Scotch writer, "rushed and reeled right rudely." +In the moment of failure the sight of a body of camp-followers, whom they +mistook for reinforcements to the enemy, spread panic through the English +host. It broke in a headlong rout. Its thousands of brilliant horsemen were +soon floundering in pits which guarded the level ground to Bruce's left, or +riding in wild haste for the border. Few however were fortunate enough to +reach it. Edward himself, with a body of five hundred knights, succeeded in +escaping to Dunbar and the sea. But the flower of his knighthood fell into +the hands of the victors, while the Irishry and the footmen were ruthlessly +cut down by the country folk as they fled. For centuries to come the rich +plunder of the English camp left its traces on the treasure-rolls and the +vestment-rolls of castle and abbey throughout the Lowlands. + + +[Sidenote: Fall of Lancaster] + +Bannockburn left Bruce the master of Scotland: but terrible as the blow was +England could not humble herself to relinquish her claim on the Scottish +crown. Edward was eager indeed for a truce, but with equal firmness Bruce +refused all negotiation while the royal title was withheld from him and +steadily pushed on the recovery of his southern dominions. His progress was +unhindered. Bannockburn left Edward powerless, and Lancaster at the head of +the Ordainers became supreme. But it was still impossible to trust the king +or to act with him, and in the dead-lock of both parties the Scots +plundered as they would. Their ravages in the North brought shame on +England such as it had never known. At last Bruce's capture of Berwick in +the spring of 1318 forced the king to give way. The Ordinances were +formally accepted, an amnesty granted, and a small number of peers +belonging to the barons' party added to the great officers of state. Had a +statesman been at the head of the baronage the weakness of Edward might +have now been turned to good purpose. But the character of the Earl of +Lancaster seems to have fallen far beneath the greatness of his position. +Distrustful of his cousin, yet himself incapable of governing, he stood +sullenly aloof from the royal Council and the royal armies, and Edward was +able to lay his failure in recovering Berwick during the campaign of 1319 +to the Earl's charge. His influence over the country was sensibly weakened; +and in this weakness the new advisers on whom the king was leaning saw a +hope of destroying his power. These were a younger and elder Hugh Le +Despenser, son and grandson of the Justiciar who had fallen beside Earl +Simon at Evesham. Greedy and ambitious as they may have been, they were +able men, and their policy was of a higher stamp than the wilful defiance +of Gaveston. It lay, if we may gather it from the faint indications which +remain, in a frank recognition of the power of the three Estates as opposed +to the separate action of the baronage. The rise of the younger Hugh, on +whom the king bestowed the county of Glamorgan with the hand of one of its +coheiresses, a daughter of Earl Gilbert of Gloucester, was rapid enough to +excite general jealousy; and in 1321 Lancaster found little difficulty in +extorting by force of arms his exile from the kingdom. But the tide of +popular sympathy was already wavering, and it was turned to the royal cause +by an insult offered to the queen, against whom Lady Badlesmere closed the +doors of Ledes Castle. The unexpected energy shown by Edward in avenging +this insult gave fresh strength to his cause. At the opening of 1322 he +found himself strong enough to recall Despenser, and when Lancaster +convoked the baronage to force him again into exile, the weakness of their +party was shown by some negotiations into which the Earl entered with the +Scots and by his precipitate retreat to the north on the advance of the +royal army. At Boroughbridge his forces were arrested and dispersed, and +Thomas himself, brought captive before Edward at Pontefract, was tried and +condemned to death as a traitor. "Have mercy on me, King of Heaven," cried +Lancaster, as, mounted on a grey pony without a bridle, he was hurried to +execution, "for my earthly king has forsaken me." His death was followed by +that of a number of his adherents and by the captivity of others; while a +Parliament at York annulled the proceedings against the Despensers and +repealed the Ordinances. + + +[Sidenote: The Despensers] + +It is to this Parliament however, and perhaps to the victorious confidence +of the royalists, that we owe the famous provision which reveals the policy +of the Despensers, the provision that all laws concerning "the estate of +our Lord the King and his heirs or for the estate of the realm and the +people shall be treated, accorded, and established in Parliaments by our +Lord the King and by the consent of the prelates, earls, barons, and +commonalty of the realm according as hath been hitherto accustomed." It +would seem from the tenor of this remarkable enactment that much of the +sudden revulsion of popular feeling had been owing to the assumption of all +legislative action by the baronage alone. The same policy was seen in a +reissue in the form of a royal Ordinance of some of the most beneficial +provisions of the Ordinances which had been formally repealed. But the +arrogance of the Despensers gave new offence; and the utter failure of a +fresh campaign against Scotland again weakened the Crown. The barbarous +forays in which the borderers under Earl Douglas were wasting +Northumberland woke a general indignation; and a grant from the Parliament +at York enabled Edward to march with a great army to the North. But Bruce +as of old declined an engagement till the wasted Lowlands starved the +invaders into a ruinous retreat. The failure forced England in the spring +of 1323 to stoop to a truce for thirteen years, in the negotiation of which +Bruce was suffered to take the royal title. We see in this act of the +Despensers the first of a series of such attempts by which minister after +minister strove to free the Crown from the bondage under which the +war-pressure laid it to the growing power of Parliament; but it ended, as +these after attempts ended, only in the ruin of the counsellors who planned +it. The pride of the country had been roused by the struggle, and the +humiliation of such a truce robbed the Crown of its temporary popularity. +It led the way to the sudden catastrophe which closed this disastrous +reign. + + +[Sidenote: Isabella] + +In his struggle with the Scots Edward, like his father, had been hampered +not only by internal divisions but by the harassing intervention of France. +The rising under Bruce had been backed by French aid as well as by a +revival of the old quarrel over Guienne, and on the accession of Charles +the Fourth in 1322 a demand of homage for Ponthieu and Gascony called +Edward over sea. But the Despensers dared not let him quit the realm, and a +fresh dispute as to the right of possession in the Agenois brought about +the seizure of the bulk of Gascony by a sudden attack on the part of the +French. The quarrel verged upon open war, and to close it Edward's queen, +Isabella, a sister of the French king, undertook in 1325 to revisit her +home and bring about a treaty of peace between the two countries. Isabella +hated the Despensers; she was alienated from her husband; but hatred and +alienation were as yet jealously concealed. At the close of the year the +terms of peace seemed to be arranged; and though declining to cross the +sea, Edward evaded the difficulty created by the demand for personal homage +by investing his son with the Duchies of Aquitaine and Gascony, and +despatching him to join his mother at Paris. The boy did homage to King +Charles for the two Duchies, the question of the Agenois being reserved for +legal decision, and Edward at once recalled his wife and son to England. +Neither threats nor prayers however could induce either wife or child to +return to his court. Roger Mortimer, the most powerful of the Marcher +barons and a deadly foe to the Despensers, had taken refuge in France; and +his influence over the queen made her the centre of a vast conspiracy. With +the young Edward in her hands she was able to procure soldiers from the +Count of Hainault by promising her son's hand to his daughter; the Italian +bankers supplied funds; and after a year's preparation the Queen set sail +in the autumn of 1326. A secret conspiracy of the baronage was revealed +when the primate and nobles hurried to her standard on her landing at +Orwell. Deserted by all and repulsed by the citizens of London whose aid he +implored, the king fled hastily to the west and embarked with the +Despensers for Lundy Island, which Despenser had fortified as a possible +refuge; but contrary winds flung him again on the Welsh coast, where he +fell into the hands of Earl Henry of Lancaster, the brother of the Earl +whom they had slain. The younger Despenser, who accompanied him, was at +once hung on a gibbet fifty feet high, and the king placed in ward at +Kenilworth till his fate could be decided by a Parliament summoned for that +purpose at Westminster in January 1327. + + +[Sidenote: Deposition of Edward] + +The peers who assembled fearlessly revived the constitutional usage of the +earlier English freedom, and asserted their right to depose a king who had +proved himself unworthy to rule. Not a voice was raised in Edward's behalf, +and only four prelates protested when the young Prince was proclaimed king +by acclamation and presented as their sovereign to the multitudes without. +The revolution took legal form in a bill which charged the captive monarch +with indolence, incapacity, the loss of Scotland, the violation of his +coronation oath and oppression of the Church and baronage; and on the +approval of this it was resolved that the reign of Edward of Caernarvon had +ceased and that the crown had passed to his son, Edward of Windsor. A +deputation of the Parliament proceeded to Kenilworth to procure the assent +of the discrowned king to his own deposition, and Edward "clad in a plain +black gown" bowed quietly to his fate. Sir William Trussel at once +addressed him in words which better than any other mark the nature of the +step which the Parliament had taken. "I, William Trussel, proctor of the +earls, barons, and others, having for this full and sufficient power, do +render and give back to you, Edward, once King of England, the homage and +fealty of the persons named in my procuracy; and acquit and discharge them +thereof in the best manner that law and custom will give. And I now make +protestation in their name that they will no longer be in your fealty and +allegiance, nor claim to hold anything of you as king, but will account you +hereafter as a private person, without any manner of royal dignity." A +significant act followed these emphatic words. Sir Thomas Blount, the +steward of the household, broke his staff of office, a ceremony used only +at a king's death, and declared that all persons engaged in the royal +service were discharged. The act of Blount was only an omen of the fate +which awaited the miserable king. In the following September he was +murdered in Berkeley Castle. + + + + + +CHAPTER II +EDWARD THE THIRD +1327-1347 + + + +[Sidenote: Estate of the Commons] + +The deposition of Edward the Second proclaimed to the world the power which +the English Parliament had gained. In thirty years from their first +assembly at Westminster the Estates had wrested from the Crown the last +relic of arbitrary taxation, had forced on it new ministers and a new +system of government, had claimed a right of confirming the choice of its +councillors and of punishing their misconduct, and had established the +principle that redress of grievances precedes a grant of supply. Nor had +the time been less important in the internal growth of Parliament. Step by +step the practical sense of the Houses themselves completed the work of +Edward by bringing about change after change in its composition. The very +division into a House of Lords and a House of Commons formed no part of the +original plan of Edward the First; in the earlier Parliaments each of the +four orders of clergy, barons, knights, and burgesses met, deliberated, and +made their grants apart from each other. This isolation however of the +Estates soon showed signs of breaking down. Though the clergy held steadily +aloof from any real union with its fellow-orders, the knights of the shire +were drawn by the similarity of their social position into a close +connexion with the lords. They seem in fact to have been soon admitted by +the baronage to an almost equal position with themselves, whether as +legislators or counsellors of the Crown. The burgesses on the other hand +took little part at first in Parliamentary proceedings, save in those which +related to the taxation of their class. But their position was raised by +the strifes of the reign of Edward the Second when their aid was needed by +the baronage in its struggle with the Crown; and their right to share fully +in all legislative action was asserted in the statute of 1322. From this +moment no proceedings can have been considered as formally legislative save +those conducted in full Parliament of all the estates. In subjects of +public policy however the barons were still regarded as the sole advisers +of the Crown, though the knights of the shire were sometimes consulted with +them. But the barons and knighthood were not fated to be drawn into a +single body whose weight would have given an aristocratic impress to the +constitution. Gradually, through causes with which we are imperfectly +acquainted, the knights of the shire drifted from their older connexion +with the baronage into so close and intimate a union with the +representatives of the towns that at the opening of the reign of Edward the +Third the two orders are found grouped formally together, under the name of +"The Commons." It is difficult to overestimate the importance of this +change. Had Parliament remained broken up into its four orders of clergy, +barons, knights, and citizens, its power would have been neutralized at +every great crisis by the jealousies and difficulty of co-operation among +its component parts. A permanent union of the knighthood and the baronage +on the other hand would have converted Parliament into the mere +representative of an aristocratic caste, and would have robbed it of the +strength which it has drawn from its connexion with the great body of the +commercial classes. The new attitude of the knighthood, their social +connexion as landed gentry with the baronage, their political union with +the burgesses, really welded the three orders into one, and gave that unity +of feeling and action to our Parliament on which its power has ever since +mainly depended. + + +[Sidenote: Scotch War] + +The weight of the two Houses was seen in their settlement of the new +government by the nomination of a Council with Earl Henry of Lancaster at +its head. The Council had at once to meet fresh difficulties in the North. +The truce so recently made ceased legally with Edward's deposition; and the +withdrawal of his royal title in further offers of peace warned Bruce of +the new temper of the English rulers. Troops gathered on either side, and +the English Council sought to pave the way for an attack by dividing +Scotland against itself. Edward Balliol, a son of the former king John, was +solemnly received as a vassal-king of Scotland at the English court. Robert +was disabled by leprosy from taking the field in person, but the insult +roused him to hurl his marauders again over the border under Douglas and +Sir Thomas Randolph. The Scotch army has been painted for us by an +eye-witness whose description is embodied in the work of Jehan le Bel. "It +consisted of four thousand men-at-arms, knights, and esquires, well +mounted, besides twenty thousand men bold and hardy, armed after the manner +of their country, and mounted upon little hackneys that are never tied up +or dressed, but turned immediately after the day's march to pasture on the +heath or in the fields.... They bring no carriages with them on account of +the mountains they have to pass in Northumberland, neither do they carry +with them any provisions of bread or wine, for their habits of sobriety are +such in time of war that they will live for a long time on flesh +half-sodden without bread, and drink the river water without wine. They +have therefore no occasion for pots or pans, for they dress the flesh of +the cattle in their skins after they have flayed them, and being sure to +find plenty of them in the country which they invade they carry none with +them. Under the flaps of his saddle each man carries a broad piece of +metal, behind him a little bag of oatmeal: when they have eaten too much of +the sodden flesh and their stomach appears weak and empty, they set this +plate over the fire, knead the meal with water, and when the plate is hot +put a little of the paste upon it in a thin cake like a biscuit, which they +eat to warm their stomachs. It is therefore no wonder that they perform a +longer day's march than other soldiers." Though twenty thousand horsemen +and forty thousand foot marched under their boy-king to protect the border, +the English troops were utterly helpless against such a foe as this. At one +time the whole army lost its way in the border wastes: at another all +traces of the enemy disappeared, and an offer of knighthood and a hundred +marks was made to any who could tell where the Scots were encamped. But +when they were found their position behind the Wear proved unassailable, +and after a bold sally on the English camp Douglas foiled an attempt at +intercepting him by a clever retreat. The English levies broke hopelessly +up, and a fresh foray into Northumberland forced the English Court in 1328 +to submit to peace. By the treaty of Northampton which was solemnly +confirmed by Parliament in September the independence of Scotland was +recognized, and Robert Bruce owned as its king. Edward formally abandoned +his claim of feudal superiority over Scotland; while Bruce promised to make +compensation for the damage done in the North, to marry his son David to +Edward's sister Joan, and to restore their forfeited estates to those +nobles who had sided with the English king. + + +[Sidenote: Fall of Mortimer] + +But the pride of England had been too much roused by the struggle with the +Scots to bear this defeat easily, and the first result of the treaty of +Northampton was the overthrow of the government which concluded it. This +result was hastened by the pride of Roger Mortimer, who was now created +Earl of March, and who had made himself supreme through his influence over +Isabella and his exclusion of the rest of the nobles from all practical +share in the administration of the realm. The first efforts to shake +Roger's power were unsuccessful. The Earl of Lancaster stood, like his +brother, at the head of the baronage; the parliamentary settlement at +Edward's accession had placed him first in the royal Council; and it was to +him that the task of defying Mortimer naturally fell. At the close of 1328 +therefore Earl Henry formed a league with the Archbishop of Canterbury and +with the young king's uncles, the Earls of Norfolk and Kent, to bring +Mortimer to account for the peace with Scotland and the usurpation of the +government as well as for the late king's murder, a murder which had been +the work of his private partizans and which had profoundly shocked the +general conscience. But the young king clave firmly to his mother, the +Earls of Norfolk and Kent deserted to Mortimer, and powerful as it seemed +the league broke up without result. A feeling of insecurity however spurred +the Earl of March to a bold stroke at his opponents. The Earl of Kent, who +was persuaded that his brother, Edward the Second, still lived a prisoner +in Corfe Castle, was arrested on a charge of conspiracy to restore him to +the throne, tried before a Parliament filled with Mortimer's adherents, and +sent to the block. But the death of a prince of the royal blood roused the +young king to resentment at the greed and arrogance of a minister who +treated Edward himself as little more than a state-prisoner. A few months +after his uncle's execution the king entered the Council chamber in +Nottingham Castle with a force which he had introduced through a secret +passage in the rock on which it stands, and arrested Mortimer with his own +hands. A Parliament which was at once summoned condemned the Earl of March +to a traitor's death, and in November 1330 he was beheaded at Tyburn, while +the queen-mother was sent for the rest of her life into confinement at +Castle Rising. + + +[Sidenote: Edward and France] + +Young as he was, and he had only reached his eighteenth year, Edward at +once assumed the control of affairs. His first care was to restore good +order throughout the country, which under the late government had fallen +into ruin, and to free his hands by a peace with France for further +enterprises in the North. A formal peace had been concluded by Isabella +after her husband's fall; but the death of Charles the Fourth soon brought +about new jealousies between the two courts. The three sons of Philip the +Fair had followed him on the throne in succession, but all had now died +without male issue, and Isabella, as Philip's daughter, claimed the crown +for her son. The claim in any case was a hard one to make out. Though her +brothers had left no sons, they had left daughters, and if female +succession were admitted these daughters of Philip's sons would precede a +son of Philip's daughter. Isabella met this difficulty by a contention that +though females could transmit the right of succession they could not +themselves possess it, and that her son, as the nearest living male +descendant of Philip the Fair, and born in the lifetime of the king from +whom he claimed, could claim in preference to females who were related to +Philip in as near a degree. But the bulk of French jurists asserted that +only male succession gave right to the French throne. On such a theory the +right inheritable from Philip the Fair was exhausted; and the crown passed +to the son of Philip's younger brother, Charles of Valois, who in fact +peacefully mounted the throne as Philip the Sixth. Purely formal as the +claim which Isabella advanced seems to have been, it revived the irritation +between the two courts, and though Edward's obedience to a summons which +Philip addressed to him to do homage for Aquitaine brought about an +agreement that both parties should restore the gains they had made since +the last treaty the agreement was never carried out. Fresh threats of war +ended in the conclusion of a new treaty of peace, but the question whether +liege or simple homage was due for the duchies remained unsettled when the +fall of Mortimer gave the young king full mastery of affairs. His action +was rapid and decisive. Clad as a merchant, and with but fifteen horsemen +at his back, Edward suddenly made his appearance in 1331 at the French +court and did homage as fully as Philip required. The question of the +Agenois remained unsettled, though the English Parliament insisted that its +decision should rest with negotiation and not with war, but on all other +points a complete peace was made; and the young king rode back with his +hands free for an attack which he was planning on the North. + + +[Sidenote: New Scotch War] + +The provisions of the Treaty of Northampton for the restitution of estates +had never been fully carried out. Till this was done the English court held +that the rights of feudal superiority over Scotland which it had yielded in +the treaty remained in force; and at this moment an opening seemed to +present itself for again asserting these rights with success. Fortune +seemed at last to have veered to the English side. The death of Robert +Bruce only a year after the Treaty of Northampton left the Scottish throne +to his son David, a child of but eight years old. The death of the king was +followed by the loss of Randolph and Douglas; and the internal difficulties +of the realm broke out in civil strife. To the great barons on either side +the border the late peace involved serious losses, for many of the Scotch +houses held large estates in England as many of the English lords held +large estates in Scotland, and although the treaty had provided for their +claims they had in each case been practically set aside. It is this +discontent of the barons at the new settlement which explains the sudden +success of Edward Balliol in a snatch which he made at the Scottish throne. +Balliol's design was known at the English court, where he had found shelter +for some years; and Edward, whether sincerely or no, forbade his barons +from joining him and posted troops on the border to hinder his crossing it. +But Balliol found little difficulty in making his attack by sea. He sailed +from England at the head of a body of nobles who claimed estates in the +North, landed in August 1332 on the shores of Fife, and after repulsing +with immense loss an army which attacked him near Perth was crowned at +Scone two months after his landing, while David Bruce fled helplessly to +France. Edward had given no open aid to this enterprise, but the crisis +tempted his ambition, and he demanded and obtained from Balliol an +acknowledgement of the English suzerainty. The acknowledgement however was +fatal to Balliol himself. Surprised at Annan by a party of Scottish nobles, +their sudden attack drove him in December over the border after a reign of +but five months; and Berwick, which he had agreed to surrender to Edward, +was strongly garrisoned against an English attack. The sudden breakdown of +his vassal-king left Edward face to face with a new Scotch war. The +Parliament which he summoned to advise on the enforcement of his claim +showed no wish to plunge again into the contest and met him only with +evasions and delays. But Edward had gone too far to withdraw. In March 1333 +he appeared before Berwick, and besieged the town. A Scotch army under the +regent, Sir Archibald Douglas, brother to the famous Sir James, advanced to +its relief in July and attacked a covering force which was encamped on the +strong position of Halidon Hill. The English bowmen however vindicated the +fame they had first won at Falkirk and were soon to crown in the victory of +Crecy. The Scotch only struggled through the marsh which covered the +English front to be riddled with a storm of arrows and to break in utter +rout. The battle decided the fate of Berwick. From that time the town has +remained English territory. It was in fact the one part of Edward's +conquests which was preserved in the end by the English crown. But fragment +as it was, it was always viewed legally as representing the realm of which +it once formed a part. As Scotland, it had its chancellor, chamberlain, and +other officers of State: and the peculiar heading of Acts of Parliament +enacted for England "and the town of Berwick-upon-Tweed" still preserves +the memory of its peculiar position. But the victory did more than give +Berwick to England. The defeat of Douglas was followed by the submission of +a large part of the Scotch nobles, by the flight of the boy-king David, and +by the return of Balliol unopposed to the throne. Edward exacted a heavy +price for his aid. All Scotland south of the Firth of Forth was ceded to +England, and Balliol did homage as vassal-king for the rest. + + +[Sidenote: Scotland freed] + +It was at the moment of this submission that the young king reached the +climax of his success. A king at fourteen, a father at seventeen, he had +carried out at eighteen a political revolution in the overthrow of +Mortimer, and restored at twenty-two the ruined work of his grandfather. +The northern frontier was carried to its old line under the Northumbrian +kings. His kingdom within was peaceful and orderly; and the strife with +France seemed at an end. During the next three years Edward persisted in +the line of policy he had adopted, retaining his hold over Southern +Scotland, aiding his sub-king Balliol in campaign after campaign against +the despairing efforts of the nobles who still adhered to the house of +Bruce, a party who were now headed by Robert the Steward of Scotland and by +Earl Randolph of Moray. His perseverance was all but crowned with success, +when Scotland was again saved by the intervention of France. The successes +of Edward roused anew the jealousy of the French court. David Bruce found a +refuge with Philip; French ships appeared off the Scotch coast and brought +aid to the patriot nobles; and the old legal questions about the Agenois +and Aquitaine were mooted afresh by the French council. For a time Edward +staved off the contest by repeated embassies; but his refusal to accept +Philip as a mediator between England and the Scots stirred France to +threats of war. In 1335 fleets gathered on its coast; descents were made on +the English shores; and troops and galleys were hired in Italy and the +north for an invasion of England. The mere threat of war saved Scotland. +Edward's forces there were drawn to the south to meet the looked-for attack +from across the Channel; and the patriot party freed from their pressure at +once drew together again. The actual declaration of war against France at +the close of 1337 was the knell of Balliol's greatness; he found himself +without an adherent and withdrew two years later to the court of Edward, +while David returned to his kingdom in 1342 and won back the chief +fastnesses of the Lowlands. From that moment the freedom of Scotland was +secured. From a war of conquest and patriotic resistance the struggle died +into a petty strife between two angry neighbours, which became a mere +episode in the larger contest which it had stirred between England and +France. + + +[Sidenote: The Hundred Years War] + +Whether in its national or in its European bearings it is difficult to +overestimate the importance of the contest which was now to open between +these two nations. To England it brought a social, a religious, and in the +end a political revolution. The Peasant Revolt, Lollardry, and the New +Monarchy were direct issues of the Hundred Years War. With it began the +military renown of England; with it opened her struggle for the mastery of +the seas. The pride begotten by great victories and a sudden revelation of +warlike prowess roused the country not only to a new ambition, a new +resolve to assert itself as a European power, but to a repudiation of the +claims of the Papacy and an assertion of the ecclesiastical independence +both of Church and Crown which paved the way for and gave its ultimate form +to the English Reformation. The peculiar shape which English warfare +assumed, the triumph of the yeoman and archer over noble and knight, gave +new force to the political advance of the Commons. On the other hand the +misery of the war produced the first great open feud between labour and +capital. The glory of Crecy or Poitiers was dearly bought by the upgrowth +of English pauperism. The warlike temper nursed on foreign fields begot at +home a new turbulence and scorn of law, woke a new feudal spirit in the +baronage, and sowed in the revolution which placed a new house on the +throne the seeds of that fatal strife over the succession which troubled +England to the days of Elizabeth. Nor was the contest of less import in the +history of France. If it struck her for the moment from her height of +pride, it raised her in the end to the front rank among the states of +Europe. It carried her boundaries to the Rhone and the Pyrenees. It wrecked +alike the feudal power of her _noblesse_ and the hopes of constitutional +liberty which might have sprung from the emancipation of the peasant or the +action of the burgher. It founded a royal despotism which reached its +height in Richelieu and finally plunged France into the gulf of the +Revolution. + + +[Sidenote: The Imperial Alliance] + +Of these mighty issues little could be foreseen at the moment when Philip +and Edward declared war. But from the very first the war took European +dimensions. The young king saw clearly the greater strength of France. The +weakness of the Empire, the captivity of the Papacy at Avignon, left her +without a rival among European powers. The French chivalry was the envy of +the world, and its military fame had just been heightened by a victory over +the Flemish communes at Cassel. In numbers, in wealth, the French people +far surpassed their neighbours over the Channel. England can hardly have +counted more than four millions of inhabitants, France boasted of twenty. +The clinging of our kings to their foreign dominions is explained by the +fact that their subjects in Gascony, Aquitaine, and Poitou must have +equalled in number their subjects in England. There was the same +disproportion in the wealth of the two countries and, as men held then, in +their military resources. Edward could bring only eight thousand +men-at-arms to the field. Philip, while a third of his force was busy +elsewhere, could appear at the head of forty thousand. Of the revolution in +warfare which was to reverse this superiority, to make the footman rather +than the horseman the strength of an army, the world and even the English +king, in spite of Falkirk and Halidon, as yet recked little. Edward's whole +energy was bent on meeting the strength of France by a coalition of powers +against her, and his plans were helped by the dread which the great +feudatories of the empire who lay nearest to him, the Duke of Brabant, the +Counts of Hainault and Gelders, the Markgrave of Juliers, felt of French +annexation. They listened willingly enough to his offers. Sixty thousand +crowns purchased the alliance of Brabant. Lesser subsidies bought that of +the two counts and the Markgrave. The king's work was helped indeed by his +domestic relations. The Count of Hainault was Edward's father-in-law; he +was also the father-in-law of the Count of Gelders. But the marriage of a +third of the Count's daughters brought the English king a more important +ally. She was wedded to the Emperor, Lewis of Bavaria, and the connexion +that thus existed between the English and Imperial Courts facilitated the +negotiations which ended in a formal alliance. + + +[Sidenote: Its Relation to the Papacy] + +But the league had a more solid ground. The Emperor, like Edward, had his +strife with France. His strife sprang from the new position of the Papacy. +The removal of the Popes to Avignon which followed on the quarrel of +Boniface the Eighth with Philip le Bel and the subjection to the French +court which resulted from it affected the whole state of European politics. +In the ever-recurring contest between the Papacy and the Empire France had +of old been the lieutenant of the Roman See. But with the settlement at +Avignon the relation changed, and the Pope became the lieutenant of France. +Instead of the Papacy using the French kings in its war of ideas against +the Empire the French kings used the Papacy as an instrument in their +political rivalry with the Emperors. But if the position of the Pope drew +Lewis to the side of England, it had much to do with drawing Edward to the +side of Lewis. It was this that made the alliance, fruitless as it proved +in a military sense, so memorable in its religious results. Hitherto +England had been mainly on the side of the Popes in their strife against +the Emperors. Now that the Pope had become a tool in the hands of a power +which was to be its great enemy, the country was driven to close alliances +with the Empire and to an evergrowing alienation from the Roman See. In +Scotch affairs the hostility of the Popes had been steady and vexatious +ever since Edward the First's time, and from the moment that this fresh +struggle commenced they again showed their French partizanship. When Lewis +made a last appeal for peace, Philip of Valois made Benedict XII. lay down +as a condition that the Emperor should form no alliance with an enemy of +France. The quarrel of both England and Germany with the Papacy at once +grew ripe. The German Diet met to declare that the Imperial power came from +God alone, and that the choice of an Emperor needed no Papal confirmation, +while Benedict replied by a formal excommunication of Lewis. England on the +other hand entered on a religious revolution when she stood hand in hand +with an excommunicated power. It was significant that though worship ceased +in Flanders on the Pope's interdict, the English priests who were brought +over set the interdict at nought. + + +[Sidenote: Failure of the Alliance] + +The negotiation of this alliance occupied the whole of 1337; it ended in a +promise of the Emperor on payment of 3000 gold florins to furnish two +thousand men-at-arms. In the opening of 1338 an attack of Philip on the +Agenois forced Edward into open war. His profuse expenditure however +brought little fruit. Though Edward crossed to Antwerp in the summer, the +year was spent in negotiations with the princes of the Lower Rhine and in +an interview with the Emperor at Coblentz, where Lewis appointed him +Vicar-General of the Emperor for all territories on the left bank of the +Rhine. The occupation of Cambray, an Imperial fief, by the French king gave +a formal ground for calling the princes of this district to Edward's +standard. But already the great alliance showed signs of yielding. Edward, +uneasy at his connexion with an Emperor under the ban of the Church and +harassed by vehement remonstrances from the Pope, entered again into +negotiations with France in the winter of 1338; and Lewis, alarmed in his +turn, listened to fresh overtures from Benedict, who held out vague hopes +of reconciliation while he threatened a renewed excommunication if Lewis +persisted in invading France. The non-arrival of the English subsidy +decided the Emperor to take no personal part in the war, and the attitude +of Lewis told on the temper of Edward's German allies. Though all joined +him in the summer of 1339 on his formal summons of them as Vicar-General of +the Empire, and his army when it appeared before Cambray numbered forty +thousand men, their ardour cooled as the town held out. Philip approached +it from the south, and on Edward's announcing his resolve to cross the +river and attack him he was at once deserted by the two border princes who +had most to lose from a contest with France, the Counts of Hainault and +Namur. But the king was still full of hope. He pushed forward to the +country round St. Quentin between the head waters of the Somme and the Oise +with the purpose of forcing a decisive engagement. But he found Philip +strongly encamped, and declaring their supplies exhausted his allies at +once called for a retreat. It was in vain that Edward moved slowly for a +week along the French border. Philip's position was too strongly guarded by +marshes and entrenchments to be attacked, and at last the allies would stay +no longer. At the news that the French king had withdrawn to the south the +whole army in turn fell back upon Brussels. + + +[Sidenote: England and the Papacy] + +The failure of the campaign dispelled the hopes which Edward had drawn from +his alliance with the Empire. With the exhaustion of his subsidies the +princes of the Low Countries became inactive. The Duke of Brabant became +cooler in his friendship. The Emperor himself, still looking to an +accommodation with the Pope and justly jealous of Edward's own intrigues at +Avignon, wavered and at last fell away. But though the alliance ended in +disappointment it had given a new impulse to the grudge against the Papacy +which began with its extortions in the reign of Henry the Third. The hold +of Rome on the loyalty of England was sensibly weakening. Their transfer +from the Eternal City to Avignon robbed the Popes of half the awe which +they had inspired among Englishmen. Not only did it bring them nearer and +more into the light of common day, but it dwarfed them into mere agents of +French policy. The old bitterness at their exactions was revived by the +greed to which they were driven through their costly efforts to impose a +French and Papal Emperor on Germany as well as to secure themselves in +their new capital on the Rhone. The mighty building, half fortress, half +palace, which still awes the traveller at Avignon has played its part in +our history. Its erection was to the rise of Lollardry what the erection of +St. Peter's was to the rise of Lutheranism. Its massive walls, its stately +chapel, its chambers glowing with the frescoes of Simone Memmi, the garden +which covered its roof with a strange verdure, called year by year for +fresh supplies of gold; and for this as for the wider and costlier schemes +of Papal policy gold could be got only by pressing harder and harder on the +national churches the worst claims of the Papal court, by demands of +first-fruits and annates from rectory and bishoprick, by pretensions to the +right of bestowing all benefices which were in ecclesiastical patronage and +by the sale of these presentations, by the direct taxation of the clergy, +by the intrusion of foreign priests into English livings, by opening a mart +for the disposal of pardons, dispensations, and indulgences, and by +encouraging appeals from every ecclesiastical jurisdiction to the Papal +court. No grievance was more bitterly felt than this grievance of appeals. +Cases of the most trifling importance were called for decision out of the +realm to a tribunal whose delays were proverbial and whose fees were +enormous. The envoy of an Oxford College which sought only a formal licence +to turn a vicarage into a rectory had not only to bear the expense and toil +of a journey which then occupied some eighteen days but was kept dangling +at Avignon for three-and-twenty weeks. Humiliating and vexatious however as +these appeals were, they were but one among the means of extortion which +the Papal court multiplied as its needs grew greater. The protest of a +later Parliament, exaggerated as its statements no doubt are, shows the +extent of the national irritation, if not of the grievances which produced +it. It asserted that the taxes levied by the Pope amounted to five times +the amount of those levied by the king; that by reservations during the +life of actual holders the Pope disposed of the same bishoprick four or +five times over, receiving each time the first-fruits. "The brokers of the +sinful city of Rome promote for money unlearned and unworthy caitiffs to +benefices to the value of a thousand marks, while the poor and learned +hardly obtain one of twenty. So decays sound learning. They present aliens +who neither see nor care to see their parishioners, despise God's services, +convey away the treasure of the realm, and are worse than Jews or Saracens. +The Pope's revenue from England alone is larger than that of any prince in +Christendom. God gave his sheep to be pastured, not to be shaven and +shorn." At the close of this reign indeed the deaneries of Lichfield, +Salisbury, and York, the archdeaconry of Canterbury, which was reputed the +wealthiest English benefice, together with a host of prebends and +preferments, were held by Italian cardinals and priests, while the Pope's +collector from his office in London sent twenty thousand marks a year to +the Papal treasury. + + +[Sidenote: Protest of the Parliament] + +But the greed of the Popes was no new grievance, though the increase of +these exactions since the removal to Avignon gave it a new force. What +alienated England most was their connexion with and dependence on France. +From the first outset of the troubles in the North their attitude had been +one of hostility to the English projects. France was too useful a supporter +of the Papal court to find much difficulty in inducing it to aid in +hampering the growth of English greatness. Boniface the Eighth released +Balliol from his oath of fealty, and forbade Edward to attack Scotland on +the ground that it was a fief of the Roman See. His intervention was met by +a solemn and emphatic protest from the English Parliament; but it none the +less formed a terrible obstacle in Edward's way. The obstacle was at last +removed by the quarrel of Boniface with Philip the Fair; but the end of +this quarrel only threw the Papacy more completely into the hands of +France. Though Avignon remained imperial soil, the removal of the Popes to +this city on the verge of their dominions made them mere tools of the +French kings. Much no doubt of the endless negotiation which the Papal +court carried on with Edward the Third in his strife with Philip of Valois +was an honest struggle for peace. But to England it seemed the mere +interference of a dependant on behalf of "our enemy of France." The people +scorned a "French Pope," and threatened Papal legates with stoning when +they landed on English shores. The alliance of Edward with an +excommunicated Emperor, the bold defiance with which English priests said +mass in Flanders when an interdict reduced the Flemish priests to silence, +were significant tokens of the new attitude which England was taking up in +the face of Popes who were leagued with its enemy. The old quarrel over +ecclesiastical wrongs was renewed in a formal and decisive way. In 1343 the +Commons petitioned for the redress of the grievance of Papal appointments +to vacant livings in despite of the rights of patrons or the Crown; and +Edward formally complained to the Pope of his appointing "foreigners, most +of them suspicious persons, who do not reside on their benefices, who do +not know the faces of the flocks entrusted to them, who do not understand +their language, but, neglecting the cure of souls, seek as hirelings only +their worldly hire." In yet sharper words the king rebuked the Papal greed. +"The successor of the Apostles was set over the Lord's sheep to feed and +not to shear them." The Parliament declared "that they neither could nor +would tolerate such things any longer"; and the general irritation moved +slowly towards those statutes of Provisors and Praemunire which heralded +the policy of Henry the Eighth. + + +[Sidenote: Flanders] + +But for the moment the strife with the Papacy was set aside in the efforts +which were needed for a new struggle with France. The campaign of 1339 had +not only ended in failure, it had dispelled the trust of Edward in an +Imperial alliance. But as this hope faded away a fresh hope dawned on the +king from another quarter. Flanders, still bleeding from the defeat of its +burghers by the French knighthood, was his natural ally. England was the +great wool-producing country of the west, but few woollen fabrics were +woven in England. The number of weavers' gilds shows that the trade was +gradually extending, and at the very outset of his reign Edward had taken +steps for its encouragement. He invited Flemish weavers to settle in his +country, and took the new immigrants, who chose the eastern counties for +the seat of their trade, under his royal protection. But English +manufactures were still in their infancy and nine-tenths of the English +wool went to the looms of Bruges or of Ghent. We may see the rapid growth +of this export trade in the fact that the king received in a single year +more than L30,000 from duties levied on wool alone. The woolsack which +forms the Chancellor's seat in the House of Lords is said to witness to the +importance which the government attached to this new source of wealth. A +stoppage of this export threw half the population of the great Flemish +towns out of work, and the irritation caused in Flanders by the +interruption which this trade sustained through the piracies that Philip's +ships were carrying on in the Channel showed how effective the threat of +such a stoppage would be in securing their alliance. Nor was this the only +ground for hoping for aid from the Flemish towns. Their democratic spirit +jostled roughly with the feudalism of France. If their counts clung to the +French monarchy, the towns themselves, proud of their immense population, +their thriving industry, their vast wealth, drew more and more to +independence. Jacques van Arteveldt, a great brewer of Ghent, wielded the +chief influence in their councils, and his aim was to build up a +confederacy which might hold France in check along her northern border. + + +[Sidenote: The Flemish Alliance] + +His plans had as yet brought no help from the Flemish towns, but at the +close of 1339 they set aside their neutrality for open aid. The great plan +of Federation which Van Arteveldt had been devising as a check on the +aggression of France was carried out in a treaty concluded between Edward, +the Duke of Brabant, the cities of Brussels, Antwerp, Louvain, Ghent, +Bruges, Ypres, and seven others. By this remarkable treaty it was provided +that war should be begun and ended only by mutual consent, free commerce be +encouraged between Flanders and Brabant, and no change made in their +commercial arrangements save with the consent of the whole league. By a +subsequent treaty the Flemish towns owned Edward as King of France, and +declared war against Philip of Valois. But their voice was decisive on the +course of the campaign which opened in 1340. As Philip held the Upper +Scheldt by the occupation of Cambray, so he held the Lower Scheldt by that +of Tournay, a fortress which broke the line of commerce between Flanders +and Brabant. It was a condition of the Flemish alliance therefore that the +war should open with the capture of Tournay. It was only at the cost of a +fight however that Edward could now cross the Channel to undertake the +siege. France was as superior in force at sea as on land; and a fleet of +two hundred vessels gathered at Sluys to intercept him. But the fine +seamanship of the English sailors justified the courage of their king in +attacking this fleet with far smaller forces; the French ships were utterly +destroyed and twenty thousand Frenchmen slain in the encounter. It was with +the lustre of this great victory about him that Edward marched upon +Tournay. Its siege however proved as fruitless as that of Cambray in the +preceding year, and after two months of investment his vast army of one +hundred thousand men broke up without either capturing the town or bringing +Philip when he approached it to an engagement. Want of money forced Edward +to a truce for a year, and he returned beggared and embittered to England. + + +[Sidenote: Edward's distress] + +He had been worsted in war as in diplomacy. One naval victory alone +redeemed years of failure and expense. Guienne was all but lost, England +was suffering from the terrible taxation, from the ruin of commerce, from +the ravages of her coast. Five years of constant reverses were hard blows +for a king of twenty-eight who had been glorious and successful at +twenty-three. His financial difficulties indeed were enormous. It was in +vain that, availing himself of an Act which forbade the exportation of wool +"till by the King and his Council it is otherwise provided," he turned for +the time the wool-trade into a royal monopoly and became the sole wool +exporter, buying at L3 and selling at L20 the sack. The campaign of 1339 +brought with it a crushing debt: that of 1340 proved yet more costly. +Edward attributed his failure to the slackness of his ministers in sending +money and supplies, and this to their silent opposition to the war. But +wroth as he was on his return, a short struggle between the ministers and +the king ended in a reconciliation, and preparations for renewed +hostilities went on. Abroad indeed nothing could be done. The Emperor +finally withdrew from Edward's friendship. A new Pope, Clement the Sixth, +proved even more French in sentiment than his predecessor. Flanders alone +held true of all England's foreign allies. Edward was powerless to attack +Philip in the realm he claimed for his own; what strength he could gather +was needed to prevent the utter ruin of the English cause in Scotland on +the return of David Bruce. Edward's soldiers had been driven from the open +country and confined to the fortresses of the Lowlands. Even these were at +last reft away. Perth was taken by siege, and the king was too late to +prevent the surrender of Stirling. Edinburgh was captured by a stratagem. +Only Roxburgh and Berwick were saved by a truce which Edward was driven to +conclude with the Scots. + + +[Sidenote: Progress of Parliament] + +But with the difficulties of the Crown the weight of the two Houses made +itself more and more sensibly felt. The almost incessant warfare which had +gone on since the accession of Edward the Third consolidated and developed +the power which they had gained from the dissensions of his father's reign. +The need of continual grants brought about an assembly of Parliament year +by year, and the subsidies that were accorded to the king showed the +potency of the financial engine which the Crown could now bring into play. +In a single year the Parliament granted twenty thousand sacks, or half the +wool of the realm. Two years later the Commons voted an aid of thirty +thousand sacks. In 1339 the barons granted the tenth sheep and fleece and +lamb. The clergy granted two tenths in one year, and a tenth for three +years in the next. But with each supply some step was made to greater +political influence. In his earlier years Edward showed no jealousy of the +Parliament. His policy was to make the struggle with France a national one +by winning for it the sympathy of the people at large; and with this view +he not only published in the County Courts the efforts he had made for +peace, but appealed again and again for the sanction and advice of +Parliament in his enterprise. In 1331 he asked the Estates whether they +would prefer negotiation or war: in 1338 he declared that his expedition to +Flanders was made by the assent of the Lords and at the prayer of the +Commons. The part of the last in public affairs grew greater in spite of +their own efforts to remain obscure. From the opening of the reign a crowd +of enactments for the regulation of trade, whether wise or unwise, shows +the influence of the burgesses. But the final division of Parliament into +two Houses, a change which was completed by 1341, necessarily increased the +weight of the Commons. The humble trader who shrank from counselling the +Crown in great matters of policy gathered courage as he found himself +sitting side by side with the knights of the shire. It was at the moment +when this great change was being brought about that the disasters of the +war spurred the Parliament to greater activity. The enormous grants of 1340 +were bought by the king's assent to statutes which provided remedies for +grievances of which the Commons complained. The most important of these put +an end to the attempts which Edward had made like his grandfather to deal +with the merchant class apart from the Houses. No charge or aid was +henceforth to be made save by the common assent of the Estates assembled in +Parliament. The progress of the next year was yet more important. The +strife of the king with his ministers, the foremost of whom was Archbishop +Stratford, ended in the Primate's refusal to make answer to the royal +charges save in full Parliament, and in the assent of the king to a +resolution of the Lords that none of their number, whether ministers of the +Crown or no, should be brought to trial elsewhere than before his peers. +The Commons demanded and obtained the appointment of commissioners elected +in Parliament to audit the grants already made. Finally it was enacted that +at each Parliament the ministers should hold themselves accountable for all +grievances; that on any vacancy the king should take counsel with his lords +as to the choice of the new minister; and that, when chosen, each minister +should be sworn in Parliament. + + +[Sidenote: Close of the truce] + +At the moment which we have reached therefore the position of the +Parliament had become far more important than at Edward's accession. Its +form was settled. The third estate had gained a fuller parliamentary power. +The principle of ministerial responsibility to the Houses had been +established by formal statute. But the jealousy of Edward was at last +completely roused, and from this moment he looked on the new power as a +rival to his own. The Parliament of 1341 had no sooner broken up than he +revoked by Letters Patent the statutes it had passed as done in prejudice +of his prerogative and only assented to for the time to prevent worse +confusion. The regular assembly of the estates was suddenly interrupted, +and two years passed without a Parliament. It was only the continual +presence of war which from this time drove Edward to summon the Houses at +all. Though the truce still held good between England and France a quarrel +of succession to the Duchy of Britanny which broke out in 1341 and called +Philip to the support of one claimant, his cousin Charles of Blois, and +Edward to the support of a rival claimant, John of Montfort, dragged on +year after year. In Flanders things went ill for the English cause. The +dissensions between the great and the smaller towns, and in the greater +towns themselves between the weavers and fullers, dissensions which had +taxed the genius of Van Arteveldt through the nine years of his wonderful +rule, broke out in 1345 into a revolt at Ghent in which the great statesman +was slain. With him fell a design for the deposition of the Count of +Flanders and the reception of the Prince of Wales in his stead which he was +ardently pressing, and whose political results might have been immense. +Deputies were at once sent to England to excuse Van Arteveldt's murder and +to promise loyalty to Edward; but the king's difficulties had now reached +their height. His loans from the Florentine bankers amounted to half a +million. His claim on the French crown found not a single adherent save +among the burghers of the Flemish towns. The overtures which he made for +peace were contemptuously rejected, and the expiration of the truce in 1345 +found him again face to face with France. + + +[Sidenote: Edward marches on Paris] + +But it was perhaps this breakdown of all foreign hope that contributed to +Edward's success in the fresh outbreak of war. The war opened in Guienne, +and Henry of Lancaster, who was now known as the Earl of Derby, and who +with the Hainaulter Sir Walter Maunay took the command in that quarter, at +once showed the abilities of a great general. The course of the Garonne was +cleared by his capture of La Reole and Aiguillon, that of the Dordogne by +the reduction of Bergerac, and a way opened for the reconquest of Poitou by +the capture of Angouleme. These unexpected successes roused Philip to +strenuous efforts, and a hundred thousand men gathered under his son, John, +Duke of Normandy, for the subjugation of the South. Angouleme was won back, +and Aiguillon besieged when Edward sailed to the aid of his hard-pressed +lieutenant. It was with an army of thirty thousand men, half English, half +Irish and Welsh, that he commenced a march which was to change the whole +face of the war. His aim was simple. Flanders was still true to Edward's +cause, and while Derby was pressing on in the south a Flemish army besieged +Bouvines and threatened France from the north. The king had at first +proposed to land in Guienne and relieve the forces in the south; but +suddenly changing his design he disembarked at La Hogue and advanced +through Normandy. By this skilful movement Edward not only relieved Derby +but threatened Paris, and left himself able to co-operate with either his +own army in the south or the Flemings in the north. Normandy was totally +without defence, and after the sack of Caen, which was then one of the +wealthiest towns in France, Edward marched upon the Seine. His march +threatened Rouen and Paris, and its strategical value was seen by the +sudden panic of the French king. Philip was wholly taken by surprise. He +attempted to arrest Edward's march by an offer to restore the Duchy of +Aquitaine as Edward the Second had held it, but the offer was fruitless. +Philip was forced to call his son to the rescue. John at once raised the +siege of Aiguillon, and the French army moved rapidly to the north, its +withdrawal enabling Derby to capture Poitiers and make himself thorough +master of the south. But John was too distant from Paris for his forces to +avail Philip in his emergency, for Edward, finding the bridges on the Lower +Seine broken, pushed straight on Paris, rebuilt the bridge of Poissy, and +threatened the capital. + + +[Sidenote: Crecy] + +At this crisis however France found an unexpected help in a body of German +knights. The long strife between Lewis of Bavaria and the Papacy had ended +at last in Clement's carrying out his sentence of deposition by the +nomination and coronation as emperor of Charles of Luxemburg, a son of King +John of Bohemia, the well-known Charles IV. of the Golden Bull. But against +this Papal assumption of a right to bestow the German Crown Germany rose as +one man. Not a town opened its gates to the Papal claimant, and driven to +seek help and refuge from Philip of Valois he found himself at this moment +on the eastern frontier of France with his father and 500 knights. Hurrying +to Paris this German force formed the nucleus of an army which assembled at +St. Denys; and which was soon reinforced by 15,000 Genoese cross-bowmen who +had been hired from among the soldiers of the Lord of Monaco on the sunny +Riviera and arrived at this hour of need. With this host rapidly gathering +in his front Edward abandoned his march on Paris, which had already served +its purpose in relieving Derby, and threw himself across the Seine to carry +out the second part of his programme by a junction with the Flemings at +Gravelines and a campaign in the north. But the rivers in his path were +carefully guarded, and it was only by surprising the ford of Blanche-Taque +on the Somme that the king escaped the necessity of surrendering to the +vast host which was now hastening in pursuit. His communications however +were no sooner secured than he halted on the twenty-sixth of August at the +little village of Crecy in Ponthieu and resolved to give battle. Half of +his army, which had been greatly reduced in strength by his rapid marches, +consisted of light-armed footmen from Ireland and Wales; the bulk of the +remainder was composed of English bowmen. The king ordered his men-at-arms +to dismount, and drew up his forces on a low rise sloping gently to the +south-east, with a deep ditch covering its front, and its flanks protected +by woods and a little brook. From a windmill on the summit of this rise +Edward could overlook the whole field of battle. Immediately beneath him +lay his reserve, while at the base of the slope was placed the main body of +the army in two divisions, that to the right commanded by the young Prince +of Wales, Edward "the Black Prince," as he was called, that to the left by +the Earl of Northampton. A small ditch protected the English front, and +behind it the bowmen were drawn up "in the form of a harrow" with small +bombards between them "which with fire threw little iron balls to frighten +the horses," the first instance known of the use of artillery in +field-warfare. + +The halt of the English army took Philip by surprise, and he attempted for +a time to check the advance of his army. But the attempt was fruitless and +the disorderly host rolled on to the English front. The sight of his +enemies indeed stirred Philip's own blood to fury, "for he hated them." The +fight began at vespers. The Genoese cross-bowmen were ordered to open the +attack, but the men were weary with their march, a sudden storm wetted and +rendered useless their bowstrings, and the loud shouts with which they +leapt forward to the encounter were met with dogged silence in the English +ranks. Their first arrow-flight however brought a terrible reply. So rapid +was the English shot "that it seemed as if it snowed." "Kill me these +scoundrels," shouted Philip, as the Genoese fell back; and his men-at-arms +plunged butchering into their broken ranks while the Counts of Alenicon and +Flanders at the head of the French knighthood fell hotly on the Prince's +line. For an instant his small force seemed lost, and he called his father +to support him. But Edward refused to send him aid. "Is he dead, or +unhorsed, or so wounded that he cannot help himself?" he asked the envoy. +"No, sir," was the reply, "but he is in a hard passage of arms, and sorely +needs your help." "Return to those that sent you," said the king, "and bid +them not send to me again so long as my son lives! Let the boy win his +spurs, for, if God so order it, I will that the day may be his and that the +honour may be with him and them to whom I have given it in charge." Edward +could see in fact from his higher ground that all went well. The English +bowmen and men-at-arms held their ground stoutly while the Welshmen stabbed +the French horses in the melly and brought knight after knight to the +ground. Soon the French host was wavering in a fatal confusion. "You are my +vassals, my friends," cried the blind John of Bohemia to the German nobles +around him, "I pray and beseech you to lead me so far into the fight that I +may strike one good blow with this sword of mine!" Linking their bridles +together, the little company plunged into the thick of the combat to fall +as their fellows were falling. The battle went steadily against the French. +At last Philip himself hurried from the field, and the defeat became a +rout. Twelve hundred knights and thirty thousand foot-men--a number equal +to the whole English force--lay dead upon the ground. + + +[Sidenote: The Yeoman] + +"God has punished us for our sins," cries the chronicler of St. Denys in a +passion of bewildered grief as he tells the rout of the great host which he +had seen mustering beneath his abbey walls. But the fall of France was +hardly so sudden or so incomprehensible as the ruin at a single blow of a +system of warfare, and with it of the political and social fabric which had +risen out of that system. Feudalism rested on the superiority of the +horseman to the footman, of the mounted noble to the unmounted churl. The +real fighting power of a feudal army lay in its knighthood, in the baronage +and landowners who took the field, each with his group of esquires and +mounted men-at-arms. A host of footmen followed them, but they were ill +armed, ill disciplined, and seldom called on to play any decisive part on +the actual battle-field. In France, and especially at the moment we have +reached, the contrast between the efficiency of these two elements of +warfare was more striking than elsewhere. Nowhere was the chivalry so +splendid, nowhere was the general misery and oppression of the poor more +terribly expressed in the worthlessness of the mob of footmen who were +driven by their lords to the camp. In England, on the other hand, the +failure of feudalism to win a complete hold on the country was seen in the +persistence of the older national institutions which based its defence on +the general levy of its freemen. If the foreign kings added to this a +system of warlike organization grounded on the service due from its +military tenants to the Crown, they were far from regarding this as +superseding the national "fyrd." The Assize of Arms, the Statute of +Winchester, show with what care the fyrd was held in a state of efficiency. +Its force indeed as an engine of war was fast rising between the age of +Henry the Second and that of Edward the Third. The social changes on which +we have already dwelt, the facilities given to alienation and the +subdivision of lands, the transition of the serf into a copyholder and of +the copyholder by redemption of his services into a freeholder, the rise of +a new class of "farmers" as the lords ceased to till their demesne by means +of bailiffs and adopted the practice of leasing it at a rent or "farm" to +one of the customary tenants, the general increase of wealth which was +telling on the social position even of those who still remained in +villenage, undid more and more the earlier process which had degraded the +free ceorl of the English Conquest into the villein of the Norman Conquest, +and covered the land with a population of yeomen, some freeholders, some +with services that every day became less weighty and already left them +virtually free. + + +[Sidenote: The Bow] + +Such men, proud of their right to justice and an equal law, called by +attendance in the county court to a share in the judicial, the financial, +and the political life of the realm, were of a temper to make soldiers of a +different sort from the wretched serfs who followed the feudal lords of the +Continent; and they were equipped with a weapon which as they wielded it +was enough of itself to make a revolution in the art of war. The bow, +identified as it became with English warfare, was the weapon not of +Englishmen but of their Norman conquerors. It was the Norman arrow-flight +that decided the day of Senlac. But in the organization of the national +army it had been assigned as the weapon of the poorer freeholders who were +liable to serve at the king's summons; and we see how closely it had become +associated with them in the picture of Chaucer's yeoman. "In his hand he +bore a mighty bow." Its might lay not only in the range of the heavy +war-shaft, a range we are told of four hundred yards, but in its force. The +English archer, taught from very childhood "how to draw, how to lay his +body to the bow," his skill quickened by incessant practice and constant +rivalry with his fellows, raised the bow into a terrible engine of war. +Thrown out along the front in a loose order that alone showed their vigour +and self-dependence, the bowmen faced and riddled the splendid line of +knighthood as it charged upon them. The galled horses "reeled right +rudely." Their riders found even the steel of Milan a poor defence against +the grey-goose shaft. Gradually the bow dictated the very tactics of an +English battle. If the mass of cavalry still plunged forward, the screen of +archers broke to right and left and the men-at-arms who lay in reserve +behind them made short work of the broken and disordered horsemen, while +the light troops from Wales and Ireland flinging themselves into the melly +with their long knives and darts brought steed after steed to the ground. +It was this new military engine that Edward the Third carried to the fields +of France. His armies were practically bodies of hired soldiery, for the +short period of feudal service was insufficient for foreign campaigns, and +yeoman and baron were alike drawn by a high rate of pay. An archer's daily +wages equalled some five shillings of our present money. Such payment when +coupled with the hope of plunder was enough to draw yeomen from thorpe and +farm; and though the royal treasury was drained as it had never been +drained before the English king saw himself after the day of Crecy the +master of a force without rival in the stress of war. + + +[Sidenote: Siege of Calais] + +To England her success was the beginning of a career of military glory, +which fatal as it was destined to prove to the higher sentiments and +interests of the nation gave it a warlike energy such as it had never known +before. Victory followed victory. A few months after Crecy a Scotch army +marched over the border and faced on the seventeenth of October an English +force at Neville's Cross. But it was soon broken by the arrow-flight of the +English archers, and the Scotch king David Bruce was taken prisoner. The +withdrawal of the French from the Garonne enabled Henry of Derby to recover +Poitou. Edward meanwhile with a decision which marks his military capacity +marched from the field of Crecy to form the siege of Calais. No measure +could have been more popular with the English merchant class, for Calais +was a great pirate-haven and in a single year twenty-two privateers from +its port had swept the Channel. But Edward was guided by weightier +considerations than this. In spite of his victory at Sluys the superiority +of France at sea had been a constant embarrassment. From this difficulty +the capture of Calais would do much to deliver him, for Dover and Calais +together bridled the Channel. Nor was this all. Not only would the +possession of the town give Edward a base of operations against France, but +it afforded an easy means of communication with the only sure allies of +England, the towns of Flanders. Flanders seemed at this moment to be +wavering. Its Count had fallen at Crecy, but his son Lewis le Male, though +his sympathies were as French as his father's, was received in November by +his subjects with the invariable loyalty which they showed to their rulers; +and his own efforts to detach them from England were seconded by the +influence of the Duke of Brabant. But with Edward close at hand beneath the +walls of Calais the Flemish towns stood true. They prayed the young Count +to marry Edward's daughter, imprisoned him on his refusal, and on his +escape to the French Court in the spring of 1347 they threw themselves +heartily into the English cause. A hundred thousand Flemings advanced to +Cassel and ravaged the French frontier. + +The danger of Calais roused Philip from the panic which had followed his +defeat, and with a vast army he advanced to the north. But Edward's lines +were impregnable. The French king failed in another attempt to dislodge the +Flemings, and was at last driven to retreat without a blow. Hopeless of +further succour, the town after a year's siege was starved into surrender +in August 1347. Mercy was granted to the garrison and the people on +condition that six of the citizens gave themselves into the English king's +hands. "On them," said Edward with a burst of bitter hatred, "I will do my +will." At the sound of the town bell, Jehan le Bel tells us, the folk of +Calais gathered round the bearer of these terms, "desiring to hear their +good news, for they were all mad with hunger. When the said knight told +them his news, then began they to weep and cry so loudly that it was great +pity. Then stood up the wealthiest burgess of the town, Master Eustache de +St. Pierre by name, and spake thus before all: 'My masters, great grief and +mishap it were for all to leave such a people as this is to die by famine +or otherwise; and great charity and grace would he win from our Lord who +could defend them from dying. For me, I have great hope in the Lord that if +I can save this people by my death I shall have pardon for my faults, +wherefore will I be the first of the six, and of my own will put myself +barefoot in my shirt and with a halter round my neck in the mercy of King +Edward.'" The list of devoted men was soon made up, and the victims were +led before the king. "All the host assembled together; there was great +press, and many bade hang them openly, and many wept for pity. The noble +King came with his train of counts and barons to the place, and the Queen +followed him, though great with child, to see what there would be. The six +citizens knelt down at once before the King, and Master Eustache spake +thus:--'Gentle King, here we be six who have been of the old bourgeoisie of +Calais and great merchants; we bring you the keys of the town and castle of +Calais, and render them to you at your pleasure. We set ourselves in such +wise as you see purely at your will, to save the remnant of the people that +has suffered much pain. So may you have pity and mercy on us for your high +nobleness' sake.' Certes there was then in that place neither lord nor +knight that wept not for pity, nor who could speak for pity; but the King +had his heart so hardened by wrath that for a long while he could not +reply; than he commanded to cut off their heads. All the knights and lords +prayed him with tears, as much as they could, to have pity on them, but he +would not hear. Then spoke the gentle knight, Master Walter de Maunay, and +said, 'Ha, gentle sire! bridle your wrath; you have the renown and good +fame of all gentleness; do not a thing whereby men can speak any villany of +you! If you have no pity, all men will say that you have a heart full of +all cruelty to put these good citizens to death that of their own will are +come to render themselves to you to save the remnant of the people.' At +this point the King changed countenance with wrath, and said 'Hold your +peace, Master Walter! it shall be none otherwise. Call the headsman. They +of Calais have made so many of my men die, that they must die themselves!' +Then did the noble Queen of England a deed of noble lowliness, seeing she +was great with child, and wept so tenderly for pity that she could no +longer stand upright; therefore she cast herself on her knees before her +lord the King and spake on this wise: 'Ah, gentle sire, from the day that I +passed over sea in great peril, as you know, I have asked for nothing: now +pray I and beseech you, with folded hands, for the love of our Lady's Son +to have mercy upon them.' The gentle King waited a while before speaking, +and looked on the Queen as she knelt before him bitterly weeping. Then +began his heart to soften a little, and he said, 'Lady, I would rather you +had been otherwhere; you pray so tenderly that I dare not refuse you; and +though I do it against my will, nevertheless take them, I give them to +you.' Then took he the six citizens by the halters and delivered them to +the Queen, and released from death all those of Calais for the love of her; +and the good lady bade them clothe the six burgesses and make them good +cheer." + + + + + +CHAPTER III +THE PEASANT REVOLT +1347-1381 + + + +[Sidenote: Edward the Third] + +Still in the vigour of manhood, for he was but thirty-five, Edward the +Third stood at the height of his renown. He had won the greatest victory of +his age. France, till now the first of European states, was broken and +dashed from her pride of place at a single blow. The kingdom seemed to lie +at Edward's mercy, for Guienne was recovered, Flanders was wholly on his +side, and Britanny, where the capture of Charles of Blois secured the +success of his rival and the English party which supported him, opened the +road to Paris. At home his government was popular, and Scotland, the one +enemy he had to dread, was bridled by the capture of her king. How great +his renown was in Europe was seen in 1347, when on the death of Lewis of +Bavaria the electors offered him the Imperial Crown. Edward was in truth a +general of a high order, and he had shown himself as consummate a +strategist in the campaign as a tactician in the field. But to the world +about him he was even more illustrious as the foremost representative of +the showy chivalry of his day. He loved the pomp of tournaments; he revived +the Round Table of the fabled Arthur; he celebrated his victories by the +creation of a new order of knighthood. He had varied the sterner operations +of the siege of Calais by a hand-to-hand combat with one of the bravest of +the French knights. A naval picture of Froissart sketches Edward for us as +he sailed to meet a Spanish fleet which was sweeping the narrow seas. We +see the king sitting on deck in his jacket of black velvet, his head +covered by a black beaver hat "which became him well," and calling on Sir +John Chandos to troll out the songs he had brought with him from Germany, +till the Spanish ships heave in sight and a furious fight begins which ends +in a victory that leaves Edward "King of the Seas." + +But beneath all this glitter of chivalry lay the subtle, busy diplomatist. +None of our kings was so restless a negotiator. From the first hour of +Edward's rule the threads of his diplomacy ran over Europe in almost +inextricable confusion. And to all who dealt with him he was equally false +and tricky. Emperor was played off against Pope and Pope against Emperor, +the friendship of the Flemish towns was adroitly used to put a pressure on +their counts, the national wrath against the exactions of the Roman See was +employed to bridle the French sympathies of the court of Avignon, and when +the statutes which it produced had served their purpose they were set aside +for a bargain in which King and Pope shared the plunder of the Church +between them. His temper was as false in his dealings with his people as in +his dealings with the European powers. Edward aired to country and +parliament his English patriotism. "Above all other lands and realms," he +made his chancellor say, "the King had most tenderly at heart his land of +England, a land more full of delight and honour and profit to him than any +other." His manners were popular; he donned on occasion the livery of a +city gild; he dined with a London merchant. His perpetual parliaments, his +appeals to them and to the country at large for counsel and aid, seemed to +promise a ruler who was absolutely one at heart with the people he ruled. +But when once Edward passed from sheer carelessness and gratification at +the new source of wealth which the Parliament opened to a sense of what its +power really was becoming, he showed himself as jealous of freedom as any +king that had gone before him. He sold his assent to its demands for heavy +subsidies, and when he had pocketed the money coolly declared the statutes +he had sanctioned null and void. The constitutional progress which was made +during his reign was due to his absorption in showy schemes of foreign +ambition, to his preference for war and diplomatic intrigue over the sober +business of civil administration. The same shallowness of temper, the same +showiness and falsehood, ran through his personal character. The king who +was a model of chivalry in his dealings with knight and noble showed +himself a brutal savage to the burgesses of Calais. Even the courtesy to +his Queen which throws its halo over the story of their deliverance went +hand in hand with a constant disloyalty to her. When once Philippa was dead +his profligacy threw all shame aside. He paraded a mistress as Queen of +Beauty through the streets of London, and set her in pomp over tournaments +as the Lady of the Sun. The nobles were quick to follow their lord's +example. "In those days," writes a chronicler of the time, "arose a rumour +and clamour among the people that wherever there was a tournament there +came a great concourse of ladies, of the most costly and beautiful but not +of the best in the kingdom, sometimes forty and fifty in number, as if they +were a part of the tournament, ladies clad in diverse and wonderful male +apparel, in parti-coloured tunics, with short caps and bands wound +cord-wise round their heads, and girdles bound with gold and silver, and +daggers in pouches across their body. And thus they rode on choice coursers +to the place of tourney; and so spent and wasted their goods and vexed +their bodies with scurrilous wantonness that the murmurs of the people +sounded everywhere. But they neither feared God nor blushed at the chaste +voice of the people." + + +[Sidenote: The Black Death] + +The "chaste voice of the people" was soon to grow into the stern moral +protest of the Lollards, but for the moment all murmurs were hushed by the +king's success. The truce which followed the capture of Calais seemed a +mere rest in the career of victories which opened before Edward. England +was drunk with her glory and with the hope of plunder. The cloths of Caen +had been brought after the sack of that town to London. "There was no +woman," says Walsingham, "who had not got garments, furs, feather-beds, and +utensils from the spoils of Calais and other foreign cities." The court +revelled in gorgeous tournaments and luxury of dress; and the establishment +in 1346 of the Order of the Garter which found its home in the new castle +that Edward was raising at Windsor marked the highest reach of the spurious +"Chivalry" of the day. But it was at this moment of triumph that the whole +colour of Edward's reign suddenly changed. The most terrible plague the +world has ever witnessed advanced from the East, and after devastating +Europe from the shores of the Mediterranean to the Baltic swooped at the +close of 1348 upon Britain. The traditions of its destructiveness and the +panic-struck words of the statutes passed after its visitation have been +amply justified by modern research. Of the three or four millions who then +formed the population of England more than one-half were swept away in its +repeated visitations. Its ravages were fiercest in the greater towns where +filthy and undrained streets afforded a constant haunt to leprosy and +fever. In the burial-ground which the piety of Sir Walter Maunay purchased +for the citizens of London, a spot whose site was afterwards marked by the +Charter House, more than fifty thousand corpses are said to have been +interred. Thousands of people perished at Norwich, while in Bristol the +living were hardly able to bury the dead. But the Black Death fell on the +villages almost as fiercely as on the towns. More than one-half of the +priests of Yorkshire are known to have perished; in the diocese of Norwich +two-thirds of the parishes changed their incumbents. The whole organization +of labour was thrown out of gear. The scarcity of hands produced by the +terrible mortality made it difficult for villeins to perform the services +due for their lands, and only a temporary abandonment of half the rent by +the landowners induced the farmers of their demesnes to refrain from the +abandonment of their farms. For a time cultivation became impossible. "The +sheep and cattle strayed through the fields and corn," says a contemporary, +"and there were none left who could drive them." Even when the first burst +of panic was over, the sudden rise of wages consequent on the enormous +diminution in the supply of labour, though accompanied by a corresponding +rise in the price of food, rudely disturbed the course of industrial +employments. Harvests rotted on the ground and fields were left untilled +not merely from scarcity of hands but from the strife which now for the +first time revealed itself between capital and labour. + + +[Sidenote: Its Social Results] + +Nowhere was the effect of the Black Death so keenly felt as in its bearing +on the social revolution which had been steadily going on for a century +past throughout the country. At the moment we have reached the lord of a +manor had been reduced over a large part of England to the position of a +modern landlord, receiving a rental in money from his tenants and supplying +their place in the cultivation of his demesne lands by paid labourers. He +was driven by the progress of enfranchisement to rely for the purposes of +cultivation on the supply of hired labour, and hitherto this supply had +been abundant and cheap. But with the ravages of the Black Death and the +decrease of population labour at once became scarce and dear. There was a +general rise of wages, and the farmers of the country as well as the +wealthier craftsmen of the town saw themselves threatened with ruin by what +seemed to their age the extravagant demands of the labour class. Meanwhile +the country was torn with riot and disorder. An outbreak of lawless +self-indulgence which followed everywhere in the wake of the plague told +especially upon the "landless men," workers wandering in search of work who +found themselves for the first time masters of the labour market; and the +wandering labourer or artizan turned easily into the "sturdy beggar," or +the bandit of the woods. A summary redress for these evils was at once +provided by the Crown in a royal proclamation. "Because a great part of the +people," runs this ordinance, "and principally of labourers and servants, +is dead of the plague, some, seeing the need of their lords and the +scarcity of servants, are unwilling to serve unless they receive excessive +wages, and others are rather begging in idleness than supporting themselves +by labour, we have ordained that any able-bodied man or woman, of +whatsoever condition, free or serf, under sixty years of age, not living of +merchandise nor following a trade nor having of his own wherewithal to +live, either his own land with the culture of which he could occupy +himself, and not serving another, shall if so required serve another for +such wages as was the custom in the twentieth year of our reign or five or +six years before." + + +[Sidenote: Statute of Labourers] + +It was the failure of this ordinance to effect its ends which brought about +at the close of 1349 the passing of the Statute of Labourers. "Every man or +woman," runs this famous provision, "of whatsoever condition, free or bond, +able in body, and within the age of threescore years, ... and not having of +his own whereof he may live, nor land of his own about the tillage of which +he may occupy himself, and not serving any other, shall be bound to serve +the employer who shall require him to do so, and shall take only the wages +which were accustomed to be taken in the neighbourhood where he is bound to +serve" two years before the plague began. A refusal to obey was punished by +imprisonment. But sterner measures were soon found to be necessary. Not +only was the price of labour fixed by the Parliament of 1351 but the labour +class was once more tied to the soil. The labourer was forbidden to quit +the parish where he lived in search of better paid employment; if he +disobeyed he became a "fugitive," and subject to imprisonment at the hands +of justices of the peace. To enforce such a law literally must have been +impossible, for corn rose to so high a price that a day's labour at the old +wages would not have purchased wheat enough for a man's support. But the +landowners did not flinch from the attempt. The repeated re-enactment of +the law shows the difficulty of applying it and the stubbornness of the +struggle which it brought about. The fines and forfeitures which were +levied for infractions of its provisions formed a large source of royal +revenue, but so ineffectual were the original penalties that the runaway +labourer was at last ordered to be branded with a hot iron on the forehead, +while the harbouring of serfs in towns was rigorously put down. Nor was it +merely the existing class of free labourers which was attacked by this +reactionary movement. The increase of their numbers by a commutation of +labour services for money payments was suddenly checked, and the ingenuity +of the lawyers who were employed as stewards of each manor was exercised in +striving to restore to the landowners that customary labour whose loss was +now severely felt. Manumissions and exemptions which had passed without +question were cancelled on grounds of informality, and labour services from +which they held themselves freed by redemption were again demanded from the +villeins. The attempt was the more galling that the cause had to be pleaded +in the manor-court itself, and to be decided by the very officer whose +interest it was to give judgement in favour of his lord. We can see the +growth of a fierce spirit of resistance through the statutes which strove +in vain to repress it. In the towns, where the system of forced labour was +applied with even more rigour than in the country, strikes and combinations +became frequent among the lower craftsmen. In the country the free +labourers found allies in the villeins whose freedom from manorial service +was questioned. These were often men of position and substance, and +throughout the eastern counties the gatherings of "fugitive serfs" were +supported by an organized resistance and by large contributions of money on +the part of the wealthier tenantry. + + +[Sidenote: Renewal of the War] + +With plague, famine, and social strife in the land, it was no time for +reaping the fruits even of such a victory as Crecy. Luckily for England the +pestilence had fallen as heavily on her foe as on herself. A common +suffering and exhaustion forced both countries to a truce, and though +desultory fighting went on along the Breton and Aquitanian borders, the +peace which was thus secured lasted with brief intervals of fighting for +seven years. It was not till 1355 that the failure of a last effort to turn +the truce into a final peace again drove Edward into war. The campaign +opened with a brilliant prospect of success. Charles the Bad, King of +Navarre, held as a prince of descent from the house of Valois large fiefs +in Normandy; and a quarrel springing suddenly up between him and John, who +had now succeeded his father Philip on the throne of France, Charles +offered to put his fortresses into Edward's hands. Master of Cherbourg, +Avranches, Pontaudemer, Evreux and Meulan, Mantes, Mortain, Pontoise, +Charles held in his hands the keys of France; and Edward grasped at the +opportunity of delivering a crushing blow. Three armies were prepared to +act in Normandy, Britanny, and Guienne. But the first two, with Edward and +Henry of Derby, who had been raised to the dukedom of Lancaster, at their +head, were detained by contrary winds, and Charles, despairing of their +arrival, made peace with John. Edward made his way to Calais to meet the +tidings of this desertion and to be called back to England by news of a +recapture of Berwick by the Scots. But his hopes of Norman co-operation +were revived in 1356. The treachery of John, his seizure of the King of +Navarre, and his execution of the Count of Harcourt who was looked upon as +the adviser of Charles in his policy of intrigue, stirred a general rising +throughout Normandy. Edward at once despatched troops under the Duke of +Lancaster to its support. But the insurgents were soon forced to fall back. +Conscious of the danger to which an English occupation of Normandy would +expose him, John hastened with a large army to the west, drove Lancaster to +Cherbourg, took Evreux, and besieged Breteuil. + + +[Sidenote: The Black Prince] + +Here however his progress was suddenly checked by news from the south. The +Black Prince, as the hero of Crecy was called, had landed in Guienne during +the preceding year and won a disgraceful success. Unable to pay his troops, +he staved off their demands by a campaign of sheer pillage. While plague +and war and the anarchy which sprang up under the weak government of John +were bringing ruin on the northern and central provinces of France, the +south remained prosperous and at peace. The young prince led his army of +freebooters up the Garonne into "what was before one of the fat countries +of the world, the people good and simple, who did not know what war was; +indeed no war had been waged against them till the Prince came. The English +and Gascons found the country full and gay, the rooms adorned with carpets +and draperies, the caskets and chests full of fair jewels. But nothing was +safe from these robbers. They, and especially the Gascons, who are very +greedy, carried off everything." Glutted by the sack of Carcassonne and +Narbonne the plunderers fell back to Bordeaux, "their horses so laden with +spoil that they could hardly move." Worthier work awaited the Black Prince +in the following year. In the plan of campaign for 1356 it had been +arranged that he should march upon the Loire, and there unite with a force +under the Duke of Lancaster which was to land in Britanny and push rapidly +into the heart of France. Delays however hindered the Prince from starting +from Bordeaux till July, and when his march brought him to the Loire the +plan of campaign had already broken down. The outbreak in Normandy had +tempted the English Council to divert the force under Lancaster from +Britanny to that province; and the Duke was now at Cherbourg, hard pressed +by the French army under John. But if its original purpose was foiled, the +march of the Black Prince on the Loire served still more effectively the +English cause. His advance pointed straight upon Paris, and again as in the +Crecy campaign John was forced to leave all for the protection of the +capital. Hasty marches brought the king to the Loire while Prince Edward +still lay at Vierzon on the Cher. Unconscious of John's designs, he wasted +some days in the capture of Romorantin while the French troops were +crossing the Loire along its course from Orleans to Tours and John with the +advance was hurrying through Loches upon Poitiers in pursuit, as he +supposed, of the retreating Englishmen. But the movement of the French +army, near as it was, was unknown in the English camp; and when the news of +it forced the Black Prince to order a retreat the enemy was already far +ahead of him. Edward reached the fields north of Poitiers to find his line +of retreat cut off and a French army of sixty thousand men interposed +between his forces and Bordeaux. + +If the Prince had shown little ability in his management of the campaign, +he showed tactical skill in the fight which was now forced on him. On the +nineteenth of September he took a strong position in the fields of +Maupertuis, where his front was covered by thick hedges and approachable +only by a deep and narrow lane which ran between vineyards. The vineyards +and hedges he lined with bowmen, and drew up his small body of men-at-arms +at the point where the lane opened upon the higher plain on which he was +himself encamped. Edward's force numbered only eight thousand men, and the +danger was great enough to force him to offer in exchange for a free +retreat the surrender of his prisoners and of the places he had taken, with +an oath not to fight against France for seven years to come. His offers +however were rejected, and the battle opened with a charge of three hundred +French knights up the narrow lane. But the lane was soon choked with men +and horses, while the front ranks of the advancing army fell back before a +galling fire of arrows from the hedgerows. In this moment of confusion a +body of English horsemen, posted unseen by their opponents on a hill to the +right, charged suddenly on the French flank, and the Prince watching the +disorder which was caused by the repulse and surprise fell boldly on their +front. The steady shot of the English archers completed the panic produced +by this sudden attack. The first French line was driven in, and on its rout +the second, a force of sixteen thousand men, at once broke in wild terror +and fled from the field. John still held his ground with the knights of the +reserve, whom he had unwisely ordered to dismount from their horses, till a +charge of the Black Prince with two thousand lances threw this last body +into confusion. The French king was taken, desperately fighting; and when +his army poured back at noon in utter rout to the gates of Poitiers eight +thousand of their number had fallen on the field, three thousand in the +flight, and two thousand men-at-arms, with a crowd of nobles, were taken +prisoners. The royal captive entered London in triumph, mounted on a big +white charger, while the Prince rode by his side on a little black hackney +to the palace of the Savoy, which was chosen as John's dwelling, and a +truce for two years seemed to give healing-time to France. + + +[Sidenote: Edward and the Scots] + +With the Scots Edward the Third had less good fortune. Recalled from Calais +by their seizure of Berwick, the king induced Balliol to resign into his +hands his shadowy sovereignty, and in the spring of 1356 marched upon +Edinburgh with an overpowering army, harrying and burning as he marched. +But the Scots refused an engagement, a fleet sent with provisions was +beaten off by a storm, and the famine-stricken army was forced to fall +rapidly back on the border in a disastrous retreat. The trial convinced +Edward that the conquest of Scotland was impossible, and by a rapid change +of policy which marks the man he resolved to seek the friendship of the +country he had wasted so long. David Bruce was released on promise of +ransom, a truce concluded for ten years, and the prohibition of trade +between the two kingdoms put an end to. But the fulness of this +reconciliation screened a dexterous intrigue. David was childless, and +Edward availed himself of the difficulty which the young king experienced +in finding means of providing the sum demanded for his ransom to bring him +over to a proposal which would have united the two countries for ever. The +scheme however was carefully concealed; and it was not till 1363 that David +proposed to his Parliament to set aside on his death the claims of the +Steward of Scotland to his crown, and to choose Edward's third son, Lionel, +Duke of Clarence, as his successor. Though the proposal was scornfully +rejected, negotiations were still carried on between the two kings for the +realization of this project, and were probably only put an end to by the +calamities of Edward's later years. + +[Illustration: France at the Treaty of Bretigny (v2-map-2t.jpg)] + + +[Sidenote: Peace of Bretigny] + +In France misery and misgovernment seemed to be doing Edward's work more +effectively than arms. The miserable country found no rest in itself. Its +routed soldiery turned into free companies of bandits, while the lords +captured at Crecy or Poitiers procured the sums needed for their ransom by +extortion from the peasantry. The reforms demanded by the States-General +which met in this agony of France were frustrated by the treachery of the +Regent, John's eldest son Charles, Duke of Normandy, till Paris, impatient +of his weakness and misrule, rose in arms against the Crown. The peasants +too, driven mad by oppression and famine, rose in wild insurrection, +butchering their lords and firing their castles over the whole face of +France. Paris and the Jacquerie, as this peasant rising was called, were at +last crushed by treachery and the sword: and, exhausted as it was, France +still backed the Regent in rejecting a treaty of peace by which John in +1359 proposed to buy his release. By this treaty Maine, Touraine, and +Poitou in the south, Normandy, Guisnes, Ponthieu, and Calais in the west +were ceded to the English king. On its rejection Edward in 1360 poured +ravaging over the wasted land. Famine however proved its best defence. "I +could not believe," said Petrarch of this time, "that this was the same +France which I had seen so rich and flourishing. Nothing presented itself +to my eyes but a fearful solitude, an utter poverty, land uncultivated, +houses in ruins. Even the neighbourhood of Paris showed everywhere marks of +desolation and conflagration. The streets are deserted, the roads overgrown +with weeds, the whole is a vast solitude." The utter desolation forced +Edward to carry with him an immense train of provisions, and thousands of +baggage waggons with mills, ovens, forges, and fishing-boats, formed a long +train which streamed for six miles behind his army. After a fruitless +attempt upon Reims he forced the Duke of Burgundy to conclude a treaty with +him by pushing forward to Tonnerre, and then descending the Seine appeared +with his army before Paris. But the wasted country forbade a siege, and +Edward after summoning the town in vain was forced to fall back for +subsistence on the Loire. It was during this march that the Duke of +Normandy's envoys overtook him with proposals of peace. The misery of the +land had at last bent Charles to submission, and in May a treaty was +concluded at Bretigny, a small place to the eastward of Chartres. By this +treaty the English king waived his claims on the crown of France and on the +Duchy of Normandy. On the other hand, his Duchy of Aquitaine, which +included Gascony, Guienne, Poitou, and Saintonge, the Limousin and the +Angoumois, Perigord and the counties of Bigorre and Rouergue, was not only +restored but freed from its obligations as a French fief and granted in +full sovereignty with Ponthieu, Edward's heritage from the second wife of +Edward the First, as well as with Guisnes and his new conquest of Calais. + + +[Sidenote: Misery of England] + +The Peace of Bretigny set its seal upon Edward's glory. But within England +itself the misery of the people was deepening every hour. Men believed the +world to be ending, and the judgement day to be near. A few months after +the Peace came a fresh swoop of the Black Death, carrying off the Duke of +Lancaster. The repressive measures of Parliament and the landowners only +widened the social chasm which parted employer from employed. We can see +the growth of a fierce spirit of resistance both to the reactionary efforts +which were being made to bring back labour services and to the enactments +which again bound labour to the soil in statutes which strove in vain to +repress the strikes and combinations which became frequent in the towns and +the more formidable gatherings of villeins and "fugitive serfs" in the +country at large. A statute of later date throws light on the nature of the +resistance of the last. It tells us that "villeins and holders of land in +villeinage withdrew their customs and services from their lords, having +attached themselves to other persons who maintained and abetted them, and +who under colour of exemplifications from Domesday of the manors and +villages where they dwelt claimed to be quit of all manner of services +either of their body or of their lands, and would suffer no distress or +other course of justice to be taken against them; the villeins aiding their +maintainers by threatening the officers of their lords with peril to life +and limb as well by open assemblies as by confederacies to support each +other." It would seem not only as if the villein was striving to resist the +reactionary tendency of the lords of manors to regain his labour service +but that in the general overturning of social institutions the copyholder +was struggling to make himself a freeholder, and the farmer to be +recognized as proprietor of the demesne he held on lease. + + +[Sidenote: John Ball] + +A more terrible outcome of the general suffering was seen in a new revolt +against the whole system of social inequality which had till then passed +unquestioned as the divine order of the world. The Peace was hardly signed +when the cry of the poor found a terrible utterance in the words of "a mad +priest of Kent" as the courtly Froissart calls him, who for twenty years to +come found audience for his sermons in spite of interdict and imprisonment +in the stout yeomen who gathered round him in the churchyards of Kent. +"Mad" as the landowners held him to be, it was in the preaching of John +Ball that England first listened to a declaration of the natural equality +and rights of man. "Good people," cried the preacher, "things will never be +well in England so long as goods be not in common, and so long as there be +villeins and gentlemen. By what right are they whom we call lords greater +folk than we? On what grounds have they deserved it? Why do they hold us in +serfage? If we all came of the same father and mother, of Adam and Eve, how +can they say or prove that they are better than we, if it be not that they +make us gain for them by our toil what they spend in their pride? They are +clothed in velvet and warm in their furs and their ermines, while we are +covered with rags. They have wine and spices and fair bread; and we +oat-cake and straw, and water to drink. They have leisure and fine houses; +we have pain and labour, the rain and the wind in the fields. And yet it is +of us and of our toil that these men hold their state." It was the tyranny +of property that then as ever roused the defiance of socialism. A spirit +fatal to the whole system of the Middle Ages breathed in the popular rime +which condensed the levelling doctrine of John Ball: + + "When Adam delved and Eve span, + Who was then the gentleman?" + + +[Sidenote: William Langland] + +More impressive, because of the very restraint and moderation of its tone, +is the poem in which William Langland began at the same moment to embody +with a terrible fidelity all the darker and sterner aspects of the time, +its social revolt, its moral and religious awakening, the misery of the +poor, the selfishness and corruption of the rich. Nothing brings more +vividly home to us the social chasm which in the fourteenth century severed +the rich from the poor than the contrast between his "Complaint of Piers +the Ploughman" and the "Canterbury Tales." The world of wealth and ease and +laughter through which the courtly Chaucer moves with, eyes downcast as in +a pleasant dream is a far-off world of wrong and of ungodliness to the +gaunt poet of the poor. Born probably in Shropshire, where he had been put +to school and received minor orders as a clerk, "Long Will," as Langland +was nicknamed from his tall stature, found his way at an early age to +London, and earned a miserable livelihood there by singing "placebos" and +"diriges" in the stately funerals of his day. Men took the moody clerk for +a madman; his bitter poverty quickened the defiant pride that made him +loth, as he tells us, to bow to the gay lords and dames who rode decked in +silver and minivere along the Cheap or to exchange a "God save you" with +the law sergeants as he passed their new house in the Temple. His world is +the world of the poor; he dwells on the poor man's life, on his hunger and +toil, his rough revelry and his despair, with the narrow intensity of a man +who has no outlook beyond it. The narrowness, the misery, the monotony of +the life he paints reflect themselves in his verse. It is only here and +there that a love of nature or a grim earnestness of wrath quickens his +rime into poetry; there is not a gleam of the bright human sympathy of +Chaucer, of his fresh delight in the gaiety, the tenderness, the daring of +the world about him, of his picturesque sense of even its coarsest +contrasts, of his delicate irony, of his courtly wit. The cumbrous +allegory, the tedious platitudes, the rimed texts from Scripture which form +the staple of Langland's work, are only broken here and there by phrases of +a shrewd common sense, by bitter outbursts, by pictures of a broad +Hogarthian humour. What chains one to the poem is its deep undertone of +sadness: the world is out of joint, and the gaunt rimer who stalks silently +along the Strand has no faith in his power to put it right. + + +[Sidenote: Piers Ploughman] + +Londoner as he is, Will's fancy flies far from the sin and suffering of the +great city to a May-morning in the Malvern Hills. "I was weary forwandered +and went me to rest under a broad bank by a burn side, and as I lay and +leaned and looked in the water I slumbered in a sleeping, it sweyved +(sounded) so merry." Just as Chaucer gathers the typical figures of the +world he saw into his pilgrim train, so the dreamer gathers into a wide +field his army of traders and chafferers, of hermits and solitaries, of +minstrels, "japers and jinglers," bidders and beggars, ploughmen that "in +setting and in sowing swonken (toil) full hard," pilgrims "with their +wenches after," weavers and labourers, burgess and bondman, lawyer and +scrivener, court-haunting bishops, friars, and pardoners "parting the +silver" with the parish priest. Their pilgrimage is not to Canterbury but +to Truth; their guide to Truth neither clerk nor priest but Peterkin the +Ploughman, whom they find ploughing in his field. He it is who bids the +knight no more wrest gifts from his tenant nor misdo with the poor. "Though +he be thine underling here, well may hap in heaven that he be worthier set +and with more bliss than thou.... For in charnel at church churles be evil +to know, or a knight from a knave there." The gospel of equality is backed +by the gospel of labour. The aim of the Ploughman is to work, and to make +the world work with him. He warns the labourer as he warns the knight. +Hunger is God's instrument in bringing the idlest to toil, and Hunger waits +to work her will on the idler and the waster. On the eve of the great +struggle between wealth and labour, Langland stands alone in his fairness +to both, in his shrewd political and religious common sense. In the face of +the popular hatred which was to gather round John of Gaunt, he paints the +Duke in a famous apologue as the cat who, greedy as she might be, at any +rate keeps the noble rats from utterly devouring the mice of the people. +Though the poet is loyal to the Church, he proclaims a righteous life to be +better than a host of indulgences, and God sends His pardon to Piers when +priests dispute it. But he sings as a man conscious of his loneliness and +without hope. It is only in a dream that he sees Corruption, "Lady Mede," +brought to trial, and the world repenting at the preaching of Reason. In +the waking life reason finds no listeners. The poet himself is looked +upon--he tells us bitterly--as a madman. There is a terrible despair in the +close of his later poem, where the triumph of Christ is only followed by +the reign of Antichrist; where Contrition slumbers amidst the revel of +Death and Sin; and Conscience, hard beset by Pride and Sloth, rouses +himself with a last effort, and seizing his pilgrim staff, wanders over the +world to find Piers Ploughman. + + +[Sidenote: Praemunire] + +The strife indeed which Langland would have averted raged only the fiercer +as the dark years went by. If the Statutes of Labourers were powerless for +their immediate ends, either in reducing the actual rate of wages or in +restricting the mass of floating labour to definite areas of employment, +they proved effective in sowing hatred between employer and employed, +between rich and poor. But this social rift was not the only rift which was +opening amidst the distress and misery of the time. The close of William +Langland's poem is the prophecy of a religious revolution; and the way for +such a revolution was being paved by the growing bitterness of strife +between England and the Papacy. In spite of the sharp protests from king +and parliament the need for money at Avignon was too great to allow any +relaxation in the Papal claims. Almost on the eve of Crecy Edward took the +decisive step of forbidding the entry into England of any Papal bulls or +documents interfering with the rights of presentation belonging to private +patrons. But the tenacity of Rome was far from loosening its grasp on this +source of revenue for all Edward's protests. Crecy however gave a new +boldness to the action of the State, and a Statute of Provisors was passed +by the Parliament in 1351 which again asserted the rights of the English +Church and enacted that all who infringed them by the introduction of Papal +"provisors" should suffer imprisonment. But resistance to provisors only +brought fresh vexations. The patrons who withstood a Papal nominee in the +name of the law were summoned to defend themselves in the Papal Court. From +that moment the supremacy of the Papal law over the law of the land became +a great question in which the lesser question of provisors merged. The +pretension of the Court of Avignon was met in 1353 by a statute which +forbade any questioning of judgements rendered in the King's Courts or +any prosecution of a suit in foreign courts under pain of outlawry, +perpetual imprisonment, or banishment from the land. It was this act of +Praemunire--as it came in after renewals to be called--which furnished so +terrible a weapon to the Tudors in their later strife with Rome. But the +Papacy paid little heed to these warnings, and its obstinacy in still +receiving suits and appeals in defiance of this statute roused the pride +of a conquering people. England was still fresh from her glory at Bretigny +when Edward appealed to the Parliament of 1365. Complaints, he said, were +constantly being made by his subjects to the Pope as to matters which were +cognizable in the King's Courts. The practice of provisors was thus +maintained in the teeth of the laws, and "the laws, usages, ancient +customs, and franchises of his kingdom were thereby much hindered, the +King's crown degraded, and his person defamed." The king's appeal was +hotly met. "Biting words," which it was thought wise to suppress, were +used in the debate which followed, and the statutes against provisors and +appeals were solemnly confirmed. + + +[Sidenote: Wyclif] + +What gave point to this challenge was the assent of the prelates to the +proceedings of the Parliament; and the pride of Urban V. at once met it by +a counter-defiance. He demanded with threats the payment of the annual sum +of a thousand marks promised by King John in acknowledgement of the +suzerainty of the See of Rome. The insult roused the temper of the realm. +The king laid the demand before Parliament, and both houses replied that +"neither King John nor any king could put himself, his kingdom, nor his +people under subjection save with their accord or assent." John's +submission had been made "without their assent and against his coronation +oath" and they pledged themselves, should the Pope attempt to enforce his +claim, to resist him with all their power. Even Urban shrank from +imperilling the Papacy by any further demands, and the claim to a Papal +lordship over England was never again heard of. But the struggle had +brought to the front a man who was destined to give a far wider scope and +significance to this resistance to Rome than any as yet dreamed of. Nothing +is more remarkable than the contrast between the obscurity of John Wyclif's +earlier life and the fulness and vividness of our knowledge of him during +the twenty years which preceded its close. Born in the earlier part of the +fourteenth century, he had already passed middle age when he was appointed +to the mastership of Balliol College in the University of Oxford and +recognized as first among the schoolmen of his day. Of all the scholastic +doctors those of England had been throughout the keenest and most daring in +philosophical speculation. A reckless audacity and love of novelty was the +common note of Bacon, Duns Scotus, and Ockham, as against the sober and +more disciplined learning of the Parisian schoolmen, Albert and Thomas +Aquinas. The decay of the University of Paris during the English wars was +transferring her intellectual supremacy to Oxford, and in Oxford Wyclif +stood without a rival. From his predecessor, Bradwardine, whose work as a +scholastic teacher he carried on in the speculative treatises he published +during this period, he inherited the tendency to a predestinarian +Augustinianism which formed the groundwork of his later theological revolt. +His debt to Ockham revealed itself in his earliest efforts at Church +reform. Undismayed by the thunder and excommunications of the Church, +Ockham had supported the Emperor Lewis of Bavaria in his recent struggle, +and he had not shrunk in his enthusiasm for the Empire from attacking the +foundations of the Papal supremacy or from asserting the rights of the +civil power. The spare, emaciated frame of Wyclif, weakened by study and +asceticism, hardly promised a reformer who would carry on the stormy work +of Ockham; but within this frail form lay a temper quick and restless, an +immense energy, an immovable conviction, an unconquerable pride. The +personal charm which ever accompanies real greatness only deepened the +influence he derived from the spotless purity of his life. As yet indeed +even Wyclif himself can hardly have suspected the immense range of his +intellectual power. It was only the struggle that lay before him which +revealed in the dry and subtle schoolman the founder of our later English +prose, a master of popular invective, of irony, of persuasion, a dexterous +politician, an audacious partizan, the organizer of a religious order, the +unsparing assailant of abuses, the boldest and most indefatigable of +controversialists, the first Reformer who dared, when deserted and alone, +to question and deny the creed of the Christendom around him, to break +through the tradition of the past, and with his last breath to assert the +freedom of religious thought against the dogmas of the Papacy. + + +[Sidenote: "De Dominio Divino."] + +At the moment of the quarrel with Pope Urban however Wyclif was far from +having advanced to such a position as this. As the most prominent of +English scholars it was natural that he should come forward in defence of +the independence and freedom of the English Church; and he published a +formal refutation of the claims advanced by the Papacy to deal at its will +with church property in the form of a report of the Parliamentary debates +which we have described. As yet his quarrel was not with the doctrines of +Rome but with its practices; and it was on the principles of Ockham that he +defended the Parliament's refusal of the "tribute" which was claimed by +Urban. But his treatise on "The Kingdom of God," "De Dominio Divino," which +can hardly have been written later than 1368, shows the breadth of the +ground he was even now prepared to take up. In this, the most famous of his +works, Wyclif bases his argument on a distinct ideal of society. All +authority, to use his own expression, is "founded in grace." Dominion in +the highest sense is in God alone; it is God who as the suzerain of the +universe deals out His rule in fief to rulers in their various stations on +tenure of their obedience to Himself. It was easy to object that in such a +case "dominion" could never exist, since mortal sin is a breach of such a +tenure and all men sin. But, as Wyclif urged it, the theory is a purely +ideal one. In actual practice he distinguishes between dominion and power, +power which the wicked may have by God's permission, and to which the +Christian must submit from motives of obedience to God. In his own +scholastic phrase, so strangely perverted afterwards, here on earth "God +must obey the devil." But whether in the ideal or practical view of the +matter all power and dominion was of God. It was granted by Him not to one +person, His Vicar on earth, as the Papacy alleged, but to all. The king was +as truly God's Vicar as the Pope. The royal power was as sacred as the +ecclesiastical, and as complete over temporal things, even over the +temporalities of the Church, as that of the Church over spiritual things. +So far as the question of Church and State therefore was concerned the +distinction between the ideal and practical view of "dominion" was of +little account. Wyclif's application of the theory to the individual +conscience was of far higher and wider importance. Obedient as each +Christian might be to king or priest, he himself as a possessor of +"dominion" held immediately of God. The throne of God Himself was the +tribunal of personal appeal. What the Reformers of the sixteenth century +attempted to do by their theory of Justification by Faith Wyclif attempted +to do by his theory of Dominion, a theory which in establishing a direct +relation between man and God swept away the whole basis of a mediating +priesthood, the very foundation on which the mediaeval church was built. + + +[Sidenote: England and Aquitaine] + +As yet the full bearing of these doctrines was little seen. But the social +and religious excitement which we have described was quickened by the +renewal of the war, and the general suffering and discontent gathered +bitterness when the success which had flushed England with a new and +warlike pride passed into a long series of disasters in which men forgot +the glories of Crecy and Poitiers. Triumph as it seemed, the treaty of +Bretigny was really fatal to Edward's cause in the south of France. By the +cession of Aquitaine to him in full sovereignty the traditional claim on +which his strength rested lost its force. The people of the south had clung +to their Duke, even though their Duke was a foreign ruler. They had +stubbornly resisted incorporation with Northern France. While preserving +however their traditional fealty to the descendants of Eleanor they still +clung to the equally traditional suzerainty of the kings of France. But the +treaty of Bretigny not only severed them from the realm of France, it +subjected them to the realm of England. Edward ceased to be their +hereditary Duke, he became simply an English king ruling Aquitaine as an +English dominion. If the Southerners loved the North-French little, they +loved the English less, and the treaty which thus changed their whole +position was followed by a quick revulsion of feeling from the Garonne to +the Pyrenees. The Gascon nobles declared that John had no right to transfer +their fealty to another and to sever them from the realm of France. The +city of Rochelle prayed the French king not to release it from its fealty +to him. "We will obey the English with our lips," said its citizens, "but +our hearts shall never be moved towards them." Edward strove to meet this +passion for local independence, this hatred of being ruled from London, by +sending the Black Prince to Bordeaux and investing him in 1362 with the +Duchy of Aquitaine. But the new Duke held his Duchy as a fief from the +English king, and the grievance of the Southerners was left untouched. +Charles V. who succeeded his father John in 1364 silently prepared to reap +this harvest of discontent. Patient, wary, unscrupulous, he was hardly +crowned before he put an end to the war which had gone on without a pause +in Britanny by accepting homage from the claimant whom France had hitherto +opposed. Through Bertrand du Guesclin, a fine soldier whom his sagacity had +discovered, he forced the king of Navarre to a peace which closed the +fighting in Normandy. A more formidable difficulty in the way of +pacification and order lay in the Free Companies, a union of marauders whom +the disbanding of both armies after the peace had set free to harry the +wasted land and whom the king's military resources were insufficient to +cope with. It was the stroke by which Charles cleared his realm of these +scourges which forced on a new struggle with the English in the south. + + +[Sidenote: Pedro the Cruel] + +In the judgement of the English court the friendship of Castille was of the +first importance for the security of Aquitaine. Spain was the strongest +naval power of the western world, and not only would the ports of Guienne +be closed but its communication with England would be at once cut off by +the appearance of a joint French and Spanish fleet in the Channel. It was +with satisfaction therefore that Edward saw the growth of a bitter +hostility between Charles and the Castilian king, Pedro the Cruel, through +the murder of his wife, Blanche of Bourbon, the French king's +sister-in-law. Henry of Trastamara, a bastard son of Pedro's father Alfonso +the Eleventh, had long been a refugee at the French court, and soon after +the treaty of Bretigny Charles in his desire to revenge this murder on +Pedro gave Henry aid in an attempt on the Castilian throne. It was +impossible for England to look on with indifference while a dependant of +the French king became master of Castille; and in 1362 a treaty offensive +and defensive was concluded between Pedro and Edward the Third. The time +was not come for open war; but the subtle policy of Charles saw in this +strife across the Pyrenees an opportunity both of detaching Castille from +the English cause and of ridding himself of the Free Companies. With +characteristic caution he dexterously held himself in the background while +he made use of the Pope, who had been threatened by the Free Companies in +his palace at Avignon and was as anxious to get rid of them as himself. +Pedro's cruelty, misgovernment, and alliance with the Moslem of Cordova +served as grounds for a crusade which was proclaimed by Pope Urban; and Du +Guesclin, who was placed at the head of the expedition, found in the Papal +treasury and in the hope of booty from an unravaged land means of gathering +the marauders round his standard. As soon as these Crusaders crossed the +Ebro Pedro was deserted by his subjects, and in 1366 Henry of Trastamara +saw himself crowned without a struggle at Burgos as king of Castille. Pedro +with his two daughters fled for shelter to Bordeaux and claimed the aid +promised in the treaty. The lords of Aquitaine shrank from fighting for +such a cause, but in spite of their protests and the reluctance of the +English council to embark in so distant a struggle Edward held that he had +no choice save to replace his ally, for to leave Henry seated on the throne +was to leave Aquitaine to be crushed between France and Castille. + + +[Sidenote: Charles the Fifth] + +The after course of the war proved that in his anticipations of the fatal +result of a combination of the two powers Edward was right, but his policy +jarred not only against the universal craving for rest, but against the +moral sense of the world. The Black Prince however proceeded to carry out +his father's design in the teeth of the general opposition. His call to +arms robbed Henry of the aid of those English Companies who had marched +till now with the rest of the crusaders, but who returned at once to the +standard of the Prince; the passes of Navarre were opened with gold, and in +the beginning of 1367 the English army crossed the Pyrenees. Advancing to +the Ebro the Prince offered battle at Navarete with an army already reduced +by famine and disease in its terrible winter march, and Henry with double +his numbers at once attacked him. But in spite of the obstinate courage of +the Castilian troops the discipline and skill of the English soldiers once +more turned the wavering day into a victory. Du Guesclin was taken, Henry +fled across the Pyrenees, and Pedro was again seated on his throne. The pay +however which he had promised was delayed; and the Prince, whose army had +been thinned by disease to a fifth of its numbers and whose strength never +recovered from the hardships of this campaign, fell back sick and beggared +to Aquitaine. He had hardly returned when his work was undone. In 1368 +Henry reentered Castille; its towns threw open their gates; a general +rising chased Pedro from the throne, and a final battle in the spring of +1369 saw his utter overthrow. His murder by Henry's hand left the bastard +undisputed master of Castille. Meanwhile the Black Prince, sick and +disheartened, was hampered at Bordeaux by the expenses of the campaign +which Pedro had left unpaid. To defray his debt he was driven in 1368 to +lay a hearth-tax on Aquitaine, and the tax served as a pretext for an +outbreak of the long-hoarded discontent. Charles was now ready for open +action. He had won over the most powerful among the Gascon nobles, and +their influence secured the rejection of the tax in a Parliament of the +province which met at Bordeaux. The Prince, pressed by debt, persisted +against the counsel of his wisest advisers in exacting it; and the lords of +Aquitaine at once appealed to the king of France. Such an appeal was a +breach of the treaty of Bretigny in which the French king had renounced his +sovereignty over the south; but Charles had craftily delayed year after +year the formal execution of the renunciations stipulated in the treaty, +and he was still able to treat it as not binding on him. The success of +Henry of Trastamara decided him to take immediate action, and in 1369 he +summoned the Black Prince as Duke of Aquitaine to meet the appeal of the +Gascon lords in his court. + + +[Sidenote: Renewal of the War] + +The Prince was maddened by the summons. "I will come," he replied, "but +with helmet on head, and with sixty thousand men at my back." War however +had hardly been declared when the ability with which Charles had laid his +plans was seen in his seizure of Ponthieu and in a rising of the whole +country south of the Garonne. Du Gueselin returned in 1370 from Spain to +throw life into the French attack. Two armies entered Guienne from the +east; and a hundred castles with La Reole and Limoges threw open their +gates to Du Guesclin. But the march of an English army from Calais upon +Paris recalled him from the south to guard the capital at a moment when the +English leader advanced to recover Limoges, and the Black Prince borne in a +litter to its walls stormed the town and sullied by a merciless massacre of +its inhabitants the fame of his earlier exploits. Sickness however recalled +him home in the spring of 1371; and the war, protracted by the caution of +Charles who forbade his armies to engage, did little but exhaust the energy +and treasure of England. As yet indeed the French attack had made small +impression on the south, where the English troops stoutly held their ground +against Du Guesclin's inroads. But the protracted war drained Edward's +resources, while the diplomacy of Charles was busy in rousing fresh dangers +from Scotland and Castille. It was in vain that Edward looked for allies to +the Flemish towns. The male line of the Counts of Flanders ended in Count +Louis le Male; and the marriage of his daughter Margaret with Philip, Duke +of Burgundy, a younger brother of the French king, secured Charles from +attack along his northern border. In Scotland the death of David Bruce put +an end to Edward's schemes for a reunion of the two kingdoms; and his +successor, Robert the Steward, renewed in 1371 the alliance with France. + + +[Sidenote: Loss of Aquitaine] + +Castille was a yet more serious danger; and an effort which Edward made to +neutralize its attack only forced Henry of Trastamara to fling his whole +weight into the struggle. The two daughters of Pedro had remained since +their father's flight at Bordeaux. The elder of these was now wedded to +John of Gaunt, Edward's fourth son, whom he had created Duke of Lancaster +on his previous marriage with Blanche, a daughter of Henry of Lancaster and +the heiress of that house, while the younger was wedded to Edward's fifth +son, the Earl of Cambridge. Edward's aim was that of raising again the +party of King Pedro and giving Henry of Trastamara work to do at home which +would hinder his interposition in the war of Guienne. It was with this view +that John of Gaunt on his marriage took the title of king of Castille. But +no adherent of Pedro's cause stirred in Spain, and Henry replied to the +challenge by sending a Spanish fleet to the Channel. A decisive victory +which this fleet won over an English convoy off Rochelle proved a fatal +blow to the English cause. It wrested from Edward the mastery of the seas, +and cut off all communication between England and Guienne. Charles was at +once roused to new exertions. Poitou, Saintonge, and the Angoumois yielded +to his general Du Guesclin; and Rochelle was surrendered by its citizens in +1372. The next year saw a desperate attempt to restore the fortune of the +English arms. A great army under John of Gaunt penetrated into the heart of +France. But it found no foe to engage. Charles had forbidden any fighting. +"If a storm rages over the land," said the king coolly, "it disperses of +itself; and so will it be with the English." Winter in fact overtook the +Duke of Lancaster in the mountains of Auvergne, and a mere fragment of his +host reached Bordeaux. The failure of this attack was the signal for a +general defection, and ere the summer of 1374 had closed the two towns of +Bordeaux and Bayonne were all that remained of the English possessions in +Southern France. Even these were only saved by the exhaustion of the +conquerors. The treasury of Charles was as utterly drained as the treasury +of Edward; and the kings were forced to a truce. + + +[Sidenote: The Social Strife] + +Only fourteen years had gone by since the Treaty of Bretigny raised England +to a height of glory such as it had never known before. But the years had +been years of a shame and suffering which stung the people to madness. +Never had England fallen so low. Her conquests were lost, her shores +insulted, her commerce swept from the seas. Within she was drained by the +taxation and bloodshed of the war. Its popularity had wholly died away. +When the Commons were asked in 1354 whether they would assent to a treaty +of perpetual peace if they might have it, "the said Commons responded all, +and all together, 'Yes, yes!'" The population was thinned by the ravages of +pestilence, for till 1369, which saw its last visitation, the Black Death +returned again and again. The social strife too gathered bitterness with +every effort at repression. It was in vain that Parliament after Parliament +increased the severity of its laws. The demands of the Parliament of 1376 +show how inoperative the previous Statutes of Labourers had proved. They +prayed that constables be directed to arrest all who infringed the Statute, +that no labourer should be allowed to take refuge in a town and become an +artizan if there were need of his service in the county from which he came, +and that the king would protect lords and employers against the threats of +death uttered by serfs who refused to serve. The reply of the Royal Council +shows that statesmen at any rate were beginning to feel that repression +might be pushed too far. The king refused to interfere by any further and +harsher provisions between employers and employed, and left cases of breach +of law to be dealt with in his ordinary courts of justice. On the one side +he forbade the threatening gatherings which were already common in the +country, but on the other he forbade the illegal exactions of the +employers. With such a reply however the proprietary class were hardly +likely to be content. Two years later the Parliament of Gloucester called +for a Fugitive-slave Law, which would have enabled lords to seize their +serfs in whatever county or town they found refuge, and in 1379 they prayed +that judges might be sent five times a year into every shire to enforce the +Statute of Labourers. + + +[Sidenote: Edward and the Parliament] + +But the strife between employers and employed was not the only rift which +was opening in the social structure. Suffering and defeat had stripped off +the veil which hid from the nation the shallow and selfish temper of Edward +the Third. His profligacy was now bringing him to a premature old age. He +was sinking into the tool of his ministers and his mistresses. The glitter +and profusion of his court, his splendid tournaments, his feasts, his Table +Round, his new order of chivalry, the exquisite chapel of St. Stephen whose +frescoed walls were the glory of his palace at Westminster, the vast keep +which crowned the hill of Windsor, had ceased to throw their glamour round +a king who tricked his Parliament and swindled his creditors. Edward paid +no debts. He had ruined the wealthiest bankers of Florence by a cool act of +bankruptcy. The sturdier Flemish burghers only wrested payment from him by +holding his royal person as their security. His own subjects fared no +better than foreigners. The prerogative of "purveyance" by which the king +in his progresses through the country had the right of first purchase of +all that he needed at fair market price became a galling oppression in the +hands of a bankrupt king who was always moving from place to place. "When +men hear of your coming," Archbishop Islip wrote to Edward, "everybody at +once for sheer fear sets about hiding or eating or getting rid of their +geese and chickens or other possessions that they may not utterly lose them +through your arrival. The purveyors and servants of your court seize on men +and horses in the midst of their field work. They seize on the very +bullocks that are at plough or at sowing, and force them to work for two or +three days at a time without a penny of payment. It is no wonder that men +make dole and murmur at your approach, for, as the truth is in God, I +myself, whenever I hear a rumour of it, be I at home or in chapter or in +church or at study, nay if I am saying mass, even I in my own person +tremble in every limb." But these irregular exactions were little beside +the steady pressure of taxation. Even in the years of peace fifteenths and +tenths, subsidies on wool and subsidies on leather, were demanded and +obtained from Parliament; and with the outbreak of war the royal demands +became heavier and more frequent. As failure followed failure the expenses +of each campaign increased an ineffectual attempt to relieve Rochelle cost +nearly a million; the march of John of Gaunt through France utterly drained +the royal treasury. Nor were these legal supplies all that the king drew +from the nation. He had repudiated his pledge to abstain from arbitrary +taxation of imports and exports. He sold monopolies to the merchants in +exchange for increased customs. He wrested supplies from the clergy by +arrangements with the bishops or the Pope. There were signs that Edward was +longing to rid himself of the control of Parliament altogether. The power +of the Houses seemed indeed as high as ever; great statutes were passed. +Those of Provisors and Praemunire settled the relations of England to the +Roman Court. That of Treason in 1352 defined that crime and its penalties. +That of the Staples in 1353 regulated the conditions of foreign trade and +the privileges of the merchant gilds which conducted it. But side by side +with these exertions of influence we note a series of steady encroachments +by the Crown on the power of the Houses. If their petitions were granted, +they were often altered in the royal ordinance which professed to embody +them. A plan of demanding supplies for three years at once rendered the +annual assembly of Parliament less necessary. Its very existence was +threatened by the convocation in 1352 and 1353 of occasional councils with +but a single knight from every shire and a single burgess from a small +number of the greater towns, which acted as Parliament and granted +subsidies. + + +[Sidenote: The Baronage and the Church] + +What aided Edward above all in eluding or defying the constitutional +restrictions on arbitrary taxation, as well as in these more insidious +attempts to displace the Parliament, was the lessening of the check which +the Baronage and the Church had till now supplied. The same causes which +had long been reducing the number of the greater lords who formed the upper +house went steadily on. Under Edward the Second little more than seventy +were commonly summoned to Parliament; little more than forty were summoned +under Edward the Third, and of these the bulk were now bound to the Crown, +partly by their employment on its service, partly by their interest in the +continuance of the war. The heads of the Baronage too were members of the +royal family. Edward had carried out on a far wider scale than before the +policy which had been more or less adhered to from the days of Henry the +Third, that of gathering up in the hands of the royal house all the greater +heritages of the land. The Black Prince was married to Joan of Kent, the +heiress of Edward the First's younger son, Earl Edmund of Woodstock. His +marriage with the heiress of the Earl of Ulster brought to the king's +second son, Lionel, Duke of Clarence, a great part of the possessions of +the de Burghs. Later on the possessions of the house of Bohun passed by +like matches to his youngest son, Thomas of Woodstock, and to his grandson, +Henry of Lancaster. But the greatest English heritage fell to Edward's +third living son, John of Gaunt as he was called from his birth at Ghent +during his father's Flemish campaign. Originally created Earl of Richmond, +the death of his father-in-law, Henry of Lancaster, and of Henry's eldest +daughter, raised John in his wife's right to the Dukedom of Lancaster and +the Earldoms of Derby, Leicester, and Lincoln. But while the baronage were +thus bound to the Crown, they drifted more and more into an hostility with +the Church which in time disabled the clergy from acting as a check on it. +What rent the ruling classes in twain was the growing pressure of the war. +The nobles and knighthood of the country, already half ruined by the rise +in the labour market and the attitude of the peasantry, were pressed harder +than ever by the repeated subsidies which were called for by the +continuance of the struggle. In the hour of their distress they cast their +eyes greedily--as in the Norman and Angevin days--on the riches of the +Church. Never had her wealth been greater. Out of a population of some +three millions the ecclesiastics numbered between twenty and thirty +thousand. Wild tales of their riches floated about the country. They were +said to own in landed property alone more than a third of the soil, while +their "spiritualities" in dues and offerings amounted to twice the king's +revenue. Exaggerated as such statements were, the wealth of the Church was +really great; but even more galling to the nobles was its influence in the +royal councils. The feudal baronage, flushed with a new pride by its +victories at Crecy and Poitiers, looked with envy and wrath at the throng +of bishops around the council-board, and attributed to their love of peace +the errors and sluggishness which had caused, as they held, the disasters +of the war. To rob the Church of wealth and of power became the aim of a +great baronial party. + + +[Sidenote: Weakness of the Church] + +The efforts of the baronage indeed would have been fruitless had the +spiritual power of the Church remained as of old. But the clergy were rent +by their own dissensions. The higher prelates were busy with the cares of +political office, and severed from the lower priesthood by the scandalous +inequality between the revenues of the wealthier ecclesiastics and the +"poor parson" of the country. A bitter hatred divided the secular clergy +from the regular; and this strife went fiercely on in the Universities. +Fitz-Ralf, the Chancellor of Oxford, attributed to the friars the decline +which was already being felt in the number of academical students, and the +University checked by statute their practice of admitting mere children +into their order. The clergy too at large shared in the discredit and +unpopularity of the Papacy. Though they suffered more than any other class +from the exactions of Avignon, they were bound more and more to the Papal +cause. The very statutes which would have protected them were practically +set aside by the treacherous diplomacy of the Crown. At home and abroad the +Roman See was too useful for the king to come to any actual breach with it. +However much Edward might echo the bold words of his Parliament, he shrank +from an open contest which would have added the Papacy to his many foes, +and which would at the same time have robbed him of his most effective +means of wresting aids from the English clergy by private arrangement with +the Roman court. Rome indeed was brought to waive its alleged right of +appointing foreigners to English livings. But a compromise was arranged +between the Pope and the Crown in which both united in the spoliation and +enslavement of the Church. The voice of chapters, of monks, of +ecclesiastical patrons, went henceforth for nothing in the election of +bishops or abbots or the nomination to livings in the gift of churchmen. +The Crown recommended those whom it chose to the Pope, and the Pope +nominated them to see or cure of souls. The treasuries of both King and +Pope profited by the arrangement; but we can hardly wonder that after a +betrayal such as this the clergy placed little trust in statutes or royal +protection, and bowed humbly before the claims of Rome. + + +[Sidenote: Its Worldliness] + +But what weakened the clergy most was their severance from the general +sympathies of the nation, their selfishness, and the worldliness of their +temper. Immense as their wealth was, they bore as little as they could of +the common burthens of the realm. They were still resolute to assert their +exemption from the common justice of the land, though the mild punishments +of the bishops' courts carried as little dismay as ever into the mass of +disorderly clerks. But privileged as they thus held themselves against all +interference from the lay world without them, they carried on a ceaseless +interference with the affairs of this lay world through their control over +wills, contracts and divorces. No figure was better known or more hated +than the summoner who enforced the jurisdiction and levied the dues of +their courts. By their directly religious offices they penetrated into the +very heart of the social life about them. But powerful as they were, their +moral authority was fast passing away. The wealthier churchmen with their +curled hair and hanging sleeves aped the costume of the knightly society +from which they were drawn and to which they still really belonged. We see +the general impression of their worldliness in Chaucer's pictures of the +hunting monk and the courtly prioress with her love-motto on her brooch. +The older religious orders in fact had sunk into mere landowners, while the +enthusiasm of the friars had in great part died away and left a crowd of +impudent mendicants behind it. Wyclif could soon with general applause +denounce them as sturdy beggars, and declare that "the man who gives alms +to a begging friar is _ipso facto_ excommunicate." + + +[Sidenote: Advance of the Commons] + +It was this weakness of the Baronage and the Church, and the consequent +withdrawal of both as represented in the temporal and spiritual Estates of +the Upper House from the active part which they had taken till now in +checking the Crown that brought the Lower House to the front. The Knight of +the Shire was now finally joined with the Burgess of the Town to form the +Third Estate of the realm: and this union of the trader and the country +gentleman gave a vigour and weight to the action of the Commons which their +House could never have acquired had it remained as elsewhere a mere +gathering of burgesses. But it was only slowly and under the pressure of +one necessity after another that the Commons took a growing part in public +affairs. Their primary business was with taxation, and here they stood firm +against the evasions by which the king still managed to baffle their +exclusive right of granting supplies by voluntary agreements with the +merchants of the Staple. Their steady pressure at last obtained in 1362 an +enactment that no subsidy should henceforth be set upon wool without assent +of Parliament, while Purveyance was restricted by a provision that payments +should be made for all things taken for the king's use in ready money. A +hardly less important advance was made by the change of Ordinances into +Statutes. Till this time, even when a petition of the Houses was granted, +the royal Council had reserved to itself the right of modifying its form in +the Ordinance which professed to embody it. It was under colour of this +right that so many of the provisions made in Parliament had hitherto been +evaded or set aside. But the Commons now met this abuse by a demand that on +the royal assent being given their petitions should be turned without +change into Statutes of the Realm and derive force of law from their entry +on the Rolls of Parliament. The same practical sense was seen in their +dealings with Edward's attempt to introduce occasional smaller councils +with parliamentary powers. Such an assembly in 1353 granted a subsidy on +wool. The Parliament which met in the following year might have challenged +its proceedings as null and void, but the Commons more wisely contented +themselves with a demand that the ordinances passed in the preceding +assembly should receive the sanction of the Three Estates. A precedent for +evil was thus turned into a precedent for good, and though irregular +gatherings of a like sort were for a while occasionally held they were soon +seen to be fruitless and discontinued. But the Commons long shrank from +meddling with purely administrative matters. When Edward in his anxiety to +shift from himself the responsibility of the war referred to them in 1354 +for advice on one of the numerous propositions of peace, they referred him +to the lords of his Council. "Most dreaded lord," they replied, "as to this +war and the equipment needful for it we are so ignorant and simple that we +know not how nor have the power to devise. Wherefore we pray your Grace to +excuse us in this matter, and that it please you with the advice of the +great and wise persons of your Council to ordain what seems best for you +for the honour and profit of yourself and of your kingdom. And whatsoever +shall be thus ordained by assent and agreement on the part of you and your +Lords we readily assent to and will hold it firmly established." + + +[Sidenote: Baronage attacks the Church] + +But humble as was their tone the growing power of the Commons showed itself +in significant changes. In 1363 the Chancellor opened Parliament with a +speech in English, no doubt as a tongue intelligible to the members of the +Lower House. From a petition in 1376 that knights of the shire may be +chosen by common election of the better folk of the shire and not merely +nominated by the sheriff without due election, as well as from an earlier +demand that the sheriffs themselves should be disqualified from serving in +Parliament during their term of office, we see that the Crown had already +begun not only to feel the pressure of the Commons but to meet it by +foisting royal nominees on the constituencies. Such an attempt at packing +the House would hardly have been resorted to had it not already proved too +strong for direct control. A further proof of its influence was seen in a +prayer of the Parliament that lawyers practising in the King's Courts might +no longer be eligible as knights of the shire. The petition marks the rise +of a consciousness that the House was now no mere gathering of local +representatives, but a national assembly, and that a seat in it could no +longer be confined to dwellers within the bounds of this county or that. +But it showed also a pressure for seats, a passing away of the old dread of +being returned as a representative and a new ambition to gain a place among +the members of the Commons. Whether they would or no indeed the Commons +were driven forward to a more direct interference with public affairs. From +the memorable statute of 1322 their right to take equal part in all matters +brought before Parliament had been incontestable, and their waiver of much +of this right faded away before the stress of time. Their assent was needed +to the great ecclesiastical statutes which regulated the relation of the +See of Rome to the realm. They naturally took a chief part in the enactment +and re-enactment of the Statute of Labourers. The Statute of the Staple, +with a host of smaller commercial and economical measures, was of their +origination. But it was not till an open breach took place between the +baronage and the prelates that their full weight was felt. In the +Parliament of 1371, on the resumption of the war, a noble taunted the +Church as an owl protected by the feathers which other birds had +contributed, and which they had a right to resume when a hawk's approach +threatened them. The worldly goods of the Church, the metaphor hinted, had +been bestowed on it for the common weal, and could be taken from it on the +coming of a common danger. The threat was followed by a prayer that the +chief offices of state, which had till now been held by the leading +bishops, might be placed in lay hands. The prayer was at once granted: +William of Wykeham, Bishop of Winchester, resigned the Chancellorship, +another prelate the Treasury, to lay dependants of the great nobles; and +the panic of the clergy was seen in large grants which were voted by both +Convocations. + + +[Sidenote: John of Gaunt] + +At the moment of their triumph the assailants of the Church found a leader +in John of Gaunt. The Duke of Lancaster now wielded the actual power of the +Crown. Edward himself was sinking into dotage. Of his sons the Black +Prince, who had never rallied from the hardships of his Spanish campaign, +was fast drawing to the grave; he had lost a second son by death in +childhood; the third, Lionel of Clarence, had died in 1368. It was his +fourth son therefore, John of Gaunt, to whom the royal power mainly fell. +By his marriage with the heiress of the house of Lancaster the Duke had +acquired lands and wealth, but he had no taste for the policy of the +Lancastrian house or for acting as leader of the barons in any +constitutional resistance to the Crown. His pride, already quickened by the +second match with Constance to which he owed his shadowy kingship of +Castille, drew him to the throne; and the fortune which placed the royal +power practically in his hands bound him only the more firmly to its cause. +Men held that his ambition looked to the Crown itself, for the approaching +death of Edward and the Prince of Wales left but a boy, Richard, the son of +the Black Prince, a child of but a few years old, and a girl, the daughter +of the Duke of Clarence, between John and the throne. But the Duke's +success fell short of his pride. In the campaign of 1373 he traversed +France without finding a foe and brought back nothing save a ruined army to +English shores. The peremptory tone in which money was demanded for the +cost of this fruitless march while the petitions of the Parliament were set +aside till it was granted roused the temper of the Commons. They +requested--it is the first instance of such a practice--a conference with +the lords, and while granting fresh subsidies prayed that the grant should +be spent only on the war. The resentment of the government at this advance +towards a control over the actual management of public affairs was seen in +the calling of no Parliament through the next two years. But the years were +disastrous both at home and abroad. The war went steadily against the +English arms. The long negotiations with the Pope which went on at Bruges +through 1375, and in which Wyclif took part as one of the royal +commissioners, ended in a compromise by which Rome yielded nothing. The +strife over the Statute of Labourers grew fiercer and fiercer, and a return +of the plague heightened the public distress. Edward was now wholly swayed +by Alice Perrers, and the Duke shared his power with the royal mistress. +But if we gather its tenor from the complaints of the succeeding Parliament +his administration was as weak as it was corrupt. The new lay ministers +lent themselves to gigantic frauds. The chamberlain, Lord Latimer, bought +up the royal debts and embezzled the public revenue. With Richard Lyons, a +merchant through whom the king negotiated with the gild of the Staple, he +reaped enormous profits by raising the price of imports and by lending to +the Crown at usurious rates of interest. When the empty treasury forced +them to call a Parliament the ministers tampered with the elections through +the sheriffs. + + +[Sidenote: The Good Parliament] + +But the temper of the Parliament which met in 1376, and which gained from +after times the name of the Good Parliament, shows that these precautions +had utterly failed. Even their promise to pillage the Church had failed to +win for the Duke and his party the good will of the lesser gentry or the +wealthier burgesses who together formed the Commons. Projects of wide +constitutional and social change, of the humiliation and impoverishment of +an estate of the realm, were profoundly distasteful to men already +struggling with a social revolution on their own estates and in their own +workshops. But it was not merely its opposition to the projects of +Lancaster and his party among the baronage which won for this assembly the +name of the Good Parliament. Its action marked a new period in our +Parliamentary history, as it marked a new stage in the character of the +national opposition to the misrule of the Crown. Hitherto the task of +resistance had devolved on the baronage, and had been carried out through +risings of its feudal tenantry. But the misgovernment was now that of the +baronage or of a main part of the baronage itself in actual conjunction +with the Crown. Only in the power of the Commons lay any adequate means of +peaceful redress. The old reluctance of the Lower House to meddle with +matters of State was roughly swept away therefore by the pressure of the +time. The Black Prince, anxious to secure his child's succession by the +removal of John of Gaunt, the prelates with William of Wykeham at their +head, resolute again to take their place in the royal councils and to check +the projects of ecclesiastical spoliation put forward by their opponents, +alike found in it a body to oppose to the Duke's administration. Backed by +powers such as these, the action of the Commons showed none of their old +timidity or self-distrust. The presentation of a hundred and forty +petitions of grievances preluded a bold attack on the royal Council. +"Trusting in God, and standing with his followers before the nobles, +whereof the chief was John Duke of Lancaster, whose doings were ever +contrary," their speaker, Sir Peter de la Mare, denounced the +mis-management of the war, the oppressive taxation, and demanded an account +of the expenditure. "What do these base and ignoble knights attempt?" cried +John of Gaunt. "Do they think they be kings or princes of the land?" But +the movement was too strong to be stayed. Even the Duke was silenced by the +charges brought against the ministers. After a strict enquiry Latimer and +Lyons were alike thrown into prison, Alice Perrers was banished, and +several of the royal servants were driven from the Court. At this moment +the death of the Black Prince shook the power of the Parliament. But it +only heightened its resolve to secure the succession. His son, Richard of +Bordeaux, as he was called from the place of his birth, was now a child of +but ten years old; and it was known that doubts were whispered on the +legitimacy of his birth and claim. An early marriage of his mother Joan of +Kent, a granddaughter of Edward the First, with the Earl of Salisbury had +been annulled; but the Lancastrian party used this first match to throw +doubts on the validity of her subsequent union with the Black Prince and on +the right of Richard to the throne. The dread of Lancaster's ambition is +the first indication of the approach of what was from this time to grow +into the great difficulty of the realm, the question of the succession to +the Crown. From the death of Edward the Third to the death of Charles the +First no English sovereign felt himself secure from rival claimants of his +throne. As yet however the dread was a baseless one; the people were +heartily with the Prince and his child. The Duke's proposal that the +succession should be settled in case of Richard's death was rejected; and +the boy himself was brought into Parliament and acknowledged as heir of the +Crown. + + +[Sidenote: Wyclif and John of Gaunt] + +To secure their work the Commons ended by obtaining the addition of nine +lords with William of Wykeham and two other prelates among them to the +royal Council. But the Parliament was no sooner dismissed than the Duke at +once resumed his power. His anger at the blow which had been dealt at his +projects was no doubt quickened by resentment at the sudden advance of the +Lower House. From the Commons who shrank even from giving counsel on +matters of state to the Commons who dealt with such matters as their +special business, who investigated royal accounts, who impeached royal +ministers, who dictated changes in the royal advisers, was an immense step. +But it was a step which the Duke believed could be retraced. His haughty +will flung aside all restraints of law. He dismissed the new lords and +prelates from the Council. He called back Alice Perrers and the disgraced +ministers. He declared the Good Parliament no parliament, and did not +suffer its petitions to be enrolled as statutes. He imprisoned Peter de la +Mare, and confiscated the possessions of William of Wykeham. His attack on +this prelate was an attack on the clergy at large, and the attack became +significant when the Duke gave his open patronage to the denunciations of +Church property which formed the favourite theme of John Wyclif. To Wyclif +such a prelate as Wykeham symbolized the evil which held down the Church. +His administrative ability, his political energy, his wealth and the +colleges at Winchester and at Oxford which it enabled him to raise before +his death, were all equally hateful. It was this wealth, this intermeddling +with worldly business, which the ascetic reformer looked upon as the curse +that robbed prelates and churchmen of that spiritual authority which could +alone meet the vice and suffering of the time. Whatever baser motives might +spur Lancaster and his party, their projects of spoliation must have seemed +to Wyclif projects of enfranchisement for the Church. Poor and powerless in +worldly matters, he held that she would have the wealth and might of heaven +at her command. Wyclif's theory of Church and State had led him long since +to contend that the property of the clergy might be seized and employed +like other property for national purposes. Such a theory might have been +left, as other daring theories of the schoolmen had been left, to the +disputation of the schools. But the clergy were bitterly galled when the +first among English teachers threw himself hotly on the side of the party +which threatened them with spoliation, and argued in favour of their +voluntary abandonment of all Church property and of a return to their +original poverty. They were roused to action when Wyclif came forward as +the theological bulwark of the Lancastrian party at a moment when the +clergy were freshly outraged by the overthrow of the bishops and the +plunder of Wykeham. They forced the king to cancel the sentence of +banishment from the precincts of the Court which had been directed against +the Bishop of Winchester by refusing any grant of supply in Convocation +till William of Wykeham took his seat in it. But in the prosecution of +Wyclif they resolved to return blow for blow. In February 1377 he was +summoned before Bishop Courtenay of London to answer for his heretical +propositions concerning the wealth of the Church. + +The Duke of Lancaster accepted the challenge as really given to himself, +and stood by Wyclif's side in the Consistory Court at St. Paul's. But no +trial took place. Fierce words passed between the nobles and the prelate: +the Duke himself was said to have threatened to drag Courtenay out of the +church by the hair of his head; at last the London populace, to whom John +of Gaunt was hateful, burst in to their Bishop's rescue, and Wyclif's life +was saved with difficulty by the aid of the soldiery. But his boldness only +grew with the danger. A Papal bull which was procured by the bishops, +directing the University to condemn and arrest him, extorted from him a +bold defiance. In a defence circulated widely through the kingdom and laid +before Parliament, Wyclif broadly asserted that no man could be +excommunicated by the Pope "unless he were first excommunicated by +himself." He denied the right of the Church to exact or defend temporal +privileges by spiritual censures, declared that a Church might justly be +deprived by the king or lay lords of its property for defect of duty, and +defended the subjection of ecclesiastics to civil tribunals. It marks the +temper of the time and the growing severance between the Church and the +nation that, bold as the defiance was, it won the support of the people as +of the Crown. When Wyclif appeared at the close of the year in Lambeth +Chapel to answer the Archbishop's summons a message from the Court forbade +the primate to proceed and the Londoners broke in and dissolved the +session. + + +[Sidenote: Death of Edward the Third] + +Meanwhile the Duke's unscrupulous tampering with elections had packed the +Parliament of 1377 with his adherents. The work of the Good Parliament was +undone, and the Commons petitioned for the restoration of all who had been +impeached by their predecessors. The needs of the treasury were met by a +novel form of taxation. To the earlier land-tax, to the tax on personality +which dated from the Saladin Tithe, to the customs duties which had grown +into importance in the last two reigns, was now added a tax which reached +every person in the realm, a poll-tax of a groat a head. In this tax were +sown the seeds of future trouble, but when the Parliament broke up in March +the Duke's power seemed completely secured. Hardly three months later it +was wholly undone. In June Edward the Third died in a dishonoured old age, +robbed on his death-bed even of his rings by the mistress to whom he clung, +and the accession of his grandson, Richard the Second, changed the whole +face of affairs. The Duke withdrew from Court, and sought a reconciliation +with the party opposed to him. The men of the Good Parliament surrounded +the new king, and a Parliament which assembled in October took vigorously +up its work. Peter de la Mare was released from prison and replaced in the +chair of the House of Commons. The action of the Lower House indeed was as +trenchant and comprehensive as that of the Good Parliament itself. In +petition after petition the Commons demanded the confirmation of older +rights and the removal of modern abuses. They complained of administrative +wrongs such as the practice of purveyance, of abuses of justice, of the +oppressions of officers of the exchequer and of the forest, of the ill +state of prisons, of the customs of "maintenance" and "livery" by which +lords extended their protection to shoals of disorderly persons and +overawed the courts by means of them. Amid ecclesiastical abuses they noted +the state of the Church courts, and the neglect of the laws of Provisors. +They demanded that the annual assembly of Parliament, which had now become +customary, should be defined by law, and that bills once sanctioned by the +Crown should be forthwith turned into statutes without further amendment or +change on the part of the royal Council. With even greater boldness they +laid hands on the administration itself. They not only demanded that the +evil counsellors of the last reign should be removed, and that the +treasurer of the subsidy on wool should account for its expenditure to the +lords, but that the royal Council should be named in Parliament, and chosen +from members of either estate of the realm. Though a similar request for +the nomination of the officers of the royal household was refused, their +main demand was granted. It was agreed that the great officers of state, +the chancellor, treasurer, and barons of exchequer should be named by the +lords in Parliament, and removed from their offices during the king's +"tender years" only on the advice of the lords. The pressure of the war, +which rendered the existing taxes insufficient, gave the House a fresh hold +on the Crown. While granting a new subsidy in the form of a land and +property tax, the Commons restricted its proceeds to the war, and assigned +two of their members, William Walworth and John Philpot, as a standing +committee to regulate its expenditure. The successor of this Parliament in +the following year demanded and obtained an account of the way in which the +subsidy had been spent. + + +[Sidenote: Discontent of the people] + +The minority of the king, who was but eleven years old at his accession, +the weakness of the royal council amidst the strife of the baronial +factions, above all the disasters of the war without and the growing +anarchy within the realm itself, alone made possible this startling +assumption of the executive power by the Houses. The shame of defeat abroad +was being added to the misery and discomfort at home. The French war ran +its disastrous course. One English fleet was beaten by the Spaniards, a +second sunk by a storm; and a campaign in the heart of France ended, like +its predecessors, in disappointment and ruin. Meanwhile the strife between +employers and employed was kindling into civil war. The Parliament, drawn +as it was wholly from the proprietary classes, struggled as fiercely for +the mastery of the labourers as it struggled for the mastery of the Crown. +The Good Parliament had been as strenuous in demanding the enforcement of +the Statute of Labourers as any of its predecessors. In spite of statutes, +however, the market remained in the labourers' hands. The comfort of the +worker rose with his wages. Men who had "no land to live on but their hands +disdained to live on penny ale or bacon, and called for fresh flesh or +fish, fried or bake, and that hot and hotter for chilling of their maw." +But there were dark shades in this general prosperity of the labour class. +There were seasons of the year during which employment for the floating +mass of labour was hard to find. In the long interval between harvest-tide +and harvest-tide work and food were alike scarce in every homestead of the +time. Some lines of William Langland give us the picture of a farm of the +day. "I have no penny pullets for to buy, nor neither geese nor pigs, but +two green cheeses, a few curds and cream, and an oaten cake, and two loaves +of beans and bran baken for my children. I have no salt bacon nor no cooked +meat collops for to make, but I have parsley and leeks and many cabbage +plants, and eke a cow and a calf, and a cart-mare to draw afield my dung +while the drought lasteth, and by this livelihood we must all live till +Lammas-tide [August], and by that I hope to have harvest in my croft." But +it was not till Lammas-tide that high wages and the new corn bade "Hunger +go to sleep," and during the long spring and summer the free labourer and +the "waster that will not work but wander about, that will eat no bread but +the finest wheat, nor drink but of the best and brownest ale," was a source +of social and political danger. "He grieveth him against God and grudgeth +against Reason, and then curseth he the King and all his council after such +law to allow labourers to grieve." Such a smouldering mass of discontent as +this needed but a spark to burst into flame; and the spark was found in the +imposition of fresh taxation. + + +[Sidenote: The Poll-Tax] + +If John of Gaunt was fallen from his old power he was still the leading +noble in the realm, and it is possible that dread of the encroachments of +the last Parliament on the executive power drew after a time even the new +advisers of the Crown closer to him. Whatever was the cause, he again came +to the front. But the supplies voted in the past year were wasted in his +hands. A fresh expedition against France under the Duke himself ended in +failure before the walls of St. Malo, while at home his brutal household +was outraging public order by the murder of a knight who had incurred +John's anger in the precincts of Westminster. So great was the resentment +of the Londoners at this act that it became needful to summon Parliament +elsewhere than to the capital; and in 1378 the Houses met at Gloucester. +The Duke succeeded in bringing the Lords to refuse those conferences with +the Commons which had given unity to the action of the late Parliament, but +he was foiled in an attack on the clerical privilege of sanctuary and in +the threats which his party still directed against Church property, while +the Commons forced the royal Council to lay before them the accounts of the +last subsidy and to appoint a commission to examine into the revenue of the +Crown. Unhappily the financial policy of the preceding year was persisted +in. The check before St. Malo had been somewhat redeemed by treaties with +Charles of Evreux and the Duke of Britanny which secured to England the +right of holding Cherbourg and Brest; but the cost of these treaties only +swelled the expenses of the war. The fresh supplies voted at Gloucester +proved insufficient for their purpose, and a Parliament in the spring of +1379 renewed the Poll-tax in a graduated form. But the proceeds of the tax +proved miserably inadequate, and when fresh debts beset the Crown in 1380 a +return was again made to the old system of subsidies. But these failed in +their turn; and at the close of the year the Parliament again fell back on +a severer Poll-tax. One of the attractions of the new mode of taxation +seems to have been that the clergy, who adopted it for themselves, paid in +this way a larger share of the burthens of the state; but the chief ground +for its adoption lay, no doubt, in its bringing within the net of the +tax-gatherer a class which had hitherto escaped him, men such as the free +labourer, the village smith, the village tiler. But few courses could have +been more dangerous. The Poll-tax not only brought the pressure of the war +home to every household; it goaded into action precisely the class which +was already seething with discontent. The strife between labour and capital +was going on as fiercely as ever in country and in town. The landlords were +claiming new services, or forcing men who looked on themselves as free to +prove they were no villeins by law. The free labourer was struggling +against the attempt to exact work from him at low wages. The wandering +workman was being seized and branded as a vagrant. The abbey towns were +struggling for freedom against the abbeys. The craftsmen within boroughs +were carrying on the same strife against employer and craft-gild. And all +this mass of discontent was being heightened and organized by agencies with +which the Government could not cope. The poorer villeins and the free +labourers had long since banded together in secret conspiracies which the +wealthier villeins supported with money. The return of soldiers from the +war threw over the land a host of broken men, skilled in arms, and ready to +take part in any rising. The begging friars, wandering and gossiping from +village to village and street to street, shared the passions of the class +from which they sprang. Priests like Ball openly preached the doctrines of +communism. And to these had been recently added a fresh agency, which could +hardly fail to stir a new excitement. With the practical ability which +marked his character, Wyclif set on foot about this time a body of poor +preachers to supply, as he held, the place of those wealthier clergy who +had lost their hold on the land. The coarse sermons, bare feet, and russet +dress of these "Simple Priests" moved the laughter of rector and canon, but +they proved a rapid and effective means of diffusing Wyclif's protests +against the wealth and sluggishness of the clergy, and we can hardly doubt +that in the general turmoil their denunciation of ecclesiastical wealth +passed often into more general denunciations of the proprietary classes. + + +[Sidenote: John Ball] + +As the spring went by quaint rimes passed through the country, and served +as a summons to revolt. "John Ball," ran one, "greeteth you all, and doth +for to understand he hath rung your bell. Now right and might, will and +skill, God speed every dele." "Help truth," ran another, "and truth shall +help you! Now reigneth pride in price, and covetise is counted wise, and +lechery withouten shame, and gluttony withouten blame. Envy reigneth with +treason, and sloth is take in great season. God do bote, for now is tyme!" +We recognize Ball's hand in the yet more stirring missives of "Jack the +Miller" and "Jack the Carter." "Jack Miller asketh help to turn his mill +aright. He hath grounden small, small: the King's Son of Heaven he shall +pay for all. Look thy mill go aright with the four sailes, and the post +stand with steadfastness. With right and with might, with skill and with +will; let might help right, and skill go before will, and right before +might, so goeth our mill aright." "Jack Carter," ran the companion missive, +"prays you all that ye make a good end of that ye have begun, and do well, +and aye better and better: for at the even men heareth the day." "Falseness +and guile," sang Jack Trewman, "have reigned too long, and truth hath been +set under a lock, and falseness and guile reigneth in every stock. No man +may come truth to, but if he sing 'si dedero.' True love is away that was +so good, and clerks for wealth work them woe. God do bote, for now is +time." In the rude jingle of these lines began for England the literature +of political controversy: they are the first predecessors of the pamphlets +of Milton and of Burke. Rough as they are, they express clearly enough the +mingled passions which met in the revolt of the peasants: their longing for +a right rule, for plain and simple justice; their scorn of the immorality +of the nobles and the infamy of the court; their resentment at the +perversion of the law to the cause of oppression. + + +[Sidenote: The Peasant Rising] + +From the eastern and midland counties the restlessness spread to all +England south of the Thames. But the grounds of discontent varied with +every district. The actual outbreak began on the 5th of June at Dartford, +where a tiler killed one of the collectors of the poll-tax in vengeance for +a brutal outrage on his daughter. The county at once rose in arms. +Canterbury, where "the whole town was of their mind," threw open its gates +to the insurgents who plundered the Archbishop's palace and dragged John +Ball from his prison. A hundred thousand Kentishmen gathered round Walter +Tyler of Essex and John Hales of Malling to march upon London. Their +grievance was mainly a political one. Villeinage was unknown in Kent. As +the peasants poured towards Blackheath indeed every lawyer who fell into +their hands was put to death; "not till all these were killed would the +land enjoy its old freedom again," the Kentishmen shouted as they fired the +houses of the stewards and flung the rolls of the manor-courts into the +flames. But this action can hardly have been due to anything more than +sympathy with the rest of the realm, the sympathy which induced the same +men when pilgrims from the north brought news that John of Gaunt was +setting free his bondmen to send to the Duke an offer to make him Lord and +King of England. Nor was their grievance a religious one. Lollardry can +have made little way among men whose grudge against the Archbishop of +Canterbury sprang from his discouragement of pilgrimages. Their discontent +was simply political; they demanded the suppression of the poll-tax and +better government; their aim was to slay the nobles and wealthier clergy, +to take the king into their own hands, and pass laws which should seem good +to the Commons of the realm. The whole population joined the Kentishmen as +they marched along, while the nobles were paralyzed with fear. The young +king--he was but a boy of sixteen--addressed them from a boat on the river; +but the refusal of his Council under the guidance of Archbishop Sudbury to +allow him to land kindled the peasants to fury, and with cries of "Treason" +the great mass rushed on London. On the 13th of June its gates were flung +open by the poorer artizans within the city, and the stately palace of John +of Gaunt at the Savoy, the new inn of the lawyers at the Temple, the houses +of the foreign merchants, were soon in a blaze. But the insurgents, as they +proudly boasted, were "seekers of truth and justice, not thieves or +robbers," and a plunderer found carrying off a silver vessel from the sack +of the Savoy was flung with his spoil into the flames. Another body of +insurgents encamped at the same time to the east of the city. In Essex and +the eastern counties the popular discontent was more social than political. +The demands of the peasants were that bondage should be abolished, that +tolls and imposts on trade should be done away with, that "no acre of land +which is held in bondage or villeinage be held at higher rate than +fourpence a year," in other words for a money commutation of all villein +services. Their rising had been even earlier than that of the Kentishmen. +Before Whitsuntide an attempt to levy the poll-tax gathered crowds of +peasants together, armed with clubs, rusty swords, and bows. The royal +commissioners who were sent to repress the tumult were driven from the +field, and the Essex men marched upon London on one side of the river as +the Kentishmen marched on the other. The evening of the thirteenth, the day +on which Tyler entered the city, saw them encamped without its walls at +Mile-end. At the same moment Highbury and the northern heights were +occupied by the men of Hertfordshire and the villeins of St. Albans, where +a strife between abbot and town had been going on since the days of Edward +the Second. + + +[Sidenote: Richard the Second] + +The royal Council with the young king had taken refuge in the Tower, and +their aim seems to have been to divide the forces of the insurgents. On the +morning of the fourteenth therefore Richard rode from the Tower to Mile-end +to meet the Essex men. "I am your King and Lord, good people," the boy +began with a fearlessness which marked his bearing throughout the crisis, +"what will you?" "We will that you free us for ever," shouted the peasants, +"us and our lands; and that we be never named nor held for serfs!" "I grant +it," replied Richard; and he bade them go home, pledging himself at once to +issue charters of freedom and amnesty. A shout of joy welcomed the promise. +Throughout the day more than thirty clerks were busied writing letters of +pardon and emancipation, and with these the mass of the Essex men and the +men of Hertfordshire withdrew quietly to their homes. But while the king +was successful at Mile-end a terrible doom had fallen on the councillors he +left behind him. Richard had hardly quitted the Tower when the Kentishmen +who had spent the night within the city appeared at its gates. The general +terror was shown ludicrously enough when they burst in and taking the +panic-stricken knights of the royal household in rough horse-play by the +beard promised to be their equals and good comrades in the days to come. +But the horse-play changed into dreadful earnest when they found that +Richard had escaped their grasp, and the discovery of Archbishop Sudbury +and other ministers in the chapel changed their fury into a cry for blood. +The Primate was dragged from his sanctuary and beheaded. The same vengeance +was wreaked on the Treasurer and the Chief Commissioner for the levy of the +hated poll-tax, the merchant Richard Lyons who had been impeached by the +Good Parliament. Richard meanwhile had ridden round the northern wall of +the city to the Wardrobe near Blackfriars, and from this new refuge he +opened his negotiations with the Kentish insurgents. Many of these +dispersed at the news of the king's pledge to the men of Essex, but a body +of thirty thousand still surrounded Wat Tyler when Richard on the morning +of the fifteenth encountered that leader by a mere chance at Smithfield. +Hot words passed between his train and the peasant chieftain who advanced +to confer with the king, and a threat from Tyler brought on a brief +struggle in which the Mayor of London, William Walworth, struck him with +his dagger to the ground. "Kill! kill!" shouted the crowd: "they have slain +our captain!" But Richard faced the Kentishmen with the same cool courage +with which he faced the men of Essex. "What need ye, my masters?" cried the +boy-king as he rode boldly up to the front of the bowmen. "I am your +Captain and your King; follow me!" The hopes of the peasants centred in the +young sovereign; one aim of their rising had been to free him from the evil +counsellors who, as they believed, abused his youth; and at his word they +followed him with a touching loyalty and trust till he entered the Tower. +His mother welcomed him within its walls with tears of joy. "Rejoice and +praise God," Richard answered, "for I have recovered to-day my heritage +which was lost and the realm of England!" But he was compelled to give the +same pledge of freedom to the Kentishmen as at Mile-end, and it was only +after receiving his letters of pardon and emancipation that the yeomen +dispersed to their homes. + + +[Sidenote: The general revolt] + +The revolt indeed was far from being at an end. As the news of the rising +ran through the country the discontent almost everywhere broke into flame. +There were outbreaks in every shire south of the Thames as far westward as +Devonshire. In the north tumults broke out at Beverley and Scarborough, and +Yorkshire and Lancashire made ready to rise. The eastern counties were in +one wild turmoil of revolt. At Cambridge the townsmen burned the charters +of the University and attacked the colleges. A body of peasants occupied +St. Albans. In Norfolk a Norwich artizan, called John the Litster or Dyer, +took the title of King of the Commons, and marching through the country at +the head of a mass of peasants compelled the nobles whom he captured to act +as his meat-tasters and to serve him on their knees during his repast. The +story of St. Edmundsbury shows us what was going on in Suffolk. Ever since +the accession of Edward the Third the townsmen and the villeins of their +lands around had been at war with the abbot and his monks. The old and more +oppressive servitude had long passed away, but the later abbots had set +themselves against the policy of concession and conciliation which had +brought about this advance towards freedom. The gates of the town were +still in the abbot's hands. He had succeeded in enforcing his claim to the +wardship of all orphans born within his domain. From claims such as these +the town could never feel itself safe so long as mysterious charters from +Pope or King, interpreted cunningly by the wit of the new lawyer class, lay +stored in the abbey archives. But the archives contained other and hardly +less formidable documents than these. Untroubled by the waste of war, the +religious houses profited more than any other landowners by the general +growth of wealth. They had become great proprietors, money-lenders to their +tenants, extortionate as the Jew whom they had banished from their land. +There were few townsmen of St. Edmund's who had not some bonds laid up in +the abbey registry. In 1327 one band of debtors had a covenant lying there +for the payment of five hundred marks and fifty casks of wine. Another +company of the wealthier burgesses were joint debtors on a bond for ten +thousand pounds. The new spirit of commercial activity joined with the +troubles of the time to throw the whole community into the abbot's hands. + + +[Sidenote: Saint Edmundsbury] + +We can hardly wonder that riots, lawsuits, and royal commissions marked the +relation of the town and abbey under the first two Edwards. Under the third +came an open conflict. In 1327 the townsmen burst into the great house, +drove the monks into the choir, and dragged them thence to the town prison. +The abbey itself was sacked; chalices, missals, chasubles, tunicles, altar +frontals, the books of the library, the very vats and dishes of the +kitchen, all disappeared. The monks estimated their losses at ten thousand +pounds. But the townsmen aimed at higher booty than this. The monks were +brought back from prison to their own chapter-house, and the spoil of their +registry, papal bulls and royal charters, deeds and bonds and mortgages, +were laid before them. Amidst the wild threats of the mob they were forced +to execute a grant of perfect freedom and of a gild to the town as well as +of free release to their debtors. Then they were left masters of the ruined +house. But all control over town or land was gone. Through spring and +summer no rent or fine was paid. The bailiffs and other officers of the +abbey did not dare to show their faces in the streets. News came at last +that the abbot was in London, appealing for redress to the court, and the +whole county was at once on fire. A crowd of rustics, maddened at the +thought of revived claims of serfage, of interminable suits of law, poured +into the streets of the town. From thirty-two of the neighbouring villages +the priests marched at the head of their flocks as on a new crusade. The +wild mass of men, women, and children, twenty thousand in all, as men +guessed, rushed again on the abbey, and for four November days the work of +destruction went on unhindered. When gate, stables, granaries, kitchen, +infirmary, hostelry had gone up in flames, the multitude swept away to the +granges and barns of the abbey farms. Their plunder shows what vast +agricultural proprietors the monks had become. A thousand horses, a hundred +and twenty plough-oxen, two hundred cows, three hundred bullocks, three +hundred hogs, ten thousand sheep were driven off, and granges and barns +burned to the ground. It was judged afterwards that sixty thousand pounds +would hardly cover the loss. + +Weak as was the government of Mortimer and Isabella, the appeal of the +abbot against this outrage was promptly heeded. A royal force quelled the +riot, thirty carts full of prisoners were despatched to Norwich; +twenty-four of the chief townsmen with thirty-two of the village priests +were convicted as aiders and abettors of the attack on the abbey, and +twenty were summarily hanged. Nearly two hundred persons remained under +sentence of outlawry, and for five weary years their case dragged on in the +King's Courts. At last matters ended in a ludicrous outrage. Irritated by +repeated breaches of promise on the abbot's part, the outlawed burgesses +seized him as he lay in his manor of Chevington, robbed and bound him, and +carried him off to London. There he was hurried from street to street lest +his hiding-place should be detected till opportunity offered for shipping +him off to Brabant. The Primate and the Pope levelled their +excommunications against the abbot's captors in vain, and though he was at +last discovered and brought home it was probably with some pledge of the +arrangement which followed in 1332. The enormous damages assessed by the +royal justices were remitted, the outlawry of the townsmen was reversed, +the prisoners were released. On the other hand the deeds which had been +stolen were again replaced in the archives of the abbey, and the charters +which had been extorted from the monks were formally cancelled. + + +[Sidenote: St. Edmundsbury in 1381] + +The spirit of townsmen and villeins remained crushed by their failure, and +throughout the reign of Edward the Third the oppression against which they +had risen went on without a check. It was no longer the rough blow of sheer +force; it was the more delicate but more pitiless tyranny of the law. At +Richard's accession Prior John of Cambridge in the vacancy of the abbot was +in charge of the house. The prior was a man skilled in all the arts of his +day. In sweetness of voice, in knowledge of sacred song, his eulogists +pronounced him superior to Orpheus, to Nero, and to one yet more +illustrious in the Bury cloister though obscure to us, the Breton +Belgabred. John was "industrious and subtle," and subtlety and industry +found their scope in suit after suit with the burgesses and farmers around +him. "Faithfully he strove," says the monastic chronicler, "with the +villeins of Bury for the rights of his house." The townsmen he owned +specially as his "adversaries," but it was the rustics who were to show +what a hate he had won. On the fifteenth of June, the day of Wat Tyler's +fall, the howl of a great multitude round his manor-house at Mildenhall +broke roughly on the chauntings of Prior John. He strove to fly, but he was +betrayed by his own servants, judged in rude mockery of the law by villein +and bondsman, condemned and killed. The corpse lay naked in the open field +while the mob poured unresisted into Bury. Bearing the prior's head on a +lance before them through the streets, the frenzied throng at last reached +the gallows where the head of one of the royal judges, Sir John Cavendish, +was already impaled; and pressing the cold lips together in mockery of +their friendship set them side by side. Another head soon joined them. The +abbey gates were burst open, and the cloister filled with a maddened crowd, +howling for a new victim, John Lackenheath, the warder of the barony. Few +knew him as he stood among the group of trembling monks, but he courted +death with a contemptuous courage. "I am the man you seek," he said, +stepping forward; and in a minute, with a mighty roar of "Devil's son! +Monk! Traitor!" he was swept to the gallows, and his head hacked from his +shoulders. Then the crowd rolled back again to the abbey gate, and summoned +the monks before them. They told them that now for a long time they had +oppressed their fellows, the burgesses of Bury; wherefore they willed that +in the sight of the Commons they should forthwith surrender their bonds and +charters. The monks brought the parchments to the market-place; many which +were demanded they swore they could not find. A compromise was at last +patched up; and it was agreed that the charters should be surrendered till +the future abbot should confirm the liberties of the town. Then, unable to +do more, the crowd ebbed away. + + +[Sidenote: Close of the rising] + +A scene less violent, but even more picturesque, went on the same day at +St. Albans. William Grindecobbe, the leader of its townsmen, returned with +one of the charters of emancipation which Richard had granted after his +interview at Mile-end to the men of Essex and Hertfordshire, and breaking +into the abbey precincts at the head of the burghers, forced the abbot to +deliver up the charters which bound the town in bondage to his house. But a +more striking proof of servitude than any charters could give remained in +the millstones which after a long suit at law had been adjudged to the +abbey and placed within its cloister as a triumphant witness that no +townsman might grind corn within the domain of the abbey save at the +abbot's mill. Bursting into the cloister, the burghers now tore the +mill-stones from the floor, and broke them into small pieces, "like blessed +bread in church," which each might carry off to show something of the day +when their freedom was won again. But it was hardly won when it was lost +anew. The quiet withdrawal and dispersion of the peasant armies with their +charters of emancipation gave courage to the nobles. Their panic passed +away. The warlike Bishop of Norwich fell lance in hand on Litster's camp, +and scattered the peasants of Norfolk at the first shock. Richard with an +army of forty thousand men marched in triumph through Kent and Essex, and +spread terror by the ruthlessness of his executions. At Waltham he was met +by the display of his own recent charters and a protest from the Essex men +that "they were so far as freedom went the peers of their lords." But they +were to learn the worth of a king's word. "Villeins you were," answered +Richard, "and villeins you are. In bondage you shall abide, and that not +your old bondage, but a worse!" The stubborn resistance which he met showed +that the temper of the people was not easily broken. The villagers of +Billericay threw themselves into the woods and fought two hard fights +before they were reduced to submission. It was only by threats of death +that verdicts of guilty could be wrung from Essex jurors when the leaders +of the revolt were brought before them. Grindecobbe was offered his life if +he would persuade his followers at St. Albans to restore the charters they +had wrung from the monks. He turned bravely to his fellow-townsmen and bade +them take no thought for his trouble. "If I die," he said, "I shall die for +the cause of the freedom we have won, counting myself happy to end my life +by such a martyrdom. Do then to-day as you would have done had I been +killed yesterday." But repression went pitilessly on, and through the +summer and the autumn seven thousand men are said to have perished on the +gallows or the field. + + + + + +CHAPTER IV +RICHARD THE SECOND +1381-1400 + + + +[Sidenote: Results of the Peasant Revolt] + +Terrible as were the measures of repression which followed the Peasant +Revolt, and violent as was the passion of reaction which raged among the +proprietary classes at its close, the end of the rising was in fact +secured. The words of Grindecobbe ere his death were a prophecy which time +fulfilled. Cancel charters of manumission as the council might, serfage was +henceforth a doomed and perishing thing. The dread of another outbreak hung +round the employer. The attempts to bring back obsolete services quietly +died away. The old process of enfranchisement went quietly on. During the +century and a half which followed the Peasant Revolt villeinage died out so +rapidly that it became a rare and antiquated thing. The class of small +freeholders sprang fast out of the wreck of it into numbers and importance. +In twenty years more they were in fact recognized as the basis of our +electoral system in every English county. The Labour Statutes proved as +ineffective as of old in enchaining labour or reducing its price. A hundred +years after the Black Death the wages of an English labourer was sufficient +to purchase twice the amount of the necessaries of life which could have +been obtained for the wages paid under Edward the Third. The incidental +descriptions of the life of the working classes which we find in Piers +Ploughman show that this increase of social comfort had been going on even +during the troubled period which preceded the outbreak of the peasants, and +it went on faster after the revolt was over. But inevitable as such a +progress was, every step of it was taken in the teeth of the wealthier +classes. Their temper indeed at the close of the rising was that of men +frenzied by panic and the taste of blood. They scouted all notion of +concession. The stubborn will of the conquered was met by as stubborn a +will in their conquerors. The royal Council showed its sense of the danger +of a mere policy of resistance by submitting the question of +enfranchisement to the Parliament which assembled in November 1381 with +words which suggested a compromise. "If you desire to enfranchise and set +at liberty the said serfs," ran the royal message, "by your common assent, +as the King has been informed that some of you desire, he will consent to +your prayer." But no thoughts of compromise influenced the landowners in +their reply. The king's grant and letters, the Parliament answered with +perfect truth, were legally null and void: their serfs were their goods, +and the king could not take their goods from them but by their own consent. +"And this consent," they ended, "we have never given and never will give, +were we all to die in one day." Their temper indeed expressed itself in +legislation which was a fit sequel to the Statutes of Labourers. They +forbade the child of any tiller of the soil to be apprenticed in a town. +They prayed the king to ordain "that no bondman nor bondwoman shall place +their children at school, as has been done, so as to advance their children +in the world by their going into the church." The new colleges which were +being founded at the Universities at this moment closed their gates upon +villeins. + + +[Sidenote: Religious reaction] + +The panic which produced this frenzied reaction against all projects of +social reform produced inevitably as frenzied a panic of reaction against +all plans for religious reform. Wyclif had been supported by the +Lancastrian party till the very eve of the Peasant Revolt. But with the +rising his whole work seemed suddenly undone. The quarrel between the +baronage and the Church on which his political action had as yet been +grounded was hushed in the presence of a common danger. His "poor +preachers" were looked upon as missionaries of socialism. The friars +charged Wyclif with being a "sower of strife, who by his serpentlike +instigation had set the serf against his lord," and though he tossed back +the charge with disdain he had to bear a suspicion which was justified by +the conduct of some of his followers. John Ball, who had figured in the +front rank of the revolt, was falsely-named as one of his adherents, and +was alleged to have denounced in his last hour the conspiracy of the +"Wyclifites." Wyclif's most prominent scholar, Nicholas Herford, was said +to have openly approved the brutal murder of Archbishop Sudbury. Whatever +belief such charges might gain, it is certain that from this moment all +plans for the reorganization of the Church were confounded in the general +odium which attached to the projects of the peasant leaders, and that any +hope of ecclesiastical reform at the hands of the baronage and the +Parliament was at an end. But even if the Peasant Revolt had not deprived +Wyclif of the support of the aristocratic party with whom he had hitherto +cooperated, their alliance must have been dissolved by the new theological +position which he had already taken up. Some months before the outbreak of +the insurrection he had by one memorable step passed from the position of a +reformer of the discipline and political relations of the Church to that of +a protester against its cardinal beliefs. If there was one doctrine upon +which the supremacy of the Mediaeval Church rested, it was the doctrine of +Transubstantiation. It was by his exclusive right to the performance of the +miracle which was wrought in the mass that the lowliest priest was raised +high above princes. With the formal denial of the doctrine of +Transubstantiation which Wyclif issued in the spring of 1381 began that +great movement of religious revolt which ended more than a century after in +the establishment of religious freedom by severing the mass of the Teutonic +peoples from the general body of the Catholic Church. The act was the +bolder that he stood utterly alone. The University of Oxford, in which his +influence had been hitherto all-powerful, at once condemned him. John of +Gaunt enjoined him to be silent. Wyclif was presiding as Doctor of Divinity +over some disputations in the schools of the Augustinian Canons when his +academical condemnation was publicly read, but though startled for the +moment he at once challenged Chancellor or doctor to disprove the +conclusions at which he had arrived. The prohibition of the Duke of +Lancaster he met by an open avowal of his teaching, a confession which +closes proudly with the quiet words, "I believe that in the end the truth +will conquer." + + +[Sidenote: Rise of Lollardry] + +For the moment his courage dispelled the panic around him. The University +responded to his appeal, and by displacing his opponents from office +tacitly adopted his cause. But Wyclif no longer looked for support to the +learned or wealthier classes on whom he had hitherto relied. He appealed, +and the appeal is memorable as the first of such a kind in our history, to +England at large. With an amazing industry he issued tract after tract in +the tongue of the people itself. The dry, syllogistic Latin, the abstruse +and involved argument which the great doctor had addressed to his academic +hearers, were suddenly flung aside, and by a transition which marks the +wonderful genius of the man the schoolman was transformed into the +pamphleteer. If Chaucer is the father of our later English poetry, Wyclif +is the father of our later English prose. The rough, clear, homely English +of his tracts, the speech of the ploughman and the trader of the day though +coloured with the picturesque phraseology of the Bible, is in its literary +use as distinctly a creation of his own as the style in which he embodied +it, the terse vehement sentences, the stinging sarcasms, the hard +antitheses which roused the dullest mind like a whip. Once fairly freed +from the trammels of unquestioning belief, Wyclif's mind worked fast in its +career of scepticism. Pardons, indulgences, absolutions, pilgrimages to the +shrines of the saints, worship of their images, worship of the saints +themselves, were successively denied. A formal appeal to the Bible as the +one ground of faith, coupled with an assertion of the right of every +instructed man to examine the Bible for himself, threatened the very +groundwork of the older dogmatism with ruin. Nor were these daring denials +confined to the small circle of scholars who still clung to him. The +"Simple Priests" were active in the diffusion of their master's doctrines, +and how rapid their progress must have been we may see from the +panic-struck exaggerations of their opponents. A few years later they +complained that the followers of Wyclif abounded everywhere and in all +classes, among the baronage, in the cities, among the peasantry of the +countryside, even in the monastic cell itself. "Every second man one meets +is a Lollard." + + +[Sidenote: Lollardry at Oxford] + +"Lollard," a word which probably means "idle babbler," was the nickname of +scorn with which the orthodox Churchmen chose to insult their assailants. +But this rapid increase changed their scorn into vigorous action. In 1382 +Courtenay, who had now become Archbishop, summoned a council at Blackfriars +and formally submitted twenty-four propositions drawn from Wyclif's works. +An earthquake in the midst of the proceedings terrified every prelate but +the resolute Primate; the expulsion of ill humours from the earth, he said, +was of good omen for the expulsion of ill humours from the Church; and the +condemnation was pronounced. Then the Archbishop turned fiercely upon +Oxford as the fount and centre of the new heresies. In an English sermon at +St. Frideswide's Nicholas Herford had asserted the truth of Wyclif's +doctrines, and Courtenay ordered the Chancellor to silence him and his +adherents on pain of being himself treated as a heretic. The Chancellor +fell back on the liberties of the University, and appointed as preacher +another Wyclifite, Repyngdon, who did not hesitate to style the Lollards +"holy priests," and to affirm that they were protected by John of Gaunt. +Party spirit meanwhile ran high among the students. The bulk of them sided +with the Lollard leaders, and a Carmelite, Peter Stokes, who had procured +the Archbishop's letters, cowered panic stricken in his chamber while the +Chancellor, protected by an escort of a hundred townsmen, listened +approvingly to Repyngdon's defiance. "I dare go no further," wrote the poor +Friar to the Archbishop, "for fear of death"; but he mustered courage at +last to descend into the schools where Repyngdon was now maintaining that +the clerical order was "better when it was but nine years old than now that +it has grown to a thousand years and more." The appearance however of +scholars in arms again drove Stokes to fly in despair to Lambeth, while a +new heretic in open Congregation maintained Wyclif's denial of +Transubstantiation. "There is no idolatry," cried William James, "save in +the Sacrament of the Altar." "You speak like a wise man," replied the +Chancellor, Robert Rygge. Courtenay however was not the man to bear +defiance tamely, and his summons to Lambeth wrested a submission from Rygge +which was only accepted on his pledge to suppress the Lollardism of the +University. "I dare not publish them, on fear of death," exclaimed the +Chancellor when Courtenay handed him his letters of condemnation. "Then is +your University an open _fautor_ of heretics," retorted the Primate, "if it +suffers not the Catholic truth to be proclaimed within its bounds." The +royal Council supported the Archbishop's injunction, but the publication of +the decrees at once set Oxford on fire. The scholars threatened death +against the friars, "crying that they wished to destroy the University." +The masters suspended Henry Crump from teaching as a troubler of the public +peace for calling the Lollards "heretics." The Crown however at last +stepped in to Courtenay's aid, and a royal writ ordered the instant +banishment of all favourers of Wyclif with the seizure and destruction of +all Lollard books on pain of forfeiture of the University's privileges. The +threat produced its effect. Herford and Repyngdon appealed in vain to John +of Gaunt for protection; the Duke himself denounced them as heretics +against the Sacrament of the Altar, and after much evasion they were forced +to make a formal submission. Within Oxford itself the suppression of +Lollardism was complete, but with the death of religious freedom all trace +of intellectual life suddenly disappears. The century which followed the +triumph of Courtenay is the most barren in its annals, nor was the sleep of +the University broken till the advent of the New Learning restored to it +some of the life and liberty which the Primate had so roughly trodden out. + + +[Sidenote: Wyclif's Bible] + +Nothing marks more strongly the grandeur of Wyclif's position as the last +of the great schoolmen than the reluctance of so bold a man as Courtenay +even after his triumph over Oxford to take extreme measures against the +head of Lollardry. Wyclif, though summoned, had made no appearance before +the "Council of the Earthquake." "Pontius Pilate and Herod are made friends +to-day," was his bitter comment on the new union which proved to have +sprung up between the prelates and the monastic orders who had so long been +at variance with each other; "since they have made a heretic of Christ, it +is an easy inference for them to count simple Christians heretics." He +seems indeed to have been sick at the moment, but the announcement of the +final sentence roused him to life again. He petitioned the king and +Parliament that he might be allowed freely to prove the doctrines he had +put forth, and turning with characteristic energy to the attack of his +assailants, he asked that all religious vows might be suppressed, that +tithes might be diverted to the maintenance of the poor and the clergy +maintained by the free alms of their flocks, that the Statutes of +Provisors and Praemunire might be enforced against the Papacy, that +Churchmen might be declared incapable of secular offices, and imprisonment +for excommunication cease. Finally in the teeth of the council's +condemnation he demanded that the doctrine of the Eucharist which he +advocated might be freely taught. If he appeared in the following year +before the convocation at Oxford it was to perplex his opponents by a +display of scholastic logic which permitted him to retire without any +retractation of his sacramental heresy. For the time his opponents seemed +satisfied with his expulsion from the University, but in his retirement at +Lutterworth he was forging during these troubled years the great weapon +which, wielded by other hands than his own, was to produce so terrible an +effect on the triumphant hierarchy. An earlier translation of the +Scriptures, in part of which he was aided by his scholar Herford, was +being revised and brought to the second form which is better known as +"Wyclif's Bible" when death drew near. The appeal of the prelates to Rome +was answered at last by a Brief ordering him to appear at the Papal Court. +His failing strength exhausted itself in a sarcastic reply which explained +that his refusal to comply with the summons simply sprang from broken +health. "I am always glad," ran the ironical answer, "to explain my faith +to any one, and above all to the Bishop of Rome; for I take it for granted +that if it be orthodox he will confirm it, if it be erroneous he will +correct it. I assume too that as chief Vicar of Christ upon earth the +Bishop of Rome is of all mortal men most bound to the law of Christ's +Gospel, for among the disciples of Christ a majority is not reckoned by +simply counting heads in the fashion of this world, but according to the +imitation of Christ on either side. Now Christ during His life upon earth +was of all men the poorest, casting from Him all worldly authority. I +deduce from these premisses as a simple counsel of my own that the Pope +should surrender all temporal authority to the civil power and advise his +clergy to do the same." The boldness of his words sprang perhaps from a +knowledge that his end was near. The terrible strain on energies enfeebled +by age and study had at last brought its inevitable result, and a stroke +of paralysis while Wyclif was hearing mass in his parish church of +Lutterworth was followed on the next day by his death. + + +[Sidenote: The Lollard movement] + +The persecution of Courtenay deprived the religious reform of its more +learned adherents and of the support of the Universities. Wyclif's death +robbed it of its head at a moment when little had been done save a work of +destruction. From that moment Lollardism ceased to be in any sense an +organized movement and crumbled into a general spirit of revolt. All the +religious and social discontent of the times floated instinctively to this +new centre. The socialist dreams of the peasantry, the new and keener +spirit of personal morality, the hatred of the friars, the jealousy of the +great lords towards the prelacy, the fanaticism of the reforming zealot +were blended together in a common hostility to the Church and a common +resolve to substitute personal religion for its dogmatic and ecclesiastical +system. But it was this want of organization, this looseness and fluidity +of the new movement, that made it penetrate through every class of society. +Women as well as men became the preachers of the new sect. Lollardry had +its own schools, its own books; its pamphlets were passed everywhere from +hand to hand; scurrilous ballads which revived the old attacks of "Golias" +in the Angevin times upon the wealth and luxury of the clergy were sung at +every corner. Nobles like the Earl of Salisbury and at a later time Sir +John Oldcastle placed themselves openly at the head of the cause and threw +open their gates as a refuge for its missionaries. London in its hatred of +the clergy became fiercely Lollard, and defended a Lollard preacher who +ventured to advocate the new doctrines from the pulpit of St. Paul's. One +of its mayors, John of Northampton, showed the influence of the new +morality by the Puritan spirit in which he dealt with the morals of the +city. Compelled to act, as he said, by the remissness of the clergy who +connived for money at every kind of debauchery, he arrested the loose +women, cut off their hair, and carted them through the streets as objects +of public scorn. But the moral spirit of the new movement, though +infinitely its grander side, was less dangerous to the Church than its open +repudiation of the older doctrines and systems of Christendom. Out of the +floating mass of opinion which bore the name of Lollardry one faith +gradually evolved itself, a faith in the sole authority of the Bible as a +source of religious truth. The translation of Wyclif did its work. +Scripture, complains a canon of Leicester, "became a vulgar thing, and more +open to lay folk and women that knew how to read than it is wont to be to +clerks themselves." Consequences which Wyclif had perhaps shrunk from +drawing were boldly drawn by his disciples. The Church was declared to have +become apostate, its priesthood was denounced as no priesthood, its +sacraments as idolatry. + + +[Sidenote: Lollardry and the Church] + +It was in vain that the clergy attempted to stifle the new movement by +their old weapon of persecution. The jealousy entertained by the baronage +and gentry of every pretension of the Church to secular power foiled its +efforts to make persecution effective. At the moment of the Peasant Revolt +Courtenay procured the enactment of a statute which commissioned the +sheriffs to seize all persons convicted before the bishops of preaching +heresy. But the statute was repealed in the next session, and the Commons +added to the bitterness of the blow by their protest that they considered +it "in nowise their interest to be more under the jurisdiction of the +prelates or more bound by them than their ancestors had been in times +past." Heresy indeed was still a felony by the common law, and if as yet we +meet with no instances of the punishment of heretics by the fire it was +because the threat of such a death was commonly followed by the recantation +of the Lollard. But the restriction of each bishop's jurisdiction within +the limits of his own diocese made it impossible to arrest the wandering +preachers of the new doctrine, and the civil punishment--even if it had +been sanctioned by public opinion--seems to have long fallen into +desuetude. Experience proved to the prelates that few sheriffs would arrest +on the mere warrant of an ecclesiastical officer, and that no royal court +would issue the writ "for the burning of a heretic" on a bishop's +requisition. But powerless as the efforts of the Church were for purposes +of repression, they were effective in rousing the temper of the Lollards +into a bitter fanaticism. The heretics delighted in outraging the religious +sense of their day. One Lollard gentleman took home the sacramental wafer +and lunched on it with wine and oysters. Another flung some images of the +saints into his cellar. The Lollard preachers stirred up riots by the +virulence of their preaching against the friars. But they directed even +fiercer invectives against the wealth and secularity of the great +Churchmen. In a formal petition which was laid before Parliament in 1395 +they mingled denunciations of the riches of the clergy with an open +profession of disbelief in transubstantiation, priesthood, pilgrimages, and +image-worship, and a demand, which illustrates the strange medley of +opinions which jostled together in the new movement, that war might be +declared unchristian and that trades such as those of the goldsmith or the +armourer, which were contrary to apostolical poverty, might be banished +from the realm. They contended (and it is remarkable that a Parliament of +the next reign adopted the statement) that from the superfluous revenues of +the Church, if once they were applied to purposes of general utility, the +king might maintain fifteen earls, fifteen hundred knights, and six +thousand squires, besides endowing a hundred hospitals for the relief of +the poor. + + +[Sidenote: Disasters of the War] + +The distress of the landowners, the general disorganization of the country, +in every part of which bands of marauders were openly defying the law, the +panic of the Church and of society at large as the projects of the Lollards +shaped themselves into more daring and revolutionary forms, added a fresh +keenness to the national discontent at the languid and inefficient +prosecution of the war. The junction of the French and Spanish fleets had +made them masters of the seas, and what fragments were left of Guienne lay +at their mercy. The royal Council strove to detach the House of Luxemburg +from, the French alliance by winning for Richard the hand of Anne, a +daughter of the late Emperor Charles the Fourth who had fled at Crecy, and +sister of King Wenzel of Bohemia who was now king of the Romans. But the +marriage remained without political result, save that the Lollard books +which were sent into their native country by the Bohemian servants of the +new queen stirred the preaching of John Huss and the Hussite wars. Nor was +English policy more successful in Flanders. Under Philip van Arteveldt, the +son of the leader of 1345, the Flemish towns again sought the friendship of +England against France, but at the close of 1382 the towns were defeated +and their leader slain in the great French victory of Rosbecque. An +expedition to Flanders in the following year under the warlike Bishop of +Norwich turned out a mere plunder-raid and ended in utter failure. A short +truce only gave France the leisure to prepare a counter-blow by the +despatch of a small but well-equipped force under John de Vienne to +Scotland in 1385. Thirty thousand Scots joined in the advance of this force +over the border: and though northern England rose with a desperate effort +and an English army penetrated as far as Edinburgh in the hope of bringing +the foe to battle, it was forced to fall back without an encounter. +Meanwhile France dealt a more terrible blow in the reduction of Ghent. The +one remaining market for English commerce was thus closed up, while the +forces which should have been employed in saving Ghent and in the +protection of the English shores against the threat of invasion were +squandered by John of Gaunt in a war which he was carrying on alone the +Spanish frontier in pursuit of the visionary crown which he claimed in his +wife's right. The enterprise showed that the Duke had now abandoned the +hope of directing affairs at home and was seeking a new sphere of activity +abroad. To drive him from the realm had been from the close of the Peasant +Revolt the steady purpose of the councillors who now surrounded the young +king, of his favourite Robert de Vere and his Chancellor Michael de la +Pole, who was raised in 1385 to the Earldom of Suffolk. The Duke's friends +were expelled from office; John of Northampton, the head of his adherents +among the Commons, was thrown into prison; the Duke himself was charged +with treason and threatened with arrest. In 1386 John of Gaunt abandoned +the struggle and sailed for Spain. + + +[Sidenote: Temper of the Court] + +Richard himself took part in these measures against the Duke. He was now +twenty, handsome and golden-haired, with a temper capable of great actions +and sudden bursts of energy but indolent and unequal. The conception of +kingship in which he had been reared made him regard the constitutional +advance which had gone on during the war as an invasion of the rights of +his Crown. He looked on the nomination of the royal Council and the great +officers of state by the two Houses or the supervision of the royal +expenditure by the Commons as Infringements on the prerogative which only +the pressure of the war and the weakness of a minority had forced the Crown +to bow to. The judgement of his councillors was one with that of the king. +Vere was no mere royal favourite; he was a great noble and of ancient +lineage. Michael de la Pole was a man of large fortune and an old servant +of the Crown; he had taken part in the war for thirty years, and had been +admiral and captain of Calais. But neither were men to counsel the young +king wisely in his effort to obtain independence at once of Parliament and +of the great nobles. His first aim had been to break the pressure of the +royal house itself, and in his encounter with John of Gaunt he had proved +successful. But the departure of the Duke of Lancaster only called to the +front his brother and his son. Thomas of Woodstock, the Duke of Gloucester, +had inherited much of the lands and the influence of the old house of +Bohun. Round Henry, Earl of Derby, the son of John of Gaunt by Blanche of +Lancaster, the old Lancastrian party of constitutional opposition was once +more forming itself. The favour shown to the followers of Wyclif at the +Court threw on the side of this new opposition the bulk of the bishops and +Churchmen. Richard himself showed no sympathy with the Lollards, but the +action of her Bohemian servants shows the tendencies of his queen. Three +members of the royal Council were patrons of the Lollards, and the Earl of +Salisbury, a favourite with the king, was their avowed head. The Commons +displayed no hostility to the Lollards nor any zeal for the Church; but the +lukewarm prosecution of the war, the profuse expenditure of the Court, and +above all the manifest will of the king to free himself from Parliamentary +control, estranged the Lower House. Richard's haughty words told their own +tale. When the Parliament of 1385 called for an enquiry every year into the +royal household, the king replied he would enquire when he pleased. When it +prayed to know the names of the officers of state, he answered that he +would change them at his will. + + +[Sidenote: The Lords Appellant] + +The burthen of such answers and of the policy they revealed fell on the +royal councillors, and the departure of John of Gaunt forced the new +opposition into vigorous action. The Parliament of 1386 called for the +removal of Suffolk. Richard replied that he would not for such a prayer +dismiss a turnspit of his kitchen. The Duke of Gloucester and Bishop +Arundel of Ely were sent by the Houses as their envoys, and warned the king +that should a ruler refuse to govern with the advice of his lords and by +mad counsels work out his private purposes it was lawful to depose him. The +threat secured Suffolk's removal; he was impeached for corruption and +maladministration, and condemned to forfeiture and imprisonment. It was +only by submitting to the nomination of a Continual Council, with the Duke +of Gloucester at its head, that Richard could obtain a grant of subsidies. +But the Houses were no sooner broken up than Suffolk was released, and in +1387 the young king rode through the country calling on the sheriffs to +raise men against the barons, and bidding them suffer no knight of the +shire to be returned for the next Parliament "save one whom the King and +his Council chose." The general ill-will foiled both his efforts: and he +was forced to take refuge in an opinion of five of the judges that the +Continual Council was unlawful, the sentence on Suffolk erroneous, and that +the Lords and Commons had no power to remove a king's servant. Gloucester +answered the challenge by taking up arms, and a general refusal to fight +for the king forced Richard once more to yield. A terrible vengeance was +taken on his supporters in the recent schemes. In the Parliament of 1388 +Gloucester, with the four Earls of Derby, Arundel, Warwick, and Nottingham, +appealed on a charge of high treason Suffolk and De Vere, the Archbishop of +York, the Chief Justice Tresilian, and Sir Nicholas Bramber. The first two +fled, Suffolk to France, De Vere after a skirmish at Radcot Bridge to +Ireland; but the Archbishop was deprived of his see, Bramber beheaded, and +Tresilian hanged. The five judges were banished, and Sir Simon Burley with +three other members of the royal household sent to the block. + + +[Sidenote: Richard's Rule] + +At the prayer of the "Wonderful Parliament," as some called this assembly, +or as others with more justice "The Merciless Parliament," it was provided +that all officers of state should henceforth be named in Parliament or by +the Continual Council. Gloucester remained at the head of the latter body, +but his power lasted hardly a year. In May 1389 Richard found himself +strong enough to break down the government by a word. Entering the Council +he suddenly asked his uncle how old he was. "Your highness," answered +Gloucester, "is in your twenty-fourth year!" "Then I am old enough to +manage my own affairs," said Richard coolly; "I have been longer under +guardianship than any ward in my realm. I thank you for your past services, +my lords, but I need them no more." The resolution was welcomed by the +whole country; and Richard justified the country's hopes by wielding his +new power with singular wisdom and success. He refused to recall De Vere or +the five judges. The intercession of John of Gaunt on his return from Spain +brought about a full reconciliation with the Lords Appellant. A truce was +concluded with France, and its renewal year after year enabled the king to +lighten the burthen of taxation. Richard announced his purpose to govern by +advice of Parliament; he soon restored the Lords Appellant to his Council, +and committed the chief offices of state to great Churchmen like Wykeham +and Arundel. A series of statutes showed the activity of the Houses. A +Statute of Provisors which re-enacted those of Edward the Third was passed +in 1390; the Statute of Praemunire, which punished the obtaining of bulls +or other instruments from Rome with forfeiture, in 1393. The lords were +bridled anew by a Statute of Maintenance, which forbade their violently +supporting other men's causes in courts of justice, and giving "livery" to +a host of retainers. The Statute of Uses in 1391, which rendered illegal +the devices which had been invented to frustrate that of Mortmain, showed +the same resolve to deal firmly with the Church. A reform of the staple and +other mercantile enactments proved the king's care for trade. Throughout +the legislation of these eight years we see the same tone of coolness and +moderation. Eager as he was to win the good-will of the Parliament and the +Church, Richard refused to bow to the panic of the landowners or to second +the persecution of the priesthood. The demands of the Parliament that +education should be denied to the sons of villeins was refused. Lollardry +as a social danger was held firmly at bay, and in 1387 the king ordered +Lollard books to be seized and brought before the Council. But the royal +officers showed little zeal in aiding the bishops to seize or punish the +heretical teachers. + + +[Sidenote: French and English] + +It was in the period of peace which was won for the country by the wisdom +and decision of its young king that England listened to the voice of her +first great singer. The work of Chaucer marks the final settlement of the +English tongue. The close of the great movement towards national unity +which had been going on ever since the Conquest was shown in the middle of +the fourteenth century by the disuse, even amongst the nobler classes, of +the French tongue. In spite of the efforts of the grammar schools and of +the strength of fashion English won its way throughout the reign of Edward +the Third to its final triumph in that of his grandson. It was ordered to +be used in courts of law in 1362 "because the French tongue is much +unknown," and in the following year it was employed by the Chancellor in +opening Parliament. Bishops began to preach in English, and the English +tracts of Wyclif made it once more a literary tongue. We see the general +advance in two passages from writers of Edward's and Richard's reigns. +"Children in school," says Higden, a writer of the first period, "against +the usage and manner of all other nations be compelled for to leave their +own language and for to construe their lessons and their things in French, +and so they have since the Normans first came into England. Also +gentlemen's children be taught for to speak French from the time that they +be rocked in their cradle, and know how to speak and play with a child's +toy; and uplandish (or country) men will liken themselves to gentlemen, and +strive with, great busyness to speak French for to be more told of." "This +manner," adds John of Trevisa, Higden's translator in Richard's time, "was +much used before the first murrain (the Black Death of 1349), and is since +somewhat changed. For John Cornwal, a master of grammar, changed the lore +in grammar school and construing of French into English; and Richard +Pencrych learned this manner of teaching of him, as other men did of +Pencrych. So that now, the year of our Lord 1385 and of the second King +Richard after the Conquest nine, in all the grammar schools of England +children leaveth French, and construeth and learneth in English. Also +gentlemen have now much left for to teach their children French." + + +[Sidenote: Chaucer] + +This drift towards a general use of the national tongue told powerfully on +literature. The influence of the French romances everywhere tended to make +French the one literary language at the opening of the fourteenth century, +and in England this influence had been backed by the French tone of the +court of Henry the Third and the three Edwards. But at the close of the +reign of Edward the Third the long French romances needed to be translated +even for knightly hearers. "Let clerks indite in Latin," says the author of +the "Testament of Love," "and let Frenchmen in their French also indite +their quaint terms, for it is kindly to their mouths; and let us show our +fantasies in such wordes as we learned of our mother's tongue." But the new +national life afforded nobler materials than "fantasies" now for English +literature. With the completion of the work of national unity had come the +completion of the work of national freedom. The vigour of English life +showed itself in the wide extension of commerce, in the progress of the +towns, and the upgrowth of a free yeomanry. It gave even nobler signs of +its activity in the spirit of national independence and moral earnestness +which awoke at the call of Wyclif. New forces of thought and feeling which +were destined to tell on every age of our later history broke their way +through the crust of feudalism in the socialist revolt of the Lollards, and +a sudden burst of military glory threw its glamour over the age of Crecy +and Poitiers. It is this new gladness of a great people which utters itself +in the verse of Geoffrey Chaucer. Chaucer was born about 1340, the son of a +London vintner who lived in Thames Street; and it was in London that the +bulk of his life was spent. His family, though not noble, seems to have +been of some importance, for from the opening of his career we find Chaucer +in close connexion with the Court. At sixteen he was made page to the wife +of Lionel of Clarence; at nineteen he first bore arms in the campaign of +1359. But he was luckless enough to be made prisoner; and from the time of +his release after the treaty of Bretigny he took no further share in the +military enterprises of his time. He seems again to have returned to +service about the Court, and it was now that his first poems made their +appearance, the "Compleynte to Pity" in 1368, and in 1369 the "Death of +Blanch the Duchesse," the wife of John of Gaunt who from this time at least +may be looked upon as his patron. It may have been to John's influence that +he owed his employment in seven diplomatic missions which were probably +connected with the financial straits of the Crown. Three of these, in 1372, +1374, and 1378, carried him to Italy. He visited Genoa and the brilliant +court of the Visconti at Milan; at Florence, where the memory of Dante, the +"great master" whom he commemorates so reverently in his verse, was still +living, he may have met Boccaccio; at Padua, like his own clerk of +Oxenford, he possibly caught the story of Griseldis from the lips of +Petrarca. + + +[Sidenote: His Early Poems] + +It was these visits to Italy which gave us the Chaucer whom we know. From +that hour his work stands out in vivid contrast with the poetic literature +from the heart of which it sprang. The long French romances were the +product of an age of wealth and ease, of indolent curiosity, of a fanciful +and self-indulgent sentiment. Of the great passions which gave life to the +Middle Ages, that of religious enthusiasm had degenerated into the conceits +of Mariolatry, that of war into the extravagances of Chivalry. Love indeed +remained; it was the one theme of troubadour and trouveur; but it was a +love of refinement, of romantic follies, of scholastic discussions, of +sensuous enjoyment--a plaything rather than a passion. Nature had to +reflect the pleasant indolence of man; the song of the minstrel moved +through a perpetual May-time; the grass was ever green; the music of the +lark and the nightingale rang out from field and thicket. There was a gay +avoidance of all that is serious, moral, or reflective in man's life: life +was too amusing to be serious, too piquant, too sentimental, too full of +interest and gaiety and chat. It was an age of talk: "mirth is none," says +Chaucer's host, "to ride on by the way dumb as a stone "; and the Trouveur +aimed simply at being the most agreeable talker of his day. His romances, +his rimes of Sir Tristram, his Romance of the Rose, are full of colour and +fantasy, endless in detail, but with a sort of gorgeous idleness about +their very length, the minuteness of their description of outer things, the +vagueness of their touch when it passes to the subtler inner world. + +It was with this literature that Chaucer had till now been familiar, and it +was this which he followed in his earlier work. But from the time of his +visits to Milan and Genoa his sympathies drew him not to the dying verse of +France but to the new and mighty upgrowth of poetry in Italy. Dante's eagle +looks at him from the sun. "Fraunces Petrark, the laureat poete," is to him +one "whose rethorique sweete enlumyned al Itail of poetrie." The "Troilus" +which he produced about 1382 is an enlarged English version of Boccaccio's +"Filostrato"; the Knight's Tale, whose first draft is of the same period, +bears slight traces of his Teseide. It was indeed the "Decameron" which +suggested the very form of the "Canterbury Tales," the earliest of which, +such as those of the Doctor, the Man of Law, the Clerk, the Prioress, the +Franklin, and the Squire, may probably be referred like the Parliament of +Foules and the House of Fame to this time of Chaucer's life. But even while +changing, as it were, the front of English poetry Chaucer preserves his own +distinct personality. If he quizzes in the rime of Sir Thopaz the wearisome +idleness of the French romance he retains all that was worth retaining of +the French temper, its rapidity and agility of movement, its lightness and +brilliancy of touch, its airy mockery, its gaiety and good humour, its +critical coolness and self-control. The French wit quickens in him more +than in any English writer the sturdy sense and shrewdness of our national +disposition, corrects its extravagance, and relieves its somewhat ponderous +morality. If on the other hand he echoes the joyous carelessness of the +Italian tale, he tempers it with the English seriousness. As he follows +Boccaccio all his changes are on the side of purity; and when the Troilus +of the Florentine ends with the old sneer at the changeableness of woman +Chaucer bids us "look Godward," and dwells on the unchangeableness of +Heaven. + + +[Sidenote: The Canterbury Tales] + +The genius of Chaucer however was neither French nor Italian, whatever +element it might borrow from either literature, but English to the core; +and from the year 1384 all trace of foreign influence dies away. Chaucer +had now reached the climax of his poetic power. He was a busy, practical +worker, Comptroller of the Customs in 1374, of the Petty Customs in 1382, a +member of the Commons in the Parliament of 1386. The fall of the Duke of +Lancaster from power may have deprived him of employment for a time, but +from 1389 to 1391 he was Clerk of the Royal Works, busy with repairs and +building at Westminster, Windsor, and the Tower. His air indeed was that of +a student rather than of a man of the world. A single portrait has +preserved for us his forked beard, his dark-coloured dress, the knife and +pen-case at his girdle, and we may supplement this portrait by a few vivid +touches of his own. The sly, elvish face, the quick walk, the plump figure +and portly waist were those of a genial and humorous man; but men jested at +his silence, his abstraction, his love of study. "Thou lookest as thou +wouldest find an hare," laughs the host, "and ever on the ground I see thee +stare." He heard little of his neighbours' talk when office work in Thames +Street was over. "Thou goest home to thy own house anon, and also dumb as +any stone thou sittest at another book till fully dazed is thy look, and +livest thus as an heremite, although," he adds slyly, "thy abstinence is +lite," or little. But of this seeming abstraction from the world about him +there is not a trace in Chaucer's verse. We see there how keen his +observation was, how vivid and intense his sympathy with nature and the men +among whom he moved. "Farewell, my book," he cried as spring came after +winter and the lark's song roused him at dawn to spend hours gazing alone +on the daisy whose beauty he sang. But field and stream and flower and +bird, much as he loved them, were less to him than man. No poetry was over +more human than Chaucer's, none ever came more frankly and genially home to +men than his "Canterbury Tales." + +It was the continuation and revision of this work which mainly occupied him +during the years from 1384 to 1391. Its best stories, those of the Miller, +the Reeve, the Cook, the Wife of Bath, the Merchant, the Friar, the Nun, +the Priest, and the Pardoner, are ascribed to this period, as well as the +Prologue. The framework which Chaucer chose--that of a pilgrimage from +London to Canterbury--not only enabled him to string these tales together, +but lent itself admirably to the peculiar characteristics of his poetic +temper, his dramatic versatility and the universality of his sympathy. His +tales cover the whole field of mediaeval poetry; the legend of the priest, +the knightly romance, the wonder-tale of the traveller, the broad humour of +the fabliau, allegory and apologue, all are there. He finds a yet wider +scope for his genius in the persons who tell these stories, the thirty +pilgrims who start in the May morning from the Tabard in Southwark--thirty +distinct figures, representatives of every class of English society from +the noble to the ploughman. We see the "verray perfight gentil knight" in +cassock and coat of mail, with his curly-headed squire beside him, fresh as +the May morning, and behind them the brown-faced yeoman in his coat and +hood of green with a mighty bow in his hand. A group of ecclesiastics light +up for us the mediaeval church--the brawny hunt-loving monk, whose bridle +jingles as loud and clear as the chapel-bell--the wanton friar, first among +the beggars and harpers of the country-side--the poor parson, threadbare, +learned, and devout, ("Christ's lore and his apostles twelve he taught, and +first he followed it himself")--the summoner with his fiery face--the +pardoner with his wallet "bretfull of pardons, come from Rome all hot"--the +lively prioress with her courtly French lisp, her soft little red mouth, +and "Amor vincit omnia" graven on her brooch. Learning is there in the +portly person of the doctor of physic, rich with the profits of the +pestilence--the busy serjeant-of-law, "that ever seemed busier than he +was"--the hollow-cheeked clerk of Oxford with his love of books and short +sharp sentences that disguise a latent tenderness which breaks out at last +in the story of Griseldis. Around them crowd types of English industry: the +merchant; the franklin in whose house "it snowed of meat and drink"; the +sailor fresh from frays in the Channel; the buxom wife of Bath; the +broad-shouldered miller; the haberdasher, carpenter, weaver, dyer, +tapestry-maker, each in the livery of his craft; and last the honest +ploughman who would dyke and delve for the poor without hire. It is the +first time in English poetry that we are brought face to face not with +characters or allegories or reminiscences of the past, but with living and +breathing men, men distinct in temper and sentiment as in face or costume +or mode of speech; and with this distinctness of each maintained throughout +the story by a thousand shades of expression and action. It is the first +time, too, that we meet with the dramatic power which not only creates each +character but combines it with its fellows, which not only adjusts each +tale or jest to the temper of the person who utters it but fuses all into a +poetic unity. It is life in its largeness, its variety, its complexity, +which surrounds us in the "Canterbury Tales." In some of the stories +indeed, which were composed no doubt at an earlier time, there is the +tedium of the old romance or the pedantry of the schoolman; but taken as a +whole the poem is the work not of a man of letters but of a man of action. +Chaucer has received his training from war, courts, business, travel--a +training not of books but of life. And it is life that he loves--the +delicacy of its sentiment, the breadth of its farce, its laughter and its +tears, the tenderness of its Griseldis or the Smollett-like adventures of +the miller and the clerks. It is this largeness of heart, this wide +tolerance, which enables him to reflect man for us as none but Shakspere +has ever reflected him, and to do this with a pathos, a shrewd sense and +kindly humour, a freshness and joyousness of feeling, that even Shakspere +has not surpassed. + + +[Sidenote: The French Marriage] + +The last ten years of Chaucer's life saw a few more tales added to the +Pilgrimage and a few poems to his work; but his power was lessening, and in +1400 he rested from his labours in his last home, a house in the garden of +St. Mary's Chapel at Westminster. His body rests within the Abbey church. +It was strange that such a voice should have awakened no echo in the +singers that follow, but the first burst of English song died as suddenly +in Chaucer as the hope and glory of his age. He died indeed at the moment +of a revolution which was the prelude to years of national discord and +national suffering. Whatever may have been the grounds of his action, the +rule of Richard the Second after his assumption of power had shown his +capacity for self-restraint. Parted by his own will from the counsellors of +his youth, calling to his service the Lords Appellant, reconciled alike +with the baronage and the Parliament, the young king promised to be among +the noblest and wisest rulers that England had seen. But the violent and +haughty temper which underlay this self-command showed itself from time to +time. The Earl of Arundel and his brother the bishop stood in the front +rank of the party which had coerced Richard in his early days; their +influence was great in the new government. But a strife between the Earl +and John of Gaunt revived the king's resentment at the past action of this +house; and at the funeral of Anne of Bohemia in 1394 a fancied slight +roused Richard to a burst of passion. He struck the Earl so violently that +the blow drew blood. But the quarrel was patched up, and the reconciliation +was followed by the elevation of Bishop Arundel to the vacant Primacy in +1396. In the preceding year Richard had crossed to Ireland and in a short +autumn campaign reduced its native chiefs again to submission. Fears of +Lollard disturbances soon recalled him, but these died at the king's +presence, and Richard was able to devote himself to the negotiation of a +marriage which was to be the turning-point of his reign. His policy +throughout the recent years had been a policy of peace. It was war which +rendered the Crown helpless before the Parliament, and peace was needful if +the work of constant progress was not to be undone. But the short truces, +renewed from time to time, which he had as yet secured were insufficient +for this purpose, for so long as war might break out in the coming year the +king hands were tied. The impossibility of renouncing the claim to the +French crown indeed made a formal peace impossible, but its ends might be +secured by a lengthened truce, and it was with a view to this that Richard +in 1396 wedded Isabella, the daughter of Charles the Sixth of France. The +bride was a mere child, but she brought with her a renewal of the truce for +five-and-twenty years. + + +[Sidenote: Change of Richard's temper] + +The match was hardly concluded when the veil under which Richard had +shrouded his real temper began to be dropped. His craving for absolute +power, such as he witnessed in the Court of France, was probably +intensified from this moment by a mental disturbance which gathered +strength as the months went on. As if to preclude any revival of the war +Richard had surrendered Cherbourg to the king of Navarre and now gave back +Brest to the Duke of Britanny. He was said to have pledged himself at his +wedding to restore Calais to the king of France. But once freed from all +danger of such a struggle the whole character of his rule seemed to change. +His court became as crowded and profuse as his grandfather's. Money was +recklessly borrowed and as recklessly squandered. The king's pride became +insane, and it was fed with dreams of winning the Imperial crown through +the deposition of Wenzel of Bohemia. The councillors with whom he had acted +since his resumption of authority saw themselves powerless. John of Gaunt +indeed still retained influence over the king. It was the support of the +Duke of Lancaster after his return from his Spanish campaign which had +enabled Richard to hold in check the Duke of Gloucester and the party that +he led; and the anxiety of the young king to retain this support was seen +in his grant of Aquitaine to his uncle, and in the legitimation of the +Beauforts, John's children by a mistress, Catherine Swinford, whom he +married after the death of his second wife. The friendship of the Duke +brought with it the adhesion of one even more important, his son Henry, the +Earl of Derby. As heir through his mother, Blanche of Lancaster, to the +estates and influence of the Lancastrian house, Henry was the natural head +of a constitutional opposition, and his weight was increased by a marriage +with the heiress of the house of Bohun. He had taken a prominent part in +the overthrow of Suffolk and De Vere, and on the king's resumption of power +he had prudently withdrawn from the realm on a vow of Crusade, had touched +at Barbary, visited the Holy Sepulchre, and in 1390 sailed for Dantzig and +taken part in a campaign against the heathen Prussians with the Teutonic +Knights. Since his return he had silently followed in his father's track. +But the counsels of John of Gaunt were hardly wiser than of old; Arundel +had already denounced his influence as a hurtful one; and in the events +which were now to hurry quickly on he seems to have gone hand in hand with +the king. + + +[Sidenote: Richard's Tyranny] + +A new uneasiness was seen in the Parliament of 1397, and the Commons prayed +for a redress of the profusion of the Court. Richard at once seized on the +opportunity for a struggle. He declared himself grieved that his subjects +should "take on themselves any ordinance or governance of the person of the +King or his hostel or of any persons of estate whom he might be pleased to +have in his company." The Commons were at once overawed; they owned that +the cognizance of such matters belonged wholly to the king, and gave up to +the Duke of Lancaster the name of the member, Sir Thomas Haxey, who had +brought forward this article of their prayer. The lords pronounced him a +traitor, and his life was only saved by the fact that he was a clergyman +and by the interposition of Archbishop Arundel. The Earl of Arundel and the +Duke of Gloucester at once withdrew from Court. They stood almost alone, +for of the royal house the Dukes of Lancaster and York with their sons the +Earls of Derby and Rutland were now with the king, and the old coadjutor of +Gloucester, the Earl of Nottingham, was in high favour with him. The Earl +of Warwick alone joined them, and he was included in a charge of conspiracy +which was followed by the arrest of the three. A fresh Parliament in +September was packed with royal partizans, and Richard moved boldly to his +end. The pardons of the Lords Appellant were revoked. Archbishop Arundel +was impeached and banished from the realm, he was transferred by the Pope +to the See of St. Andrews, and the Primacy given to Roger Walden. The Earl +of Arundel, accused before the Peers under John of Gaunt as High Steward, +was condemned and executed in a single day. Warwick, who owned the truth of +the charge, was condemned to perpetual imprisonment. The Duke of Gloucester +was saved from a trial by a sudden death in his prison at Calais. A new +Parliament at Shrewsbury in the opening of 1398 completed the king's work. +In three days it declared null the proceedings of the Parliament of 1388, +granted to the king a subsidy on wool and leather for his life, and +delegated its authority to a standing committee of eighteen members from +both Houses with power to continue their sittings even after the +dissolution of the Parliament and to "examine and determine all matters and +subjects which had been moved in the presence of the king with all the +dependencies thereof." + + +[Sidenote: Henry of Lancaster] + +In a single year the whole colour of Richard's government had changed. He +had revenged himself on the men who had once held him down, and his revenge +was hardly taken before he disclosed a plan of absolute government. He had +used the Parliament to strike down the Primate as well as the greatest +nobles of the realm and to give him a revenue for life which enabled him to +get rid of Parliament itself, for the Permanent Committee which it named +were men devoted, as Richard held, to his cause. John of Gaunt was at its +head, and the rest of its lords were those who had backed the king in his +blow at Gloucester and the Arundels. Two however were excluded. In the +general distribution of rewards which followed Gloucester's overthrow the +Earl of Derby had been made Duke of Hereford, the Earl of Nottingham Duke +of Norfolk. But at the close of 1397 the two Dukes charged each other with +treasonable talk as they rode between Brentford and London, and the +Permanent Committee ordered the matter to be settled by a single combat. In +September 1398 the Dukes entered the lists; but Richard forbade the duel, +sentenced the Duke of Norfolk to banishment for life, and Henry of +Lancaster to exile for ten years. As Henry left London the streets were +crowded with people weeping for his fate; some followed him even to the +coast. But his withdrawal removed the last check on Richard's despotism. He +forced from every tenant of the Crown an oath to recognize the acts of his +Committee as valid, and to oppose any attempts to alter or revoke them. +Forced loans, the sale of charters of pardon to Gloucester's adherents, the +outlawry of seven counties at once on the plea that they had supported his +enemies and must purchase pardon, a reckless interference with the course +of justice, roused into new life the old discontent. Even this might have +been defied had not Richard set an able and unscrupulous leader at its +head. Leave had been given to Henry of Lancaster to receive his father's +inheritance on the death of John of Gaunt, in February 1399. But an +ordinance of the Continual Committee annulled this permission and Richard +seized the Lancastrian estates. Archbishop Arundel at once saw the chance +of dealing blow for blow. He hastened to Paris and pressed the Duke to +return to England, telling him how all men there looked for it, "especially +the Londoners, who loved him a hundred times more than they did the king." +For a while Henry remained buried in thought, "leaning on a window +overlooking a garden"; but Arundel's pressure at last prevailed, he made +his way secretly to Britanny, and with fifteen knights set sail from +Vannes. + + +[Sidenote: Ireland and the Pale] + +What had really decided him was the opportunity offered by Richard's +absence from the realm. From the opening of his reign the king's attention +had been constantly drawn to his dependent lordship of Ireland. More than +two hundred years had passed away since the troubles which followed the +murder of Archbishop Thomas forced Henry the Second to leave his work of +conquest unfinished, and the opportunity for a complete reduction of the +island which had been lost then had never returned. When Henry quitted +Ireland indeed Leinster was wholly in English hands, Connaught bowed to a +nominal acknowledgement of the English overlordship, and for a while the +work of conquest seemed to go steadily on. John de Courcy penetrated into +Ulster and established himself at Downpatrick; and Henry planned the +establishment of his youngest son, John, as Lord of Ireland. But the levity +of the young prince, who mocked the rude dresses of the native chieftains +and plucked them in insult by the beard, soon forced his father to recall +him; and in the continental struggle which soon opened on the Angevin +kings, as in the constitutional struggle within England itself which +followed it, all serious purpose of completing the conquest of Ireland was +forgotten. Nothing indeed but the feuds and weakness of the Irish tribes +enabled the adventurers to hold the districts of Drogheda, Dublin, Wexford, +Waterford, and Cork, which formed what was thenceforth known as "the +English Pale." In all the history of Ireland no event has proved more +disastrous than this half-finished conquest. Had the Irish driven their +invaders into the sea, or the English succeeded in the complete reduction +of the island, the misery of its after ages might have been avoided. A +struggle such as that in which Scotland drove out its conquerors might have +produced a spirit of patriotism and national union which would have formed +a people out of the mass of warring clans. A conquest such as that in which +the Normans made England their own would have spread at any rate the law, +the order, the civilization of the conquering country over the length and +breadth of the conquered. Unhappily Ireland, while powerless to effect its +entire deliverance, was strong enough to hold its assailants partially at +bay. The country was broken into two halves whose conflict has never +ceased. So far from either giving elements of civilization or good +government to the other, conqueror and conquered reaped only degradation +from the ceaseless conflict. The native tribes lost whatever tendency to +union or social progress had survived the invasion of the Danes. Their +barbarism was intensified by their hatred of the more civilized intruders. +But these intruders themselves, penned within the narrow limits of the +Pale, brutalized by a merciless conflict, cut off from contact with the +refining influences of a larger world, sank rapidly to the level of the +barbarism about them: and the lawlessness, the ferocity, the narrowness of +feudalism broke out unchecked in this horde of adventurers who held the +land by their sword. + + +[Sidenote: English and Irish] + +From the first the story of the English Pale was a story of degradation and +anarchy. It needed the stern vengeance of John, whose army stormed its +strongholds and drove its leading barons into exile, to preserve even their +fealty to the English Crown. John divided the Pale into counties and +ordered the observance of the English law; but the departure of his army +was the signal for a return of the disorder he had trampled under foot. +Between Englishmen and Irishmen went on a ceaseless and pitiless war. Every +Irishman without the Pale was counted by the English settlers an enemy and +a robber whose murder found no cognizance or punishment at the hands of the +law. Half the subsistence of the English barons was drawn from forays +across the border, and these forays were avenged by incursions of native +marauders which carried havoc at times to the very walls of Dublin. Within +the Pale itself the misery was hardly less. The English settlers were +harried and oppressed by their own baronage as much as by the Irish +marauders, while the feuds of the English lords wasted their strength and +prevented any effective combination either for common conquest or common +defence. So utter seemed their weakness that Robert Bruce saw in it an +opportunity for a counter-blow at his English assailants, and his victory +at Bannockburn was followed up by the despatch of a Scotch force to Ireland +with his brother Edward at its head. A general rising of the Irish welcomed +this deliverer; but the danger drove the barons of the Pale to a momentary +union, and in 1316 their valour was proved on the bloody field of Athenree +by the slaughter of eleven thousand of their foes and the almost complete +annihilation of the sept of the O'Connors. But with victory returned the +old anarchy and degradation. The barons of the Pale sank more and more into +Irish chieftains. The Fitz-Maurices, who became Earls of Desmond and whose +vast territory in Minister was erected into a County Palatine, adopted the +dress and manners of the natives around them. The rapid growth of this evil +was seen in the ruthless provisions by which Edward the Third strove to +check it in his Statute of Kilkenny. The Statute forbade the adoption of +the Irish language or name or dress by any man of English blood: it +enforced within the Pale the exclusive use of English law, and made the use +of the native or Brehon law, which was gaining ground, an act of treason; +it made treasonable any marriage of the Englishry with persons of Irish +race, or any adoption of English children by Irish foster-fathers. + + +[Sidenote: Richard in Ireland] + +But stern as they were these provisions proved fruitless to check the +fusion of the two races, while the growing independence of the Lords of the +Pale threw off all but the semblance of obedience to the English +government. It was this which stirred Richard to a serious effort for the +conquest and organization of the island. In 1386 he granted the "entire +dominion" of Ireland with the title of its Duke to Robert de Vere on +condition of his carrying out its utter reduction. But the troubles of the +reign soon recalled De Vere, and it was not till the truce with France had +freed his hands that the king again took up his projects of conquest. In +1394 he landed with an army at Waterford, and received the general +submission of the native chieftains. But the Lords of the Pale held +sullenly aloof; and Richard had no sooner quitted the island than the Irish +in turn refused to carry out their promise of quitting Leinster, and +engaged in a fresh contest with the Earl of March, whom the king had +proclaimed as his heir and left behind him as his lieutenant in Ireland. In +the summer of 1398 March was beaten and slain in battle: and Richard +resolved to avenge his cousin's death and complete the work he had begun by +a fresh invasion. He felt no apprehension of danger. At home his triumph +seemed complete. The death of Norfolk, the exile of Henry of Lancaster, +left the baronage without heads for any rising. He ensured, as he believed, +the loyalty of the great houses by the hostages of their blood whom he +carried with him, at whose head was Henry of Lancaster's son, the future +Henry the Fifth. The refusal of the Percies, the Earl of Northumberland and +his son Henry Percy or Hotspur, to obey his summons might have warned him +that danger was brewing in the north. Richard however took little heed. He +banished the Percies, who withdrew into Scotland; and sailed for Ireland at +the end of May, leaving his uncle the Duke of York regent in his stead. + + +[Sidenote: Landing of Henry] + +The opening of his campaign was indecisive, and it was not till fresh +reinforcements arrived at Dublin that the king could prepare for a march +into the heart of the island. But while he planned the conquest of Ireland +the news came that England was lost. Little more than a month had passed +after his departure when Henry of Lancaster entered the Humber and landed +at Ravenspur. He came, he said, to claim his heritage; and three of his +Yorkshire castles at once threw open their gates. The two great houses of +the north joined him at once. Ralph Neville, the Earl of Westmoreland, had +married his half-sister; the Percies came from their exile over the +Scottish border. As he pushed quickly to the south all resistance broke +down. The army which the Regent gathered refused to do hurt to the Duke; +London called him to her gates; and the royal Council could only march +hastily on Bristol in the hope of securing that port for the King's return. +But the town at once yielded to Henry's summons, the Regent submitted to +him, and with an army which grew at every step the Duke marched upon +Cheshire, where Richard's adherents were gathering in arms to meet the +king. Contrary winds had for a while kept Richard ignorant of his cousin's +progress, and even when the news reached him he was in a web of treachery. +The Duke of Albemarle, the son of the Regent Duke of York, was beside him, +and at his persuasion the King abandoned his first purpose of returning at +once, and sent the Earl of Salisbury to Conway while he himself waited to +gather his army and fleet. The six days he proposed to gather them in +became sixteen, and the delay proved fatal to his cause. As no news came of +Richard the Welshmen who flocked to Salisbury's camp dispersed on Henry's +advance to Chester. Henry was in fact master of the realm at the opening of +August when Richard at last sailed from Waterford and landed at Milford +Haven. + + +[Sidenote: Richard's capture] + +Every road was blocked, and the news that all was lost told on the thirty +thousand men he brought with him. In a single day but six thousand +remained, and even these dispersed when it was found that the King had +ridden off disguised as a friar to join the force which he believed to be +awaiting him in North Wales with Salisbury at its head. He reached +Caernarvon only to find this force already disbanded, and throwing himself +into the castle despatched his kinsmen, the Dukes of Exeter and Surrey, to +Chester to negotiate with Henry of Lancaster. But they were detained there +while the Earl of Northumberland pushed forward with a picked body of men, +and securing the castles of the coast at last sought an interview with +Richard at Conway. The King's confidence was still unbroken. He threatened +to raise a force of Welshmen and to put Lancaster to death. Deserted as he +was indeed, a King was in himself a power, and only the treacherous pledges +of the Earl induced him to set aside his plans for a reconciliation to be +brought about in Parliament and to move from Conway on the promise of a +conference with Henry at Flint. But he had no sooner reached the town than +he found himself surrounded by Lancaster's forces. "I am betrayed," he +cried, as the view of his enemies burst on him from the hill; "there are +pennons and banners in the valley." But it was too late for retreat. +Richard was seized and brought before his cousin. "I am come before my +time," said Lancaster, "but I will show you the reason. Your people, my +lord, complain that for the space of twenty years you have ruled them +harshly: however, if it please God, I will help you to rule them better." +"Fair cousin," replied the King, "since it pleases you, it pleases me +well." Then, breaking in private into passionate regrets that he had ever +spared his cousin's life, he suffered himself to be carried a prisoner +along the road to London. + +END OF VOL. II. + + + +***END OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK HISTORY OF THE ENGLISH PEOPLE, +VOLUME II (OF 8)*** + + +******* This file should be named 17038.txt or 17038.zip ******* + + +This and all associated files of various formats will be found in: +https://www.gutenberg.org/dirs/1/7/0/3/17038 + + + +Updated editions will replace the previous one--the old editions +will be renamed. + +Creating the works from public domain print editions means that no +one owns a United States copyright in these works, so the Foundation +(and you!) can copy and distribute it in the United States without +permission and without paying copyright royalties. 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