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The History of England from the Accession of Henry III. to the Death of Edward III. (1216-1377)
The Sicilian And The Scottish Arbitrations
by Tout, T.F. (M.A.)
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Edward I. had now attained the height of his
fame. He had conquered Llewelyn; he had reformed the
administration; he had put himself as a lawmaker in the same rank
as St. Louis or Frederick II.; and he had restored England to a
leading position in the councils of Europe. Moreover, he had won a
character for justice and fairness which did him even greater
service, since the several deaths of prominent sovereigns during
1285 left him almost alone of his generation among princes of a
lesser stature. Of the chief rulers of Europe in the early years of
Edward's reign, Rudolf of Hapsburg alone survived; and the King of
the Romans had little weight outside Germany many. Edward had
outlived his brother-in-law Alfonso of Castile, his cousin Philip
the Bold, his uncle Charles of Anjou, and Peter of Aragon. But the
conflicts, in which these kings had been engaged, were continued by
their successors. Above all, the contest for Sicily still raged.
The successors of Martin IV., though deprived of the active support
of France, would not abandon the claims of the captive Charles of
Salerno; and James of Aragon, Peter's second son, maintained
himself in Sicily, despite papal censures and despite the virtual
desertion of his cause by his elder brother, Alfonso III., the new
king of Aragon. Each side was at a standstill, though each side
struggled on. The personal hatreds, which made it impossible to
reconcile the older generation, were dying out, and the chief
obstacle in the way of a settlement was the stubbornness of the
papacy. If any one could reconcile the quarrel, it was the King of
England; and to him Charles' sons and the nobles of his dominions
appealed to procure his release.
Edward was anxious to proffer his services as a peacemaker.
The
dream of a Europe, united for the liberation of the holy places,
had not been expelled from his mind by his schemes for the
advancement of his kingdom. If he could inspire his neighbour kings
with something of his spirit, the crusade might still be possible.
Other matters also called Edward's attention to the continent. He
had to do homage to the new French king; he had to press for the
execution of the treaty of Amiens, and his presence was again
necessary in Gascony. His realm was in such profound peace that he
could safely leave it. Accordingly in May, 1286, he took ship for
France. With him went his wife Eleanor of Castile, his chancellor
Bishop Burnell, and a large number of his nobles. He entrusted the
regency to his cousin, Edmund, Earl of Cornwall, the son and
successor of Earl Richard; and England saw him no more until
August, 1289. Edward first made his way to Amiens, where he met the
new King of France, Philip the Fair. The two kings went together to
Paris, where Edward spent two months. There he performed homage for
Gascony, and made a new agreement as to the execution of the treaty
of Amiens, by which he renounced his claims over Quercy for a money
payment, and was put in possession of Saintonge, south of the
Charente. The settlement was the easier as for the moment neither
king had his supreme interest in Gascony. Edward's real business
was to make peace between Anjou and Aragon, and Philip IV. showed
every desire to help him. Before Edward left Paris, he had
negotiated a truce between the Kings of France and Aragon. Soon
afterwards he went to Bordeaux. He made Gascony his headquarters
for three years, and strove with all his might to convert the truce
into a peace.
Grave obstacles arose, chief among which was the determination
of the papacy to make no terms with the King of Aragon so long as
his brother still reigned over Sicily. Honorius IV., in approving
Edward's preliminary action, and exhorting him to obtain the
liberation of the Prince of Salerno, carefully guarded himself
against recognising the schismatic Aragonese. Edward himself was no
partisan of either side. He was heartily anxious for peace and
desirous to free his kinsman from the rigours of his long
imprisonment. His wish for a close alliance between England and
Aragon was unacceptable to the partisanship both of Honorius IV.
and his successor Nicholas IV. Papal coldness,
however, did not turn Edward from his course. In the summer of 1287
he met Alfonso at Oloron in Béarn, where a treaty was drawn
up by which the Aragonese king agreed to release Charles of Salerno
on condition that he would either, within three years, procure from
the pope the recognition of James in Sicily, or return to captivity
and forfeit Provence. Besides this, an alliance between England and
Aragon was to be cemented by the marriage of one of Edward's
daughters to Alfonso. Delighted with the success of his
undertaking, Edward, on his return to Bordeaux, again took the
cross and prepared to embark on the crusade.
Nicholas IV. interposed between Edward and his vows by
denouncing the treaty of Oloron.1 Though well-meaning, he was not
strong enough to shake himself free from partisan traditions, and
though honestly anxious to bring about a crusade, he could not see
that he made the holy war impossible by interposing obstacles in
the way of the one prince who seriously intended to take the cross.
While denouncing Edward's treaty, Nicholas encouraged his crusading
zeal by granting him a new ecclesiastical tenth for six years, a
tax made memorable by the fact that it occasioned the stringent
valuation of benefices, called the taxation of Pope Nicholas, which
was the standard clerical rate-book until the reign of Henry VIII.
Despite the pope, Edward still persevered in his mediation, and in
October, 1288, a new treaty for Charles' liberation was signed at
Canfranc, in Aragon, which only varied in details from the
agreement of 1287. Charles was released, but he straightway made
his way to Rome, where Nicholas absolved him from his oath and
crowned him King of Sicily. Edward was bitterly disappointed. He
tarried in the south until July, 1289, usefully employed in
promoting the prosperity of his duchy, crushing conspiracies,
furthering the commerce of Bordeaux, and founding new
bastides. At last tidings of disorder at home called him
back to his kingdom before the purpose of his continental sojourn
had been accomplished. But he still pressed on his thankless task,
and in 1291 peace was made at Tarascon, between Aragon and the
Roman see, on the hard condition of Alfonso abandoning his brother's
cause. On Alfonso's death soon afterwards the war was renewed, for
James then united the Sicilian and Aragonese thrones and would not
yield up either. It was not until 1295 that Boniface VIII., a
stronger pope than Nicholas, ended the struggle on terms which left
the stubborn Aragonese masters of Sicily.
1 For his policy, see O. Schiff, Studien zur
Geschichte P. Nikolaus IV. (1897).
Things had not gone well in England during Edward's absence.
Edmund of Cornwall had shown vigour in putting down the revolt of
Rhys, but he was not strong enough to control either the greater
barons or the officers of the crown. Grave troubles were already
brewing in Scotland. A fierce quarrel between the Earls of
Gloucester and Hereford broke out with regard to the boundaries of
Glamorgan and Brecon, and the private war between the two marchers
proved more formidable to the peace of the realm than the revolt of
the Welsh prince. Even more disastrous to the country was the
scandalous conduct of the judges and royal officials, who profited
by the king's absence to pile up fortunes at the expense of his
subjects. The highest judges of the land forged charters, condoned
homicides, sold judgments, and practised extortion and violence. A
great cry arose for the king's return. In the Candlemas parliament
of 1289 Earl Gilbert of Gloucester met a request for a general aid
by urging that nothing should be granted until Englishmen once more
saw the king's face. Alarmed at this threat, Edward returned, and
landed at Dover on August 12, 1289.
The whole situation was changed by the king's arrival. Edward
met the innumerable complaints against his subordinates by
dismissing nearly all the judges from office, and appointing a
special commission to investigate the charges brought against royal
officials of every rank. Thomas Weyland, chief justice of the
common pleas, anticipated inquiry by taking sanctuary with the
Franciscan friars of Bury St. Edmunds. A knight and a married man,
he had taken subdeacon's orders in early life and sought to little
purpose to be protected by his clergy. His refuge was watched by
the local sheriffs; finally, he was starved into surrender, and
suffered to abjure the realm.1 He fled to France, whence he never
returned. For some years the commission investigated the offences of
the ministers of the crown. Though much that was irregular was
proved against them, many charges broke down under inquiry, and, as
time went on, the official class saw that their interest lay in
condoning rather than in punishing scandals. Some of the worst
offenders, such as the greedy and corrupt Adam of Stratton, were
never restored to office;2 but Hengham, the chief justice of the
King's Bench, was soon reinstated. There were not enough good
lawyers in England to make it prudent for Edward to dispense with
the services of such a man. A rigorous maintenance of a high
standard of official morality meant getting rid of nearly all the
king's ministers, and any successors would have been inferior in
experience and not superior in honesty. Edward had to work with
such material as he had, and on the whole he made the best of it.
Scandalous as were the proceedings of his agents, their iniquities
are but trifles as compared with the offences of the counsellors of
Philip the Fair.
1 For the abjuratio regni see A.
Réville in the Revue Historique, 1. (1892),
1-42.
2 For Adam of Stratton see Hall, Red Book of
the Excheque, iii., cccxv.-cccxxxi. Extracts from the Assize
rolls recording the proceedings of the special commission will soon
be published by the Royal Historical Society.
Fear of Edward drove nobles into obedience as well as ministers
into honesty. Gloucester desisted unwillingly from his attacks on
Brecon, and was constrained to divorce his wife and marry the
king's daughter, Joan of Acre. In becoming the king's son-in-law,
he was forced to surrender his estates to the crown, receiving them
back entailed on the heirs of the marriage or, in their default, on
the heirs of Joan. Thus the system of entails made possible by the
statute De donis was used by Edward to strengthen his hold
over the most powerful of his feudatories and increase the prospect
of his estates escheating to the crown. Considered in this light,
Gilbert's marriage with the king's daughter seems less a reward of
loyalty than a punishment for lawlessness. In the same year as this
marriage, Edward passed another law directed against the baronage.
This was the statute of Westminster the Third, called from its
opening words, Quia emptore. It enacted that, when part of
an estate was alienated by its lord, the grantee should not be
permitted to become the subtenant of the grantor, but should stand
to the ultimate lord of the fief in the same feudal relation as the
grantor himself. This prohibition of further subinfeudation stopped
the creation of new manors and prevented the rivetting of new links
in the feudal chain, which were the necessary condition of its
strength. Though passed at the request of the barons, it was a
measure much more helpful to the king than to his vassals. It stood
to the barons as the statute of Mortmain stood to the Church.
Edward was bent on showing that he was master, and his new
son-in-law and the Earl of Hereford became the victims of his
policy. He forced the reluctant Gloucester to admit that the
pretensions of the lord of Glamorgan to be the overlord of the
bishop of LLandaff and the guardian of the temporalities of the see
during a vacancy were usurpations. Seeing that his marcher
prerogatives were thus rapidly becoming undermined, Gloucester put
the most cherished marcher right to the test by renewing the
private war with the Earl of Hereford which had disturbed the realm
during Edward's absence. The king issued peremptory orders for the
immediate cessation of hostilities. These mandates Hereford obeyed,
but Gloucester did not. Resolved that law not force was henceforth
to settle disputes in the march, Edward summoned a novel court at
Ystradvellte, in Brecon, wherein a jury from the neighbouring
shires and liberties was to decide the case between the two earls
in the presence of the chief marchers. Gloucester refused to
appear, and the marchers declined to take part in the trial,
pleading that it was against their liberties. The case was
adjourned to give the recalcitrants every chance, and after a
preliminary report by the judges, Edward resolved to hear the suit
in person. In October, 1291, he presided at Abergavenny over the
court before which the earls were arraigned. They were condemned to
imprisonment and forfeiture. Content with humbling their pride and
annihilating their privileges, Edward suffered them to redeem
themselves from captivity by the payment of heavy fines, and before
long gave them back their lands. The king's victory was so complete
that neither of the earls could forgive it. In 1295, Gloucester
died, without opportunity of revenge; but Hereford lived on,
brooding over his wrongs, and in later years signally avenged the
trial at Abergavenny. Meanwhile the conqueror of the principality
had shown unmistakably that the liberties of the march were an
anachronism, since the marchers had no longer the work of defending
English interests against the Welsh nation.1
1 Mr. J.E. Morris in chap. vi. of his Welsh
Wars of Edward I. has admirably summarised this suit. See also
G.T. Clark's Land of Morgan.
Another measure that followed Edward's home-coming was the
expulsion of the Jews. Despite constant odium and intermittent
persecution, the Jewish financiers who had settled in England after
the Norman conquest steadily improved their position down to the
reign of Henry III. The personal dependants of the crown, they were
well able to afford to share their gains from usury with their
protectors. They lived in luxury, built stone houses, set up an
organisation of their own, and even purchased lands. Henry III.'s
financial embarrassments forced him to rely upon them, and the
alliance of the Jews and the crown stimulated the religious bigotry
of the popular party to ill-treat the Jews during the Barons' War.
Stories of Jews murdering Christian children were eagerly believed;
and the cult of St. Hugh of Lincoln and St. William of Norwich,1
two pretended victims of Hebrew cruelty, testified to the hatred
which Englishmen bore to the race.
1 See for this saint, Thomas of Monmouth,
Life and Miracles of St. William of Norwich, ed. Jessopp and
James (1896).
Under Edward I. the condition of the Jews became more
precarious. The king hated them alike on religious and economical
grounds. He rigorously insisted that they should wear a distinctive
dress, and at last altogether prohibited usury. Driven from their
chief means of earning their living, the Jews had recourse to
clipping and sweating the coin. Indiscriminate severities did
little to abate these evils. Meanwhile active missionary efforts
were made to win over the Jews to the Christian faith. They were
compelled to listen to long sermons from mendicant friars, and
their obstinacy in adhering to their own creed was denounced as a
deliberate offence against the light. Peckham shut up their
synagogues, and Eleanor of Provence, who had entered a convent,
joined with the archbishop in urging her son to take severe
measures against them. There was a similar movement in France, and
Edward, during his long stay abroad, had expelled the Jews from
Aquitaine. In 1290 he applied the same policy to England, and their
exile was so popular an act that parliament made him a special
grant as a thankoffering. But though Edward
thus drove the Jews to seek new homes beyond sea, he allowed them
to carry their property with them, and punished the mariners who
took advantage of the helplessness of their passengers to rob and
murder them. Though individual Jews were found from time to time in
England during the later middle ages, their official
re-establishment was only allowed in the seventeenth
century.1
1 For the Jews see J. Jacobs, Jews in Angevin
England; Tovey, Anglia Judaica; J.M. Rigg, Select
Pleas of the Jewish Exchequer; and for their exile B.L.
Abrahams, Expulsion of the Jews from England in 1290.
Two generations at least before their expulsion, the Jews had
been outrivalled in their financial operations by societies of
Italian bankers, whose admirable organisation and developed system
of credit enabled them to undertake banking operations of a
magnitude quite beyond the means of the Hebrews. First brought into
England as papal agents for remitting to Rome the spoils of the
Church, they found means of evading the canonical prohibitions of
usury, and became the loanmongers of prince and subject alike. To
the crown the Italians were more useful than the Jews had been. The
value of the Jews to the monarch had been in the special facilities
enjoyed by him in taxing them. The utility of the Italian societies
was in their power of advancing sums of money that enabled the king
to embark on enterprises hitherto beyond the limited resources of
the medieval state. The Italians financed all Edward's enterprises
from the crusade of 1270 to his Welsh and Scottish campaigns. From
them Edward and his son borrowed at various times sums amounting to
almost half a million of the money of the time. In return the
Italians, chief among whom was the Florentine Society of the
Frescobaldi, obtained privileges which made them as deeply hated as
ever the Hebrews had been.1
1 See on this subject E.A. Bond's article in
Archæologia, vol. xxviii., pp. 207-326; W.E. Rhodes,
Italian Bankers in England under Edward I. and II. in
Owens Coll. Historical Essays, pp. 137-68; and R.J.
Whitwell, Italian Bankers and the English Crown in
Transactions of Royal Hist. Soc., N.S., xvii. (1903), pp.
175-234.
Among the troubles which had called Edward back from Gascony was
the condition of Scotland, where a long period of prosperity had
ended with the death of Edward's brother-in-law, Alexander III., in
1286. Alexander III. attended his brother-in-law's coronation in
1274, and the irritation excited by his limiting his homage to his
English lordships of Tynedale and Penrith did not cause any great
amount of friction. But the homage question was only postponed, and
at Michaelmas, 1278, Alexander was constrained to perform
unconditionally this unwelcome act. "I, Alexander King of
Scotland," were his words, "become the liege man of the lord
Edward, King of England, against all men." But by carefully
refraining from specifying for what he became Edward's vassal,
Alexander still suggested that it was for his English lordships.
Edward with equal caution declared that he received the homage,
"saving his right and claim to the homage of Scotland when he may
wish to speak concerning it". Both parties were content with mutual
protestations. Edward was so friendly to Alexander that he allowed
him to appoint Robert Bruce, Earl of Carrick, his proxy in
professing fealty, so as to minimise the king's feeling of
humiliation. The King of Scots went home loaded with presents, and
for the rest of his life his relations with Edward remained
cordial.
The closing years of Alexander's reign were overshadowed by
domestic misfortunes and the prospects of difficulties about the
succession. His wife, Margaret of England, had died in 1275, and
was followed to the tomb by their two sons, Alexander and David. A
delicate girl, Margaret, then alone represented the direct line of
the descendants of William the Lion. Margaret was married, when
still young, to Eric, King of Norway, and died in 1283 in giving
birth to her only child, a daughter named Margaret. No children
were born of Alexander's second marriage; and in March, 1286, the
king broke his neck, when riding by night along the cliffs of the
coast of Fife. Before his death, however, he persuaded the magnates
of Scotland to recognise his granddaughter as his successor. The
Maid of Norway, as Margaret was called, was proclaimed queen, and
the administration was put into the hands of six guardians, who
from 1286 to 1289 carried on the government with fair success. As
time went on, the baronage got out of hand and a feud between the
rival south-western houses of Balliol and Bruce foreshadowed worse
troubles.
William Eraser, Bishop of St. Andrews, the chief of the regents,
visited Edward in Gascony and urged the necessity of action. The best
solution of all problems was that the young Queen of Scots should
be married to Edward of Carnarvon, a boy a few months her junior.
But both the Scots nobles and the King of Norway were jealous and
suspicious, and any attempt to hurry forward such a proposal would
have been fatal to its accomplishment. However, negotiations were
entered into between England, Scotland, and Norway. In 1289 the
guardians of Scotland agreed to nominate representatives to treat
on the matter. Edward took up his quarters at Clarendon, while his
agents, conspicuous among whom was Anthony Bek, Bishop of Durham,
negotiated with the envoys of Norway and Scotland. On November 6
the three powers concluded the treaty of Salisbury, by which they
agreed that Margaret should be sent to England or Scotland before
All Saints' Day, 1290, "free and quit of all contract of marriage
or espousals". Edward promised that if Margaret came into his
custody he would, as soon as Scotland was tranquil, hand her over
to the Scots as "free and quit" as when she came to him; and the
"good folk of Scotland" engaged that, if they received their queen
thus free, they would not marry her "save with the ordinance, will,
and counsel of Edward and with the agreement of the King of
Norway". In March, 1290, a parliament of Scots magnates met at
Brigham, near Kelso, and ratified the treaty. Fresh negotiations
were begun for the marriage of Edward of Carnarvon and the Queen of
Scots, resulting in the treaty of Brigham of July 18, which Edward
confirmed a month later at Northampton. By this Edward agreed that,
in the event of the marriage taking place, the laws and customs of
Scotland should be perpetually maintained. Should Margaret die
without issue, Scotland was to go to its natural heir, and in any
case was to remain "separate and divided from the realm of
England".
The treaty of Brigham was as wise a scheme as could have been
devised for bringing about the unity of Britain. In the care taken
to meet the natural scruples of the smaller nation we are reminded
of the treaty of Union of 1707. But a nearer parallel is to be
found in the conditions under which the union between France and
Brittany was gradually accomplished after the marriage of Anne of
Brittany. In both cases alike, in France and in England, the
stronger party was content with securing the personal union of the
two crowns, and strove to reconcile the weaker party by providing
safeguards against violent or over-rapid amalgamation. It was left
for the future to decide whether the habit of co-operation,
continued for generations, might not ultimately involve a more
organic union. Unluckily for this island, the policy which
ultimately made the stubborn Celts of Brittany content with union
with France, never had a chance of being carried out here. Edward
made every preparation for bringing over the Maid of Norway to her
kingdom and her husband, and neither the Scots nor the Norwegians
grudged his leading share in accomplishing their common wishes. But
the child's health gave way before the hardships of the journey.
Before All Saints' day had come round, she died in one of the
Orkneys, where the ship which conveyed her had put in.
The death of the queen threatened Scotland with revolution. The
regents' commission became of doubtful legality, and a swarm of
claimants for the vacant throne arose, whose resources, if not
their rights, were sufficiently evenly balanced to make civil
strife inevitable. Since southern Scotland had become a wholly
feudal, largely Norman, and partly English state, there had been no
grave difficulties with regard to the succession. Now that they
arose, there was doubt as to the principles on which claims to the
throne should be settled. There was no legitimate representative
left of the stock of William the Lion. The male line of his brother
David, Earl of Huntingdon, had died out with John the Scot, the
last independent Earl of Chester. The nearest claimants to the
succession were therefore to be found in the descendants of David's
three daughters. But there was no certainty that any rights could
be transmitted through the female line. Moreover there was a doubt
whether, allowing that a woman could transmit the right to rule,
the succession should proceed according to primogeniture or in
accordance with the nearness of the claimant to the source of his
claim. If the former view were held then John of Balliol, lord of
Barnard castle in Durham and of Galloway in Scotland, had the best
right as the grandson of Earl David's eldest daughter. Yet less
than a century before, the passing over of Arthur of Brittany in
favour of his uncle John, had recalled to men's mind the ancient
doctrine that a younger son is nearer to the parent stock than a
grandson sprung from his elder brother; and if the view, then
expressed in the History of William the Marshal,1 was
still to hold good, Robert Bruce, lord of Skelton in Yorkshire, and
of Annandale in the northern kingdom, was the nearest in blood to
David of Huntingdon as the son of his second daughter. Beyond this
there was the further question of the divisibility of the kingdom.
So fully was southern Scotland feudalised that it seemed arguable
that the monarchy, or at least its demesne lands, might be divided
among all the representatives of the coheiresses, after the fashion
in which the Huntingdon estates had been allotted to all the
representatives of Earl David. In that case John of Hastings, lord
of Abergavenny, put in a claim as the grandson of Earl David's
youngest daughter.
1 Hist. de Guillaume le Maréchal,
ii., 64, II. 11899-902.
Oil, sire, quer c'est raison
Quer plus près est sanz achaison
Le filz de la terre son père
Que le niês: dreiz est qu'il i père.
When so much was uncertain, every noble who boasted any
connexion with the royal house safeguarded his interests, or
advertised his pedigree, by enrolling himself among the claimants.
Five or six of the competitors had no better ground of right than
descent from bastards of the royal house, especially from the
numerous illegitimate offspring of William the Lion. The others
went back to more remote ancestors. A foreign prince, Florence,
Count of Holland, demanded the succession as a descendant of a
sister of Earl David, declaring that David had forfeited his rights
by rebellion. John Comyn, lord of Badenoch, brought forward his
descent from Donaldbane, brother of Malcolm Canmore. One claim
reads like a fairy tale, with stories of an unknown king dying,
leaving a son to be murdered by a wicked uncle, and a daughter to
escape to obscurity in Ireland, where she married and transmitted
her rights to her children. There was no authority in Scotland
strong enough to decide these claims. Once more Robert Bruce raised
the standard of disorder, and the appeal of Bishop Fraser to Edward
to undertake the settlement of the question showed that the English
king's mediation was the readiest way of restoring order.
In 1291 Edward summoned the magnates of both realms, along with
certain popular representatives, to meet at Norham, Bishop Bek's
border castle on the Tweed. Trained civilians and canonists also
attended, while abbeys and churches contributed extracts from
chronicles, carefully compiled by royal order, with a view of
illustrating the king's claims. On May 10 Edward met the assembly
in Norham parish church. Roger Brabazon, the chief justice,
declared in the French tongue that Edward was prepared to do
justice to the claimants as "superior and direct lord of Scotland".
Before, however, he could act, his master required that his
overlordship should be recognised by the Scots. It is likely that
this demand was not unexpected. Even in the treaty of Brigham
Edward had been careful not to withdraw his claim of superiority,
and his action with relation to Alexander III.'s homage was well
known. But the sensitiveness which their late king had shown in the
face of Edward's earlier claims was shared by the Scots lords, and
shrinking from recognising facts which they ought to have faced
before they solicited his intervention, they begged for delay and
drew up remonstrances. Edward granted them, a respite for three
weeks, though he swore by St. Edward that he would rather die than
diminish the rights due to the Confessor's crown. He had already
summoned the northern levies, and was prepared to enforce his claim
by force. His uncompromising attitude put the Scots in an awkward
position. But they had gone to Norham to get his help, and they
were not prepared to run the risk of an English invasion as well as
civil war. Most of the claimants had as many interests in England
as in Scotland, and a breach with Edward would involve the
forfeiture of their southern lands as well as the loss of a
possible kingdom in the north. When the magnates reassembled, the
competitors set the example of acknowledging Edward as overlord.
Fresh demands followed their submission, and were at once conceded.
Edward was to have seisin of Scotland and its royal castles, though
he pledged himself to return both land and fortresses to him who
should be chosen king.
Edward then undertook the examination of the suit. He delegated
the hearing of the claims to a commission, of whom the great
majority, eighty, were Scotsmen, nominated in equal numbers by
Bruce and Balliol, the two senior competitors, while the remaining
twenty-four consisted of Englishmen, and included many of Edward's
wisest counsellors. In deference to Scottish feeling, Edward
ordered the court to meet on Scottish territory, at Berwick, and
appointed August 2 for the opening day. Meanwhile the full
consequences of the Scottish submission were carried out. On
Edward's taking seisin of Scotland, the regency came to an end. The
nomination of the provisional government resting with Edward, he
reappointed the former regents, and allowed the Scots barons to
elect their chancellor. But with the regents Edward associated a
northern baron, Brian Fitzalan of Bedale, and the Scottish bishop,
who was appointed chancellor, had to act jointly with one of
Edward's clerks. Edward then made a short progress, reaching as far
as Stirling and St. Andrews. He was back at Berwick for the meeting
of the commissioners on August 2.
The first session of the court was a brief one. The twelve
competitors put in their claims, and Bruce and Balliol supported
theirs by argument. However, on August 12, the trial was adjourned
for nearly a year, until June 2, 1292. On its resumption in
Edward's presence, the more difficult issues were carefully worked
out. A new and fantastic claim, sent in by Eric of Norway, as the
nearest of kin to his daughter, did not delay matters. The judges
were instructed to settle in the first instance the relative claims
of Bruce and Balliol, and also to decide by what law these should
be determined. On October 14, they declared their first judgment.
They rejected Bruce's plea that the decision should follow the
"natural law by which kings rule," and accepted Balliol's
contention that they should follow the laws of England and
Scotland. They further laid down that the law of succession to the
throne was that of other earldoms and dignities. They pronounced in
favour of primogeniture as against proximity of blood.
These decisions practically settled the case, but a further
adjournment was resolved upon, and upon the reassembling of the
court on November 6 the only question still open, that of whether
the kingdom could be divided, was taken up. John of Hastings came
on the scene with the contention that the monarchy should be
divided among the representatives of Earl David's daughters. Bruce
had the effrontery to associate himself with Hastings' demand. A
short adjournment was arranged to settle this issue, and on
November 17 the final scene took place in the hall of Berwick castle.
Besides the commissioners, the king was there in full parliament,
and eleven claimants, who still persevered, were present or
represented by proxy. Nine of these were severally told that they
would obtain nothing by their petitions. Bruce was informed that
his claim to the whole was incompatible with his present claim for
a third. It was laid down that the kingdom of Scotland was
indivisible, and that the right of Balliol had been
established.
The seal of the regency was broken: Edward handed over the
seisin of Scotland to John Balliol, who three days later took the
oath of fealty as King of Scots, promising that he would perform
all the service due to Edward from his kingdom, Balliol hurried to
his kingdom, and was crowned at Scone on St. Andrew's day. He then
returned to England, and kept Christmas with his overlord at
Newcastle, where, on December 26, he did homage to Edward in the
castle hall. But within a few days a difficulty arose. John
resented Edward's retaining the jurisdiction over a law-suit in
which a Berwick merchant, a Scotsman, was a party. He was reassured
by Edward that he only did so, because the case had arisen during
the vacancy, when Edward was admittedly ruling Scotland. But Edward
significantly added a reservation of his right of hearing appeals,
even in England; and when the King of Scots went back to his realm,
early in January, he must have already foreseen that there was
trouble to come.
Edward never lost sight of his own interests, and it is clear
that he took full advantage of the needs of the Scots to establish
a close supremacy over the northern kingdom. Making allowance for
this sinister element, his general policy in dealing with the great
suit had been singularly prudent and correct. He was anxious to
ascertain the right heir; he gave the Scots a preponderating voice
in the tribunal; he rejected the temptation which Bruce and
Hastings dangled before him of splitting up the realm into three
parts, and he restored the land and its castles as soon as the suit
was settled. There is nothing to show that up to this point his
action had produced any resentment in Scotland, and little evidence
that there was any strong national feeling involved. Scottish
chroniclers, who wrote after the war of independence, have given a
colour to Edward's policy which contemporary evidence does not
justify. From the point of his generation, his action was just
and legal. He had, in fact, performed a signal service to Scotland
in vindicating its unity; and by maintaining the rigid doctrines of
Anglo-Norman jurisprudence, he rescued it from the vague philosophy
which Bruce called natural law, and the recrudescence of Celtic
custom that gave even bastards a hope of the succession. The real
temptation came when, after his triumph, Edward sought to extract
from the submission of the Scots consequences which had no warranty
in custom, and made Scottish resistance inevitable.
The expulsion of the Jews, the reform of the administration, the
statute Quia emptores, the treaty of Tarascon, the
humiliation of Gloucester, and the successful issue of the Scottish
arbitration, mark the culminating point in the reign of Edward I.
The king had ruled twenty years with almost uniform success, and
his only serious disappointment had been the failure of the
crusade. The last hope of the Latin East faded when, in 1291, Acre,
so long the bulwark of the crusaders against the Turks, opened its
gates to the infidel. With the fall of Acre went the last chance of
the holy war. Before long the peace of Europe, which Edward thought
that he had established, was once more rudely disturbed.
Difficulties soon arose with Scotland, with France, with the
Church, and with the barons. These troubles bore the more severely
on the king because this period saw also the removal of nearly all
of those in whom he had placed special trust. The gracious Eleanor
of Castile died in 1290, at Harby, in Nottinghamshire, near
Lincoln,1 and the devotion of the king to the partner of his
youth found a striking expression in the sculptured crosses, which
marked the successive resting-places of her corpse on its last
journey from Harby to Westminster Abbey. A few months later
Edward's mother, Eleanor of Castile, ended her long life in the
convent of Amesbury, in Wiltshire. The ministers of Edward's early
reign were also removed by death. Bishop Kirkby, the treasurer,
died in 1290, and Burnell, the chancellor, in 1292, soon after he
had performed his last public act in the declaration of the king's
judgment as to the Scottish succession. Archbishop Peckham died in
the same year. New domestic ties were formed, and fresh
ministers were found, but the ageing king became more and more
lonely, as he was compelled to rely upon a younger and a less
faithful generation. Of his old comrades the chief remaining was
Henry Lacy, Earl of Lincoln, while the removal of Burnell brought
forward to the first rank prelates whose position had hitherto been
somewhat obscured by his predominance. Prominent among these were
the brothers Thomas Bek, Bishop of St. David's, and Anthony Bek,
Bishop of Durham, members of a conspicuous Lincolnshire baronial
family. Both of these for a time strikingly combined devotion to
the royal service with loyalty to those clerical and aristocratic
traditions which, strictly interpreted, were almost incompatible
with faithful service to a secular monarch. Even more important
henceforth was the king's treasurer, Walter Langton, Bishop of
Lichfield, the most trusted minister of Edward's later life, a
faithful but not too scrupulous prelate of the ministerial type,
who stood to the second half of the reign in almost the same close
relation as that in which Burnell stood to the years which we have
now traversed.
1 See for this W.H. Stevenson, Death of
Eleanor of Castile, in English Hist. Review, iii.
(1888), pp. 315-318.
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