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The History of England from the Accession of Henry III. to the Death of Edward III. (1216-1377)
The Early Foreign Policy And Legislation Of Edward I
by Tout, T.F. (M.A.)
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The Dominican chronicler, Nicholas Trivet,
thus describes the personality of Edward I.: "He was of elegant
build and lofty stature, exceeding the height of the ordinary man
by a head and shoulders. His abundant hair was yellow in childhood,
black in manhood, and snowy white in age. His brow was broad, and
his features regular, save that his left eyelid drooped somewhat,
like that of his father, and hid part of the pupil. He spoke with a
stammer, which did not, however, detract from the persuasiveness of
his eloquence. His sinewy, muscular arms were those of the
consummate swordsman, and his long legs gave him a firm hold in the
saddle when riding the most spirited of steeds. His chief delight
was in war and tournaments, but he derived great pleasure from
hawking and hunting, and had a special joy in chasing down stags on
a fleet horse and slaying them with a sword instead of a hunting
spear. His disposition was magnanimous, but he was intolerant of
injuries, and reckless of dangers when seeking revenge, though
easily won over by a humble submission."1 The defects of his
youth are well brought out by the radical friar who wrote the
Song of Lewes. Even to the partisan of Earl Simon, Edward
was "a valiant lion, quick to attack the strongest, and fearing the
onslaught of none. But if a lion in pride and fierceness, he was a
panther in inconstancy and mutability, changing his word and
promise, cloaking himself by pleasant speech. When he is in a
strait he promises whatever you wish, but as soon as he has escaped
he forgets his promise. The treachery or falsehood, whereby he is
advanced, he calls prudence; the way whereby he arrives whither he
will, crooked though it be, he regards as straight;
whatever he likes he says is lawful, and he thinks he is released
from the law, as though he were greater than a king."2
1 Annals, pp. 181-82.
2 Song of Lewes, pp. 14-15, ed.
Kingsford.
Hot and impulsive in disposition, easily persuaded that his own
cause was right, and with a full share in the pride of caste,
Edward committed many deeds of violence in his youth, and never got
over his deeply rooted habit of keeping the letter of his promise
while violating its spirit. Yet he learnt to curb his impetuous
temper, and few medieval kings had a higher idea of justice or a
more strict regard to his plighted word. "Keep troth" was inscribed
upon his tomb, and his reign signally falsified the prediction of
evil which the Lewes song-writer ventured to utter. A true sympathy
bound him closely to his nobles and people. His unstained family
life, his piety and religious zeal, his devotion to friends and
kinsfolk, his keen interest in the best movements of his time,
showed him a true son of Henry III. But his strength of will and
seriousness of purpose stand in strong contrast to his father's
weakness and levity. A hard-working, clear-headed, practical, and
sober temperament made him the most capable king of all his line.
He may have been wanting in originality or deep insight, yet it is
impossible to dispute the verdict that has declared him to be the
greatest of all the Plantagenets.
The broad lines of Edward's policy during the thirty-five years
of his kingship had already been laid down for him during his rude
schooling. The ineffectiveness of his father's government inspired
him with a love of strong rule, and this enabled him to grapple
with the chronic maladministration which made even a well-ordered
medieval kingdom a hot-bed of disorder. The age of Earl Simon had
been fertile in new ideals and principles of government. Edward
held to the best of the traditions of his youth, and his task was
not one of creation so much as of selection. His age was an age of
definition. The series of great laws, which he made during the
earlier half of his reign, represented a long effort to appropriate
what was best in the age that had gone before, and to combine it in
orderly sequence. The same ideals mark the constitutional policy of
his later years. The materials for the future constitution of England
were already at his hand. It was a task well within Edward's
capacity to strengthen the authority of the crown by associating
the loyal nobles and clergy in the work of ruling the state, and to
build up a body politic in which every class of the nation should
have its part. Yet he never willingly surrendered the most
insignificant of his prerogatives, and if he took the people into
partnership with him, he did so with the firm belief that he would
be a more powerful king if his subjects loved and trusted him.
Though closely associated with his nobles by many ties of kinship
and affection, he was the uncompromising foe of feudal separatism,
and hotly resented even the constitutional control which the barons
regarded as their right. In the same way the unlimited franchises
of the lords of the Welsh march, the almost regal authority which
the treaty of Shrewsbury gave to the Prince of Wales, the rejection
of his claims as feudal overlord of Scotland, were abhorrent to his
autocratic disposition. True son of the Church though he was, he
was the bitter foe of ecclesiastical claims which, constantly
encroaching beyond their own sphere, denied kings the fulness of
their authority.
Edward's policy was thoroughly comprehensive. He is not only the
"English Justinian" and the creator of our later constitution; he
has rightly been praised for his clear conception of the ideal of a
united Britain which brought him into collision with Welsh and
Scots. His foreign policy lay as near to his heart as the conquest
of Wales or Scotland, or the subjection of priests and nobles. He
was eager to make Gascony obey him, anxious to keep in check the
French king, and to establish a sort of European balance of power,
of which England, as in Wolsey's later dreams, was to be the tongue
of the balance. Yet, despite his severe schooling in self-control,
he undertook more than he could accomplish, and his failure was the
more signal because he found the utmost difficulty in discovering
trustworthy subordinates. Moreover, the limited resources of a
medieval state, and the even more limited control which a medieval
ruler had over these resources, were fatal obstacles in the way of
too ambitious a policy. Edward had inherited his father's load of
debt, and could only accomplish great things by further pledging
his credit to foreign financiers, against whom his subjects raised
unending complaints. Yet, if his methods of attaining his objects were
sometimes mean and often violent, there was a rare nobility about
his general purpose.
Every precaution was taken to secure Edward's succession and the
establishment of the provisional administration which was to rule
until his return. Before leaving England in 1270, Edward had
appointed as his agents Walter Giffard, Archbishop of York, Roger
Mortimer, and Robert Burnell, his favourite clerk. The vacancy of
the see of Canterbury after Boniface's death placed Giffard in a
position of peculiar eminence. Appointed first lord of the council,
he virtually became regent; and he associated with himself in the
administration of the realm his two colleagues in the management of
the new king's private affairs. Early in 1273 a parliament of
magnates and representatives of shires and boroughs took oaths of
allegiance to the king and continued the authority of the three
regents. By the double title of Edward's personal delegation and
the recognition of the estates, Giffard, Mortimer, and Burnell
ruled the country for the two years which were to elapse before the
sovereign's return. Their government was just, economical, and
peaceful. Even Gilbert of Gloucester remained quiet, and, save for
the refusal of the Prince of Wales to perform his feudal
obligations, the calm of the last years of the old reign continued.
It is evidence of constitutional progress that the administration
was carried on with so little friction in the absence of the
monarch. Roger Mortimer, the most formidable of the feudal
baronage, was himself one of the agents of this salutary change.
The marcher chieftain put down with promptitude an attempted revolt
of north-country knights which threatened public tranquillity.
Edward first heard of his father's death in Sicily, but the
tidings of the maintenance of peace rendered it unnecessary for him
to hasten his return, and he made his way slowly through Italy. In
Sicily he was entertained by his uncle, Charles of Anjou. Thence he
went to Orvieto, where the new pope, Gregory X., who, as archdeacon
of Liege, had been the comrade of his crusade, was then residing.
From king and pope alike Edward earnestly sought vengeance for the
murder of Henry of Almaine. Proceeding northwards, he was received
with great pomp by the cities of Lombardy, and made personal
acquaintance with Savoy and its count, Philip, his aged
great-uncle. Crossing the Mont Cenis, he was welcomed by
bands of English magnates who had gone forth to meet him. He was
soon at the head of a little army, and in the true spirit of a hero
of romance halted to receive the challenge of the boastful Count of
Chalon. The tournament between the best knights of England and
Burgundy was fought out with such desperation that it became a
serious battle. At last Edward unhorsed the count in a personal
encounter, which added greatly to his fame. This "Little Battle of
Chalon" was the last victory of his irresponsible youth.
The serious business of kingcraft began when Edward met his
cousin, Philip III., at Paris. The news from England was still so
good that Edward resolved to remain in France with the twofold
object of settling his relations with the French monarchy and of
receiving the homage and regulating the affairs of Aquitaine.
Despite the treaty of Paris of 1259, there were so many subjects of
dispute between the English and French kings that, beneath the warm
protestations of affection between the kinsmen, there was, as a
French chronicler said, but a cat-and-dog love between them.1 The
treaty had not been properly executed, and the English had long
complained that the French had not yielded up to England their
king's rights over the three bishoprics of Limoges, Cahors, and
Périgueux, which St. Louis had ceded. New complications
arose after the death of Alfonse of Poitiers in the course of the
Tunisian crusade. By the treaty of Paris the English king should
then have entered into possession of Saintonge south of the
Charente, the Agenais, and lower Quercy. But the ministers of
Philip III. laid hands upon the whole of Alfonse's inheritance and
refused to surrender these districts to the English. The welcome
which Edward received from his cousin at Paris could not blind him
to the incompatibility of their interests, nor to the impossibility
of obtaining at the moment the cession of the promised lands. He
did not choose to tarry at Paris while the diplomatists unravelled
the tangled web of statecraft. Nor would he tender an unconditional
homage to the prince who withheld from him his inheritance. Already
a stickler for legal rights, even when used to his own detriment,
Edward was unable to deny his subjection to the overlord
of Aquitaine. He therefore performed homage, but he phrased his
submission in terms which left him free to urge his claims at a
more convenient season. "Lord king," he said to Philip, "I do you
homage for all the lands which I ought to hold of you." The
vagueness of this language suggested that, if Edward could not get
Saintonge, he might revive his claim to Normandy. The king
appointed a commission to continue the negotiations with the French
court, and then betook himself to Aquitaine.2
1 "Hic amor dici potest amor cati et canis,"
Chron. Limov., in Recueil des Hist. de la France,
xxi., 784.
2 C.V. Langlois' Le Règne de Philippe
le Hardi (1887), and Gavrilovitch's Le Traité de
Paris, give the best modern accounts of Edward's early dealings
with the French crown.
It was nearly ten years since the presence of the monarch had
restrained the turbulence of the Gascon duchy. Edward had before
him the task of watching over its internal administration, and
checking the subtle policy whereby the agents of the French crown
were gradually undermining his authority. Two wars, the war of
Béarn and the war of Limoges, desolated Gascony from the
Pyrenees to the Vienne. It was Edward's first task to bring these
troubles to an end. Age and experience had not diminished the
ardour which had so long made Gaston of Béarn the focus of
every trouble in the Pyrenean lands. He defied a sentence of the
ducal court of Saint Sever, and was already at war with the
seneschal, Luke of Tany, when Edward's appearance brought matters
to a crisis. During the autumn and winter of 1273-74, Edward hunted
out Gaston from his mountain strongholds, and at last the
Béarnais, despairing of open resistance, appealed to the
French king. Philip accepted the appeal, and ordered Edward to
desist from molesting Gaston during its hearing. The English king,
anxious not to quarrel openly with the French court, granted a
truce. The suit of Gaston long occupied the parliament of Paris,
but the good-will of the French lawyers could not palliate the
wanton violence of the Viscount of Béarn. The French, like
the English, were sticklers for formal right, and were unwilling to
push matters to extremities. Edward had the reward of his
forbearance, for Philip advised Gaston to go to England and make
his submission. Gratified by his restoration to Béarn in
1279, Gaston remained faithful for the next few years. Edward was
less successful in dealing with Limoges. There had been for
many years a struggle between the commune of the castle, or
bourg, of Limoges and Margaret the viscountess. It was to no
purpose that the townsfolk had invoked the treaty of Paris,
whereby, as they maintained, the French king transferred to the
King of England his ancient jurisdiction over them. They were
answered by a decree of the parliament of Paris that the homage of
the commune of Limoges belonged not to the crown but to the
viscountess, and that therefore the treaty involved no change in
their allegiance. Edward threw himself with ardour on to the side
of the burgesses. Guy of Lusignan, still the agent of his brother
abroad, though prudently excluded from England, was sent to
Limoges, where he incited the commune to resist the viscountess. In
May, 1274, Edward himself took up his quarters in Limoges, and for
a month ruled there as sovereign. But the French court reiterated
the decree which made the commune the vassal of the viscountess. To
persevere in upholding the rebels meant an open breach with the
French court in circumstances more unfavourable than in the case of
Gaston of Béarn. Once more Edward refused to allow his
ambition to prevail over his sense of legal obligation. With rare
self-restraint he renounced the fealty of Limoges, and abandoned
his would-be subjects to the wrath of the viscountess. This was an
act of loyalty to feudal duty worthy of St. Louis. If Edward, on
later occasions, pressed his own legal claims against his vassals,
he set in his own case a pattern of strict obedience to his
overlord.
While Edward was still abroad, his friend Gregory X. held from
May to July, 1274, the second general council at Lyons, wherein
there was much talk of a new crusade, and an effort was made, which
came very near temporary success, towards healing the schism of the
Eastern and Western Churches. At Gregory's request Edward put off
his coronation, lest the celebration might call away English
prelates from Lyons. When the council was over, he at last turned
towards his kingdom. At Paris he was met by the mayor of London,
Henry le Waleis, and other leading citizens, who set before him the
grievous results of the long disputes with Flanders, which had
broken off the commercial relations between the two countries, and
had inflicted serious losses on English trade. Edward strove to
bring the Flemings to their senses by prohibiting the export of wool
from England to the weaving towns of Flanders. The looms of Ghent
and Bruges were stopped by reason of the withholding of the raw
material, and the distress of his subjects made Count Guy of
Flanders anxious to end so costly a quarrel. On July 28 Edward met
Guy at Montreuil and signed a treaty which re-established the old
friendship between lands which stood in constant economic need of
each other. There was no longer any occasion for further delay, and
on August 2 Edward and his queen crossed over to Dover. Received
with open arms by his subjects, he was crowned at Westminster on
August 19 by the new Archbishop of Canterbury, Robert Kilwardby,
philosopher, theologian, and Dominican friar, whom Gregory X. had
placed over the church of Canterbury, despite the vigorous efforts
which Edward made to secure the primacy for Robert Burnell. He had
been absent from England for four years.
Edward's sojourn in France was fruitful of results which he was
unable to reap for the moment. Conscious of the inveterate
hostility of the French king, he strove to establish relations with
foreign powers to counterbalance the preponderance of his rival.
When the death of Richard of Cornwall reopened the question of the
imperial succession, Charles of Anjou had been anxious to obtain
the prize for his nephew, Philip III., on the specious pretext that
the headship of Christendom would enable the King of France to
"collect chivalry from all the world" and institute the crusade
which both Gregory X. and Edward so ardently desired. But the most
zealous enthusiast for the holy war could hardly be deceived by the
false zeal with which the Angevin cloaked his overweening ambition.
It was a veritable triumph for Edward, when Gregory X., though
attracted for a moment by the prospect of a strong emperor capable
of landing a crusade, accepted the choice of the German magnates
who, in terror of France, elected as King of the Romans the
strenuous but not overmighty Swabian count, Rudolf of Hapsburg. As
Alfonso of Castile's pretensions were purely nominal, this election
ended the Great Interregnum by restoring the empire on a narrower
but more practical basis. Though Gregory strove to reconcile the
French to Rudolf's accession, common suspicion of France bound
Edward and the new King of the Romans in a common friendship.
Family disputes soon destroyed the unity of
policy of the Capetian house. Philip III., well meaning but weak,
was drifting into complete dependence on Charles of Anjou, whom
Edward distrusted, alike as the protector of the murderers of Henry
of Almaine and as the supplanter of his mother in the
Provençal heritage. Margaret of Provence, the widow of St.
Louis, had a common grievance with Edward and his mother against
Charles of Anjou. She hated him the more inasmuch as he was
depriving her of all influence over her son, King Philip. It was
easy in such circumstances for the two widowed queens of France and
England to form grandiose schemes for ousting Charles from
Provence. Rudolf lent himself to their plans by investing Margaret
with the county. Edward's filial piety and political interests made
him a willing partner in these designs. In 1278 he betrothed his
daughter Joan of Acre to Hartmann, the son of the King of the
Romans. The plan of Edward and Rudolf was to revive in some fashion
the kingdom of Arles1 in favour of the young couple. Though
Rudolf was unfaithful to this policy, and abandoned the proposed
English marriage in favour of a match between his daughter and the
son of the King of Sicily, the two queens persisted in their plans,
and new combinations against Charles and Philip for some years
threatened the peace of Europe.
1 Fournier's Le Royaume d'Arles et de
Vienne (1891) gives the best modern account of Edward's
relations to the Middle Kingdom.
It is unlikely that Edward hoped for serious results from
schemes so incoherent and backed with such slender resources.
Besides his alliance with the emperor, he strove to injure the
French king by establishing close relations with his
brother-in-law, Alfonso of Castile, who since 1276 was at war with
the French. Earlier than this, he made himself the champion of
Blanche of Artois, the widow of Henry III. of Navarre and
Champagne. He wished that Joan, their only child, should bring her
father's lands to one of his own sons, and, though disappointed in
this ambition, he managed to marry his younger brother, Edmund of
Lancaster, to Blanche. Though the French took possession of
Navarre, whereby they alike threatened Gascony and Castile, they
suffered Blanche to rule in Champagne in her daughter's name, and
Edmund was associated with her in the government of that county.
The tenure of a great French fief by the brother of the
English king was a fresh security against the aggressions of the
kings of France and Sicily. It probably facilitated the conclusion
of the long negotiations as to the interpretation of the treaty of
Paris, and the partition of the inheritance of Alfonse of Poitiers.
Edward's position against France was further strengthened in 1279
by the death of his wife's mother, Joan of Castile, the widow of
Ferdinand the Saint and the stepmother of Alfonso the Wise,
whereupon he took possession of Ponthieu in Eleanor's name.
Scarcely had he established himself at Abbeville, the capital of
the Picard county, than the negotiations at Paris were so far
ripened that Philip III. went to Amiens, where Edward joined him.
On May 23 both kings agreed to accept the treaty of Amiens by which
the more important of the outstanding difficulties between the two
nations were amicably regulated. By it Philip recognised Eleanor as
Countess of Ponthieu, and handed over a portion of the inheritance
of Alfonse of Poitiers to Edward. Agen and the Agenais were ceded
at once, and a commission was appointed to investigate Edward's
claims over lower Quercy. In return for this Edward yielded up his
illusory rights over the three bishoprics of Limoges,
Périgueux, and Cahors. It was a real triumph for English
diplomacy.
No lasting peace could arise from acts which emphasised the
essential incompatibility of French and English interests by
enlarging the territory of the English kings in France. The
undercurrent of hostility still continued; and the proposal of Pope
Nicholas III. that Edward should act as mediator between Philip
III. and Alfonso of Castile led to difficulties that deeply
incensed Edward, and embroiled him once more both with France and
Spain. Under Angevin influence, both Philip and Alfonso rejected
Edward's mediation in favour of that of the Prince of Salerno,
Charles of Anjou's eldest son. Disgust at this unfriendliness made
Edward again support the plans of Margaret of Provence against the
Angevins. In 1281 Margaret's intrigues formed a combination of
feudal magnates called the League of Macon, with the object of
prosecuting her claims over Provence by force of arms. Edward and
his mother, Eleanor, his Savoyard kinsfolk, and Edmund of Lancaster
all entered into the league. But it was hopeless for a disorderly
crowd of lesser chieftains, with the nominal support of a distant
prince like Edward, to conquer Provence in the teeth of the
hostility of the strongest and the ablest princes of the age. The
League of Macon came to nothing, like so many other ambitious
combinations of a time in which men's capacity to form plans
transcended their capacity to execute them. Margaret herself soon
despaired of the way of arms and was bought off by a money
compensation. The league mainly served to keep alive the troubles
that still separated England and France. In 1284 Philip gained a
new success in winning the hand of Joan of Champagne, Count
Edmund's step-daughter, for his son, the future Philip the Fair.
When Joan attained her majority, Edmund lost the custody of
Champagne, which went to the King of France as the natural
protector of his son and his son's bride. With his brother's
withdrawal from Provins to Lancaster, Edward lost one of his means
of influencing the course of French politics.
A compensation for these failures was found in 1282 when the
Sicilian vespers rang the knell of the Angevin power in Sicily.
When the revolted islanders chose Peter, King of Aragon, as their
sovereign, Charles, seeking to divert him from Sicily by attacking
him at home, inspired his partisan, Pope Martin IV., to preach a
crusade against Aragon. It was in vain that Edward strove to
mediate between the two kings.
The only response made to his efforts was a fantastic proposal
that they should fight out their differences in a tournament at
Bordeaux with him as umpire, but Edward refused to have anything to
do with the pseudo-chivalrous venture. At last, in 1285, Philip
III. lent himself to his uncle's purpose so far as to lead a
papalist crusade over the Pyrenees. The movement was a failure.
Philip lost his army and his life in Aragon, and his son and
successor, Philip IV., at once withdrew from the undertaking. In
the year of the crusade of Aragon, Charles of Anjou, Peter of
Aragon, and Martin IV. died. With them the struggles, which had
begun with the attack on Frederick II, reached their culminating
point. Their successors continued the quarrel with diminished
forces and less frantic zeal, and so gave Edward his best chance to
pose as the arbiter of Europe. Though Edward's continental policy
lay so near his heart that it can hardly be passed over, it was
fuller of vain schemes than of great results. Yet it was not
altogether fruitless, since twelve years of resolute and moderate
action raised England, which under Henry III. was of no account in
European affairs, to a position only second to that of France, and
that under conditions more nearly approaching the modern conception
of a political balance and a European state system than feudalism,
imperialism, and papalism had hitherto rendered possible.
In domestic policy, seven years of monotonous administration had
in a way prepared for vigorous reforms. Edward's return to England
in 1274 was quickly followed by the dismissal of Walter of Merton,
the chancellor of the years of quiescence. He was succeeded by
Robert Burnell, who, though foiled in his quest of Canterbury,
obtained an adequate standing by his preferment to the bishopric of
Bath and Wells. For the eighteen years of life which still remained
to him, Bishop Burnell held the chancery and possessed the chief
place in Edward's counsels. The whole of this period was marked by
a constant legislative activity which ceased so soon after
Burnell's death that it is tempting to assign at least as large a
part of the law-making of the reign to the minister as to the
sovereign. A consummate lawyer and diplomatist, Burnell served
Edward faithfully. Nor was his fidelity impaired either by the
laxity which debarred him from higher ecclesiastical preferment or
by his ambitious endeavours to raise the house of Shropshire
squires from which he sprang into a great territorial family.
Edward gave him his absolute confidence and was blind even to his
defects.
The first general parliament of the reign to which the king
summoned the commons was held at Westminster in the spring of 1275.
Its work was the statute of Westminster the First, a comprehensive
measure of many articles which covered almost the whole field of
legislation, and is especially noteworthy for the care which its
compilers took to uphold sound administration and put down abuses.
Not less important was the provision of an adequate revenue for the
debt-burdened king. The same parliament made Edward a permanent
grant of a custom on wool, wool-fells, and leather, which remained
henceforth a chief source of the regular income of the crown. The
later imposition of further duties soon caused men to describe the
customs of 1275 as the "Great and Ancient Custom". It was
significant of the economic condition of England that the great custom
was a tax on exports, not imports, and that, with the exception of
leather, it was a tax on raw materials. Granted the more willingly
since the main incidence of it was upon the foreign merchants, who
bought up English wool for the looms of Flanders and Brabant, the
custom proved a source of revenue which could easily be
manipulated, increased, and assigned in advance to the Italian
financiers, willing to lend money to a necessitous king. A new step
in our financial history was attained when this tax on trade steps
into the place so long held by the taxes on land, from which the
Normans and Angevins had derived their enormous revenue.
The statute of Westminster the First had a long series of
fellows. Next year came the statute of Rageman, which supplemented
an earlier inquest into abuses by instituting a special inquiry in
cases of trespass. In 1277 the first Welsh war interrupted the
current of legislation. The break was compensated for in 1278 by
the passing of the important statute of Gloucester, the
consummation of a policy which Edward had adopted as soon as he set
foot on English soil. The troubles of Edward's youth had made clear
to him the obstacles thrown in the path of orderly government by
the great territorial franchises. He had been forced to modify his
policy to gratify the lord of Glamorgan, and win over the house of
Mortimer by the erection of a new franchise that was a palatinate
in all but name. But such great "regalities" were, after all,
exceptional. Much more irritating to an orderly mind were the
innumerable petty immunities which made half the hundreds in
England the appendages of baronial estates, and such common
privileges as "return of writs," which prevented the sheriff's
officers from executing his mandates on numerous manors where the
lords claimed that the execution of writs must be entrusted to
their bailiffs.1 These widespread powers in private hands were
the more annoying to the king since they were commonly exercised
with no better warrant than long custom, and without direct grant
from him.
1 See on "return of writs" and a host of similar
immunities, Pollock and Maitland's History of English Law,
i., 558-82.
Bracton had already laid down the doctrine that no prescription
can avail against the rights of the crown, and it was a commonplace
with the lawyers of the age that nothing less than a clear grant by
royal charter could justify such delegation of the
sovereign's powers into private hands. Within a few months of his
landing, Edward sent out commissioners to inquire into the baronial
immunities. The returns of these inquests, which were carried out
hundred by hundred, are embodied in the precious documents called
the Hundred Rolls. The study of these reports inspired the
procedure of the statute of Gloucester, by which royal officers
were empowered to traverse the land demanding by what warrant the
lords of franchises exercised their powers. The demand of the crown
for documentary proof of royal delegation would have destroyed more
than half the existing liberties. But aristocratic opinion deserted
Edward when he strove to carry out so violent a revolution. The
irritation of the whole baronage is well expressed in the story of
how Earl Warenne, unsheathing a rusty sword, declared to the
commissioners: "Here is my warrant. My ancestors won their lands
with the sword. With my sword I will defend them against all
usurpers." Nor was this mere boasting. The return of the king's
officers tells us that Warenne would not say of whom, or by what
services, he held his Yorkshire stronghold of Conisborough, and
that his bailiffs refused them entrance into his liberties and
would not suffer his tenants to answer or appear before them.1
Edward found it prudent not to press his claims. He disturbed few
men in their franchises, and was content to have collected the mass
of evidence embodied in the placita de quo warranto, and
thus to have stopped the possibility of any further growth of the
franchises. A few years later he accepted the compromise that
continuous possession since the coronation of Richard I. was a
sufficient answer to a writ of quo warranto. In this lies
the whole essence of Edward's policy in relation to feudalism, a
policy very similar to that of St. Louis. Every man is to have his
own, and the king is not to inquire too curiously what a man's own
was. But no extension of any private right was to be tolerated.
Thus feudalism as a principle of political jurisdiction gradually
withered away, because it was no longer suffered to take fresh
root. The later land legislation of Edward's reign pushed the idea
still further.
1 Kirkby's Quest for Yorkshire, pp. 3,
227, 231, Surtees Soc.
In 1278 it had been the turn of the barons to suffer. Next came
the turn of the Church. Though Edward was a true son of the Church,
he saw as clearly as William the Conqueror and Henry II. the
essential incompatibility between the royal supremacy and the
pretensions of the extreme ecclesiastics. The limits of Church and
State, the growth of clerical wealth and immunities, and the
relations of the world-power of the pope to the local authority of
the king, were problems which no strong king could afford to
neglect, and perhaps were incapable of solution on medieval lines.
Edward saw that the most practical way of dealing with clerical
claims was for him to stand in good personal relations to the chief
dispensers of ecclesiastical jurisdiction. With a pope like Gregory
X. it was easy for Edward to be on friendly terms; but it was more
difficult to feel any cordiality for the dogmatic canonists or the
furious Guelfic partisans who too often occupied the chair of St.
Peter. Yet Edward was shrewd enough to see that it was worth while
making sacrifices to keep on his side the power which, alike under
Innocent III. and Clement IV., had given valuable assistance to his
grandfather and father in their struggle against domestic enemies.
Moreover the enormous growth of the system of papal provisions had
given the papacy the preponderating authority in the selection of
the bishops of the English Church. It was only by yielding to the
popes, whenever it was possible, that Edward could secure the
nomination of his own candidates to the chief ecclesiastical posts
in his own realm.
In the earlier years of his reign Edward was luckier in his
relations to the popes than to his own archbishops. But he found
that his power at Rome broke down just where he wanted to exercise
it most. He was disgusted to find how little influence he had in
the selection of the Archbishops of Canterbury. Gregory X. sent to
Canterbury the Dominican Robert Kilwardby, the first mendicant to
hold high place in the English Church. Kilwardby was translated in
1278 to the cardinal bishopric of Porto, a post of greater dignity
but less emolument and power than the English archbishopric. A
cardinal bishop was bound to reside at Rome, and the real motive
for this doubtful promotion was the desire to remove Kilwardby from
England and to send a more active man in his place. Edward's
indiscreet devotion to Bishop Burnell led him again to press his
friend's claims, but, though he persuaded the monks of Christ
Church to elect him, Nicholas III. quashed the appointment, and
selected the Franciscan friar, John Peckham, as archbishop.
Peckham, a famous theologian and physicist, had been a
distinguished professor at Paris, Oxford, and Rome. He was
high-minded, honourable and zealous, a saint as well as a scholar,
an enthusiast for Church reform and a vigorous upholder of the
extremest hierarchical pretensions. Fussy, energetic, tactless, he
was the true type of the academic ecclesiastic, and alike in his
personal qualities and his wonderful grasp of detail, he may be
compared to Archbishop Laud. Though received by Edward with a rare
magnanimity, Friar John allowed no personal considerations of
gratitude to interpose between him and his duty. Reaching England
in June, 1279, he presided, within six weeks of his landing, at a
provincial council at Reading. In this gathering canons were passed
against pluralities which frightened every benefice hunter among
the clerks of the royal household. Orders were also issued for the
periodical denunciation of ecclesiastical penalties against all
violators of the Great Charter in a fashion that suggested that the
king was an habitual offender against the fundamental laws of his
realm.
Edward wrathfully laid the usurpations of the new primate before
parliament, and forced Peckham to withdraw all the canons dealing
with secular matters, and particularly those which concerned the
Great Charter. The king set up the counter-claims of the State
against the pretensions of the Church, and the estates passed the
statute of Mortmain of 1279 as the layman's answer to the canons of
Reading. Like most of Edward's laws the statute of Mortmain was
based on earlier precedents. The wealth of the Church had long
inspired statesmen with alarm, and a true follower of St. Francis
like Peckham was specially convinced of the need of reducing the
clergy to apostolic poverty. By the new law all grants of land to
ecclesiastical corporations were expressly prohibited, under the
penalty of the land being forfeited to its supreme lord. The
statute was not a mere political weapon of the moment. It had a
wider importance as a step in the development of Edward's
anti-feudal policy, and may be regarded as a counterpart of the
inquest into franchises, and as a means of protecting the State as
well as of disciplining the Church. A corporation never died, and
never paid reliefs or wardships. Its property never escheated for
want of heirs, and, as scutages were passing out of fashion,
ecclesiastics were less valuable to the king in times of war than
lay lords. The recent exigencies of the Welsh war had emphasised
the need of strengthening the military defences of the crown, and
the new statute secured this by preventing the further devolution
of lands into the dead hand of the Church. But all medieval laws
were rather enunciations of an ideal than measures which practical
statesmen aimed at carrying out in detail. The statute of Mortmain
hardly stayed the creation of fresh monasteries and colleges, or
the further endowment of old ones. All that was necessary for the
pious founder was to obtain a royal dispensation from the operation
of the statute. There was little need to fear that the new law
would stand in the way of the power of the ecclesiastical
estate.
A more distinct challenge to the Church was provoked by a
further aggression of Peckham in 1281. In that year the primate
summoned a council at Lambeth, wherein he sought to withdraw from
the cognisance of the civil courts all suits concerning patronage
and the disposition of the personal effects of ecclesiastics. To
extend the jurisdiction of the forum ecclesiasticum was the
surest way of exciting the hostility of the common lawyers and the
king. Once more Edward annulled the proceedings of a council, and
once more the submission of Peckham saved the land from a conflict
which might have assumed the proportions of Becket's struggle
against Henry II. Four years later Edward pressed his advantage
still further by the royal ordinance of 1285, called
Circumspecte agatis, which, though accepting the supremacy
of the Church courts within their own sphere, narrowly defined the
limits of their power in matters involving a temporal element.
Again Peckham was fain to acquiesce. His policy had not only
irritated the king, but alienated his fellow bishops. He visited
his province with pertinacity and minuteness, and he was the less
able to stand up against the king as he was engaged in violent
quarrels with all his own suffragans. The leader of the bishops in
resisting his claims was Thomas of Cantilupe. Restored to England
by the liberal policy of Edward, Montfort's chancellor after Lewes
had been raised to the see of Hereford, where his sanctity and
devotion won him the universal love of his flock. Involved in
costly lawsuits with the litigious primate, Thomas was forced to leave
his diocese to plead his cause before the papal curia. He
died in Italy in 1282, and his relics, carried back by his
followers to his own cathedral, won the reputation of working
miracles. A demand arose for his canonisation, and Edward before
his death had secured the appointment of the papal commission,
which, a few years later, added St. Thomas of Hereford to the list
of saints.1 Thus the chancellor of Montfort obtained the honour
of sanctity through the action of the victor of Evesham.
1 The processus canonisationis of
Cantilupe, printed in the Bollandist Acta Sanctorum, Oct. 1,
539-705, illustrates many aspects of this period.
The second Welsh war interrupted both the conflict between
Edward and the archbishop, and the course of domestic legislation.
Yet even in the midst of his campaigns Edward issued the statute of
Acton Burnell of 1283, which provided a better way of recovering
merchants' debts, and the statute of Rhuddlan of 1284 for the
regulation of the king's exchequer. The king's full activity as a
lawgiver was renewed after the settlement of his conquest by the
statute of Wales of 1284, and the legislation of his early years
culminated in the two great acts of 1285, the statute of
Westminster the Second, and the statute of Winchester. That year,
which also witnessed the passing of the Circumspecte agatis,
stands out as the most fruitful in lawmaking in the whole of
Edward's reign.
The second statute of Westminster, passed in the spring
parliament, partook of the comprehensive character of the first
statute of that name. There were clauses by which, as the Canon of
Oseney puts it, "Edward revived the ancient laws which had
slumbered through the disturbance of the realm: some corrupted by
abuse he restored to their proper form: some less evident and
apparent he declared: some new ones, useful and honourable, he
added". Among the more conspicuous innovations of the second
statute of Westminster was the famous clause De donis
conditionalibus, which forms a landmark in the law of real
property. It facilitated the creation of entailed estates by
providing that the rights of an heir of an estate, granted upon
conditions, were not to be barred on account of the alienation of
such an estate by its previous tenant. Thus arose those estates for
life, which in later ages became a special feature of the English
land system, and which, by restricting the control of the actual
possessor of a property over his land, did much to perpetuate the
worst features of medieval land-holding. It is a modern error to
regard the legitimation of estates in tail as a triumph of
reactionary feudalism over the will of Edward. Apart from the fact
that there is not a tittle of contemporary evidence to justify such
a view, it is manifest that the interest of the king was in this
case exactly the same as that of each individual lord of a manor.
The greater prospect of reversion to the donor, and the other
features of the system of entails, which commended them to the
petty baron, were still more attractive to the king, the greatest
proprietor as well as the ultimate landlord of all the realm. Other
articles of the Westminster statute were only less important than
the clause De donis, notable among them being the
institution of justices of nisi prius, appointed to travel
through the shires three times a year to hear civil causes. This
was part of the simplification and concentration of judicial
machinery, whereby Edward made tolerable the circuit system which
under Henry III. had been a prolific source of grievances.
While in the statute of Westminster Edward prepared for the
future, the companion statute of Winchester, the work of the autumn
parliament, revived the jurisdiction of the local courts; reformed
the ancient system of watch and ward, and brought the ancient
system of popular courts into harmony with the jurisdiction
emanating from the crown, which had gone so far towards superseding
it. This measure marks the culmination of Edward's activity as a
lawgiver. During the five next years there were no more important
statutes.
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