Andy King

EDWARD I

A New King Arthur?

Contents

Preface

Note on the Text

Genealogical Table

EDWARD I

Prologue: A European King

1. Lion or Leopard? Apprenticeship in Civil War

2. King and Reformer: Edward’s Government

3. Britain and France: Overlordship and War

4. Edward’s Kingship: Patronage, Punishment and Political Theatre

Conclusion: A Great King?

Illustrations

Appendix: Surviving Buildings Associated with Edward I

Further Reading

Notes

Picture Credits

Acknowledgements

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THE HOUSES OF WESSEX AND DENMARK

Athelstan

Tom Holland

Aethelred the Unready

Richard Abels

Cnut

Ryan Lavelle

Edward the Confessor

James Campbell

THE HOUSES OF NORMANDY, BLOIS AND ANJOU

William I

Marc Morris

William II

John Gillingham

Henry I

Edmund King

Stephen

Carl Watkins

Henry II

Richard Barber

Richard I

Thomas Asbridge

John

Nicholas Vincent

THE HOUSE OF PLANTAGENET

Henry III

Stephen Church

Edward I

Andy King

Edward II

Christopher Given-Wilson

Edward III

Jonathan Sumption

Richard II

Laura Ashe

THE HOUSES OF LANCASTER AND YORK

Henry IV

Catherine Nall

Henry V

Anne Curry

Henry VI

James Ross

Edward IV

A. J. Pollard

Edward V

Thomas Penn

Richard III

Rosemary Horrox

THE HOUSE OF TUDOR

Henry VII

Sean Cunningham

Henry VIII

John Guy

Edward VI

Stephen Alford

Mary I

John Edwards

Elizabeth I

Helen Castor

THE HOUSE OF STUART

James I

Thomas Cogswell

Charles I

Mark Kishlansky

[Cromwell

David Horspool]

Charles II

Clare Jackson

James II

David Womersley

William III & Mary II

Jonathan Keates

Anne

Richard Hewlings

THE HOUSE OF HANOVER

George I

Tim Blanning

George II

Norman Davies

George III

Amanda Foreman

George IV

Stella Tillyard

William IV

Roger Knight

Victoria

Jane Ridley

THE HOUSES OF SAXE-COBURG & GOTHA AND WINDSOR

Edward VII

Richard Davenport-Hines

George V

David Cannadine

Edward VIII

Piers Brendon

George VI

Philip Ziegler

Elizabeth II

Douglas Hurd

To Claire, my Clio

Preface

‘If ever there was a national hero, it was Edward of England.’[1] So wrote Edward Jenks in his hagiography of Edward I, published in the ‘Heroes of the Nations’ series in 1902. Today, however, the king is perhaps best known as the cold-hearted, ruthless, warmongering tyrant (and defenestrator of Piers Gaveston) portrayed by Patrick McGooghan in that epic Hollywood fantasy Braveheart (1995).

It has become a cliché for the authors of books about medieval kings to start by pointing out that it is scarcely possible to write a biography of their subject, in the modern sense of the genre. Clichéd it may be, but largely true, for there is scant evidence to shed light on the private motivations behind a king’s public deeds. Indeed, it is not always possible to distinguish between what was done by the king himself, what was done at the king’s direct order, and what was done by his officials acting in his name (possibly without his knowledge). Even the king’s own words were frequently written up after the event by royal officials with only general reference to what he actually said, or were entirely invented by imaginative chroniclers, who set out to provide a moral or poetic – rather than a strictly historical – truth. But if Edward himself remains something of an enigma, we know a great deal about his reign. At this time, England was perhaps the most bureaucratic government in Western Christendom; vast quantities of its records, set down on acres of dried sheepskin, are still preserved at The National Archives. And notwithstanding their literary flourishes, most of the chronicle accounts are, in fact, very well informed.

Edward remains one of England’s more controversial kings, but he was very much a prince of his time, ruling in accordance with contemporary moral and political precepts. Undoubtedly a covetous and ruthless man, he nevertheless acted according to his lights; this book attempts to explain those lights.

Note on the Text

MONEY

Medieval England had a currency based on the Carolingian French denominations of pounds, shillings and pence. Most coinage was minted as silver pennies.

1 pound (£) = 20 shillings (s) = 240 pennies (d) 1s = 12d The mark, used as a unit of account, equalled two-thirds of a pound 1 mark = 13s 4d

It is difficult to make meaningful comparisons with modern prices, but at this time £5 was considered a reasonable annual salary for a clerk; those with an annual income of £40 were considered sufficiently wealthy that they ought to take up knighthood; and an annual income of £1,000 was considered sufficient to maintain the estate of an earl. In the late thirteenth century, England’s total money supply was perhaps not much more than £1 million. The crown’s ordinary annual income was £26,828 3s 9¼d, according to a somewhat spuriously precise Exchequer estimate of 1284.

GASCONY AND AQUITAINE

Gascony is a region of south-west France centred on Bordeaux. From 1154 until 1450, the kings of England ruled Gascony as dukes of Aquitaine. Technically, Gascony was a lordship within the larger duchy of Aquitaine, but in practice the English referred to Gascony and Aquitaine interchangeably.

Prologue

A European King

On the night of 17 June 1239, Eleanor, Queen of England, gave birth to a son. Eleanor’s father was the Count of Provence. The baby’s father, Henry III, was the great-grandson of the Frenchman Geoffrey Plantagenet, Count of Anjou (who, legend had it, was descended from the Devil). Henry was also Duke of Aquitaine, by right of which title he ruled Gascony, a region of south-west France which stretched from Bordeaux to the Spanish border. He would also have been Duke of Normandy – had not his father, King John, lost the duchy in 1205.

His continental ancestry notwithstanding, the boy would become the first King of England since the Conquest to bear an English name. He was named after Edward the Confessor (who died in 1066, and was canonized in 1161). The pious Henry III had a particular reverence for English saints; Edward’s younger brother was named Edmund, after the martyred king of the East Angles (d. 869). But these were not just English saints; they were royal English saints. Despite their French descent, the Plantagenets considered themselves the heirs of the pre-Conquest royal dynasty, as descendants of Matilda, granddaughter of Edmund Ironside, King of England (for a few months) in 1016. And a familial connection to a royal saint was worth emphasizing at a time when the prestige of English kingship had been sadly diminished by the disasters of King John’s reign.

Edward enjoyed close family ties with much of the royalty of Western Christendom. His paternal aunts, Joan and Isabella, were married, respectively, to Alexander II, King of Scots, and the Holy Roman Emperor Frederick II. His uncle, Richard, Earl of Cornwall, would be elected as emperor in 1257 (though his election was disputed). Edward’s closest connections, however, were with France. His maternal aunt, Margaret, was Queen of France, the wife of Louis IX; and he grew up in a court dominated by Frenchmen. Perhaps the most prominent were Henry III’s Lusignan half-brothers: William de Valence, husband of the Countess of Pembroke; and Aymer de Lusignan, bishop of the immensely wealthy see of Winchester. Both owed their advancement entirely to Henry. A rival faction comprised Queen Eleanor’s maternal relatives. Her uncle, Peter, Count of Savoy, had been granted the Yorkshire lordship of Richmond; and his brother Boniface was Archbishop of Canterbury. But the man who would have the greatest impact on Edward’s early career was Simon de Montfort, a younger son of the seigneur of Montfort l’Amaury, near Paris. The family were heirs to the earldom of Leicester; and it was in pursuit of this claim that Simon came to England. He rapidly gained Henry’s favour, and the hand of his sister, Edward’s aunt Eleanor.

Little is known about Edward’s upbringing and education. Despite his English name, he would habitually have spoken French, the language of a court and nobility steeped in French culture. Indeed, French was literally his mother tongue, for Queen Eleanor may never have learned to speak English. He would have learned to read both French and Latin, but would probably not have been taught to write (a separate and mechanical skill, hardly fitting for a king, who could call on clerks to write at his dictation). Certainly, he practised those knightly skills so widely admired in a king; unlike his father, the decidedly unmartial Henry, Edward revelled in the tournament, and was an enthusiastic participant in this dangerous and warlike sport.

Edward’s accomplishments are extolled in a fulsome quill-portrait by the English scholar Nicholas Trevet, writing soon after the king’s death:

He was a man of proven judgement in conducting business, and dedicated to the practice of arms from adolescence, through which he had gained for himself a reputation for knighthood far surpassing all the other rulers of his time across Christendom … His speech was lisping, yet in debate he did not lack for effective and persuasive eloquence.

Trevet also describes Edward’s appearance in considerable detail:

He was of elegant form and commanding stature, standing head and shoulders above the common people. He was adorned with hair which in adolescence turned from a nearly silver colour to a golden yellow; became black when he was a young man; and in old age turned to the whiteness of a swan. He had a wide brow, and regular features, except that the eyelid of the left eye drooped, reflecting his father’s similar appearance … Long of arm in proportion to a supple body, no one was more apt to the use of the sword, which he wielded with a wiry vigour. His belly protruded, and the length of his legs kept him from being unseated by the jumping and galloping of the most spirited horses.[1]

His unusual height was widely commented on; the sobriquet ‘Longshanks’ (‘Long Legs’) was coined in his lifetime.

Edward would grow up to be a uxorious man. He had some fourteen children by his first wife, Eleanor of Castile, of whom six survived into adulthood: five daughters and a son, Edward of Caernarvon (the future Edward II). He also left two surviving sons by his second wife, Margaret of France. He seems not to have maintained a mistress, though one chronicle does credit him with fathering a bastard – John de Botetourt, a prominent knight in his household from the 1280s – but such a moral lapse was far from unusual in a king.

He was notably indulgent to his daughters; they were married off much later than was usual for princesses, and were maintained in a lavish style (which, of course, added to the lustre of Edward’s court). One of them, Mary, was put into a nunnery at the age of six; nevertheless, she was a frequent visitor at court, where Edward regularly paid her gambling debts. As in any family, there were occasional arguments. He is recorded as paying for the repair of a coronet belonging to his daughter Elizabeth, after he had thrown it into a fire in a fit of rage. And he fell out with his daughter Joan, when after the death of her husband, the Earl of Gloucester, she secretly married Sir Ralph de Monthermer, a humble knight of the earl’s household. But Edward soon forgave the couple, and – seeing the advantage of having one of England’s largest noble estates in the hands of a man beholden to him – allowed Ralph to use the title Earl of Gloucester in his wife’s right.

Edward I’s relations with his son Edward proved rather more difficult. In another fit of rage in 1307 (the last year of his life), he is said to have called him a ‘base-born whoreson’[2] and to have pulled out hanks of his hair. It is a curious insult for a father to hurl at his son, especially by so beloved a wife, and the story may well have improved with the telling (though certainly the king was much given to swearing: ‘by God’s blood’ was one of his favourite oaths). The argument concerned Piers Gaveston, the son of a Gascon nobleman, attached to the royal household. Edward considered that his son was extravagantly generous to Gaveston; in particular, he had tried to grant him the county of Ponthieu in Picardy, inherited from his mother. Favouritism and injudicious patronage were grievous faults in Edward I’s eyes, for these had been instrumental in shaping the turbulent political climate in which he himself had grown up.

1

Lion or Leopard? Apprenticeship in Civil War

A lion by pride and fierceness, he is by inconstancy and changeableness a leopard, 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 renounces his promise.[1]

So wrote a contemporary commentator on Edward’s leading (if somewhat inconsistent) role during the political conflict and civil war of his father’s reign – events which would shape Edward’s kingship.

In 1249, at the tender age of ten, Edward became one of the greatest landholders in the King of England’s dominions when he was granted Gascony. However, Simon de Montfort, his uncle by marriage, had been appointed the previous year as king’s lieutenant in Gascony for a seven-year term, and remained in control. In 1252, the grant was reconfirmed, this time with the condition that ‘Edward and his heirs shall in no way alienate the said land … from the king’s crown, to which they shall ever remain united’.[2] This was intended to reassure the Gascons that the duchy of Aquitaine, of which they were subjects, would remain central to the interests of the English crown. Nevertheless, de Montfort’s abrasive and domineering style of lordship provoked rebellion; Henry III removed him from office (albeit with a substantial pay-off), and in August 1253 led an army to Gascony to restore English authority. According to the contemporary chronicler Matthew Paris, a disconsolate Edward watched his father’s ship until it had sailed over the horizon – disconsolate, probably, because at the age fourteen he was still being denied any part in the affairs of what was nominally his own lordship.[3]

The following year, Edward became an even wealthier landholder, as a result of his marriage. His bride was Eleanor, half-sister of Alfonso X, King of Castile. As for most medieval princes, Edward’s marriage was determined by the demands of diplomacy. Alfonso was the great-great-grandson of Henry II of England; by virtue of this descent, he laid claim to Gascony. Henry III therefore needed to conciliate him. Aware that his claim was weak, Alfonso was prepared to bargain it away for a marriage alliance. To support the happy couple in a suitable estate, Edward was to be provided with lands worth 15,000 marks (£10,000). To this end, Henry added to the grant of Gascony most of Ireland and extensive lands in Wales, including the ‘Four Cantrefs’, between the Conwy and the Dee, bordering Cheshire. Edward now held virtually all the lands of the kings of England beyond the realm, as well as a generous estate within England itself. Thus lavishly endowed, Edward was finally allowed to sail to Gascony in May 1254. He spent some months there, gaining his first military experience on the only successful expedition his father ever led, to subdue the remaining rebels. It was not until late September that Edward set out for Castile, where he was knighted by Alfonso, and married to the thirteen-year-old Eleanor.

This was a particularly generous endowment for a royal heir; and the chronicler Matthew Paris, never at a loss for a put-down, commented that, after granting away so much to his son, Henry ‘seemed like a mutilated kinglet’.[4] Yet, although his landed endowment included the earldom of Chester, Edward was not accorded any formal title. When as a young man Richard (the future Cœur de Lion, Edward’s great-uncle) had been granted Gascony, he was installed as Duke of Aquitaine. However, Edward was formally styled as just the king’s eldest son (for instance, in a charter issued in 1255: ‘Edward, first-born son and heir of Lord Henry, illustrious King of England’[5]). More generally, he was referred to simply as Lord Edward, the honorific ‘lord’ being habitually accorded to anyone with a claim to a degree of social distinction, down to the lowliest knight.

In fact, despite the apparent generosity of the grant – and despite Matthew Paris’s jibe – Henry retained his authority and title over the lands: quite literally, for he continued to use the title ‘King of England, Lord of Ireland and Duke of Aquitaine’. Edward’s authority over his own administration remained firmly constrained. Henry constantly interfered with the appointment of officials, countermanding Edward’s appointments and installing his own candidates. He also interfered in Edward’s government of Gascony, to the point where he and his son were each trying to implement contradictory policies in the lordship. Crucially, as in 1252, the grant was made on condition that ‘no one … should be able to lay any claim or right at any time in any of the said lands and castles, but they should remain in entirety to the kings of England in perpetuity’.[6] This restriction was based on the doctrine, developing across Europe, that a king should not grant away crown lands. The grant to Edward did not breach this rule, for in the course of time he himself would become king, and so the lands would automatically return to the crown. However, medieval lordship depended on patronage: a lord was expected to reward his followers. Edward was hampered in fulfilling such expectations, for these restrictions prevented him from rewarding his own followers with lands, while his father’s interference prevented him from rewarding them with offices. This must have been particularly galling considering Henry’s careless extravagance in rewarding his own Lusignan and Savoyard favourites with lands, offices and financial and legal favours. And while most of these grants were not made from crown lands (and so were not in outright breach of the injunction against diminishing the crown estate), many royal rights and dues were delegated or granted away – or, indeed, simply usurped by the beneficiaries of Henry’s selective generosity.

During this time, Edward came increasingly under the influence of his mother, Queen Eleanor, and her Savoyard relatives, in the ever more rancorous factional politics of the royal court. Eleanor promoted the appointment of the high-handed and unscrupulous Sir Geoffrey de Langley as steward of Edward’s Welsh lands. By autumn 1256, Langley had provoked rebellion in the Four Cantrefs, and Llywelyn ap Gruffudd, ruler of the Welsh principality of Gwynedd, seized the opportunity to invade. Edward lacked the resources to face such a challenge; an expedition led by one of his ministers ended in disaster when his army was annihilated. Matthew Paris opined that ‘Edward was not a little ashamed and hurt by the rebellion and rising of the Welsh, because he was called lord of Wales, but had not been able to restrain their rebelliousness’.[7] With their quarrel over Gascony still rankling, Henry initially refused to help his son, enquiring coldly, ‘What is it to me? The land is yours by my grant.’[8] However, the Welsh victory forced him to react, and in August 1257 he led an expedition into Gwynedd, accompanied by Edward. Typically for Henry’s military exploits, it was badly planned; the army rapidly ran out of supplies and had to make an ignominious withdrawal. The experience at least provided Edward with a valuable object lesson on the importance of logistics in warfare – a lesson which he would take to heart.

The war did little to bring Edward closer to his father. It did, however, draw him away from the influence of the Savoyards, into allegiance with their rivals, his Lusignan uncles; they lent him the money to finance his campaigns, which his perpetually cash-strapped father could not afford. In June 1256, just before his seventeenth birthday, Edward had taken part in his first tournament, and he now began to acquire his own following – a coterie of like-minded young noblemen, enthusiastic tourneyers, trained in war. These included his cousin Henry of Almain and John de Warenne, Earl of Surrey, both closely linked with the Lusignans; and English lords of the Welsh Marches such as Hamo le Strange and Roger Clifford, bound to Edward by their shared interests in Wales.

Granted vast estates by his father, but permitted only a subordinate role in governing them, Edward – like so many royal heirs-in-waiting before and after him – had neither real power nor real responsibility. Unrestrained by his father’s government, which was (even by the standards of the time) notoriously lax and weak in punishing the misdeeds of noblemen and their followers, Edward’s aristocratic gang developed a reputation for ill-disciplined and violent rowdiness. In a grim catalogue of their misdeeds, Matthew Paris paraphrased Luke’s Gospel (23:31), commenting: ‘If he does such things when he is green, what can be expected when he is seasoned?’[9]

In 1258, political crisis erupted. It had been brewing for years, for Henry was seen as naïve, easily led and overly partial to his favourites; and his government was widely regarded as corrupt, arbitrary, partisan, and diplomatically and militarily incompetent to boot. Unable to persuade any parliaments to make grants of taxation, the royal administration had resorted to financial expedients regarded as akin to extortion. Many royal officials were on the take, abusing their power to obstruct any attempt to bring them to account. Those who had the king’s ear were able to get away with murder – quite literally in some cases – and Henry’s Lusignan half-brothers were among the chief culprits.

This all came to a head on 30 April, when a sworn confederation of seven magnates confronted the king at Westminster. Their spokesman, Roger Bigod, Earl of Norfolk, demanded that ‘the caitiff and intolerable Poitevins [i.e. the Lusignans], and all foreigners, be put to flight from your face and ours as though from the face of a lion’.[10] They also demanded that Henry and Edward swear an oath to accept reform, and put forward a detailed programme, the Provisions of Oxford, at a specially summoned parliament in June.

From the start, the reform movement was entangled with factional conflict and complicated by personal ambitions and animosities. It thus presented Edward with a dilemma: on one side were his half-uncles, the Lusignans; on the other, among the confederation demanding their exile, were his great-uncle Peter of Savoy and his uncle Simon de Montfort, who would emerge as the leader of the reform movement. It is one of the more telling ironies of English history – one apparently lost on contemporaries – that this self-consciously English political movement, brought together in part by a common resentment of foreigners, should be led by a Frenchman. Edward initially sided with the Lusignans, who had bailed him out in his hour of need, and against the reformers, who were bent on shackling the authority of the king. It was only when the Lusignans were forced into exile that he could finally be brought to swear the reformers’ oath.

Meanwhile, as Henry’s problems increased at home, he sought to reduce his difficulties abroad. Relations with France had been improving since the two countries had last come to blows in 1242, and a permanent peace settlement was sealed by the Treaty of Paris, finally ratified in October 1259. Henry agreed to renounce his claims to the lands lost by King John, including Normandy, and to perform homage to the King of France for Gascony. Consequently, Henry was now a peer of the French realm. These terms affected Edward’s inheritance, and were to have a profound effect on his relations with France, for, as a result of the treaty, on his father’s death he too would become a liege of the French crown.

Edward was persuaded to agree to the treaty by May 1260 – albeit with great reluctance; but by this time, he was publicly espousing the cause of the reform movement. In August, he sent a writ to his justice in Cheshire, ordering him to ensure that ‘common justice’ was done in a particular case before him. The preamble reads as a statement of reformist principle:

If, on account of the influence of any person, common justice is denied to any one of our subjects by us or by our bailiffs, we lose the favour both of God and man, and our lordship is belittled. We wish therefore that common justice shall be exhibited to everyone.[11]

He nailed his colours even more firmly to the mast in October, when a faction calling itself the ‘community of the bachelors of England’[12] appealed to him, complaining of the failure to implement the promised reforms. Edward replied that, although he had sworn his oath to accept reform unwillingly, he was now ready to stand by it, and, indeed, to risk death for the community of the realm. Soon after, he issued a letter recording his oath to give aid and counsel to de Montfort.

Edward may have adopted reforming ideals as a means of throwing off the shackles imposed on him by his father. Certainly, he took advantage of Henry’s departure for France (to finalize the peace agreement) to rearrange his affairs to his own liking, appointing the violent and lawless Sir Roger Leyburn as his steward. Rumours reached Henry that his son was plotting to depose him. However, on his return, he was reconciled with Edward, who was packed off to France, where he devoted himself to the tournament, in the company of the Lusignans. Yet, when he returned to England in the spring of 1261, he briefly allied himself with de Montfort again, before coming back to his father’s side. Once again, he was despatched to the continent, this time to Gascony, where he achieved a measure of success in restoring English authority.

It was these changes of allegiance which earned Edward a reputation for leopard-like inconstancy and untrustworthiness. But his position was an awkward one. As England lurched towards civil war, it became increasingly difficult to find a clear path through the tangled thickets of his conflicting personal and political loyalties. These difficulties were compounded by the parlous state of his finances. It is true that this was in large part down to his own extravagance. But lavish expenditure was necessary to maintain the status befitting the first-born son of the illustrious King of England. Largesse was considered an indispensable virtue in a lord (provided always that it was dispensed with prudence); and given the restrictions on rewarding his followers with lands or office, he had little option but to be open-handed with gifts instead.

These difficulties came to a head when Edward returned to England in the spring of 1262. His steward, Sir Roger Leyburn, was now charged on Henry’s authority with defrauding Edward, and Henry ordered him to reimburse the massive sum of £1,820. Edward had also granted him a manor in Kent; this was now recovered, on the king’s orders, because it had originally been granted to Edward on condition that it should not be alienated. Within a year, Leyburn had joined de Montfort. Worse still, his prosecution only served to estrange many of Edward’s other followers, and John de Warenne, Henry of Almain, Roger Clifford and Hamo le Strange soon followed suit.

However, it is by no means easy to distinguish cause from effect. Leyburn may have been scapegoated because of pre-existing Montfortian sympathies; nor is it clear that Edward was directly involved in the proceedings against him. According to one account, he was himself turned against Leyburn by the malicious reports of his mother, Queen Eleanor, who regarded these followers as a bad influence.[13] It is perhaps unsurprising that Edward returned to the continent again, to spend his time (and money) on the tournament circuit, an altogether more congenial arena than the treacherous shifting sands of English politics.

Edward came back from France early in 1263; and this time he brought with him a force of French mercenaries to serve in another campaign against the Welsh. But their presence further alienated his former allies, the Marcher lords, who refused to fight alongside them, and the expedition proved another inglorious failure. Shortly afterwards, Edward found a different use for his mercenaries, pitting them against de Montfort’s supporters, as the country descended into civil war. In this time of crisis, he resorted to the kind of arbitrary expedient which would lead to bitter controversy in the later years of his kingship: in order to pay his men, he seized nearly £1,000 deposited by various individuals for safekeeping at the Templars’ church in London.

By August, Edward had managed to win his followers back to his side, including Leyburn. Two chroniclers record that he achieved this by the straightforward expedient of bribing them; a third suggests that he was simply very persuasive.[14] Certainly, Edward showed a willingness to compromise; they were not required to break their oaths to uphold the Provisions of Oxford. He also dismissed his foreign mercenaries, whose unpopularity made them a liability. In fact, his erstwhile followers’ return to the royalist fold may have been prompted by de Montfort’s plans for an alliance with the native Welsh leader, Llywelyn ap Gruffudd – an anathema to Marcher lords such as le Strange.

When negotiations between Henry and the reformers broke down, it was agreed to put the dispute to the arbitration of Louis IX of France. Edward accompanied his father to France, where, in January 1264, Louis delivered a verdict which totally vindicated the royalist position. Unsurprisingly, this proved unacceptable to de Montfort, and open war broke out. Edward took a leading role on his father’s side, and managed to compound his reputation for untrustworthiness; on at least two occasions, when he had been caught at a disadvantage, he made temporary truces with his opponents – only to throw them over and take up arms again as soon as he had extricated himself.

The fighting reached a climax on 14 May 1264, when Henry’s forces met with de Montfort’s at Lewes, in Sussex. Edward, commanding one of the divisions of the royal army, led a fierce attack, routed his opponents and pursued them from the battlefield. Unfortunately, in his absence, the rest of the army was then defeated. When he finally rallied his men and returned, it was to find that his uncle, Richard, Earl of Cornwall, had been captured, and his father was trapped in Lewes Priory. Henry was forced to come to terms, and de Montfort took charge of the government – an overruling of the king’s authority unprecedented in English history. This had grave implications for Edward’s own prospects, not least because the terms were to remain in force ‘also during the reign of Lord Edward when he shall have become king, until a date which shall be settled hereafter’.[15] In the meantime, Edward was to be kept as a hostage to ensure Henry’s compliance, and to prevent Edward himself from trying to overturn the settlement.

Edward managed to escape from custody in May 1265, with the connivance of a Marcher ally, Roger Mortimer. Allowed to go out riding with his guards, he insisted on trying out all the horses, to see which was the fastest; once he had thoroughly tired out all but one, he rode off on it, leaving his guards behind. Rapidly rallying support in the Marches, he first defeated the forces led by de Montfort’s son Simon, at Kenilworth; then, using the banners he captured there to disguise his forces, he advanced on de Montfort himself, at Evesham, in Worcestershire. Battle was joined on 4 August, and de Montfort was slaughtered along with hundreds of his supporters. This marked the turning point of the civil war; and the following two years saw Edward take a leading role in mopping up resistance and putting down new risings.

By now, Edward was also playing a leading role in governing the realm; Henry was old and in obviously declining health, and there was a real threat that civil war would break out again. Nevertheless, on 24 June 1268, at Parliament at Northampton, Edward took the cross, along with some of the leading magnates of the realm, including his brother Edmund. Their uncle, Louis IX of France, a seasoned crusader, had taken the cross again in 1267, and encouraged Edward to follow his example. However, crusading was extremely costly and exceedingly risky, and letting both the king’s surviving sons go off on crusade together was considered ill-advised. Consequently, both Henry and the pope initially opposed Edward’s departure, suggesting that Edmund should lead the English crusaders instead. Edward, however, was insistent. And he got his way. Undoubtedly, he was sincerely committed to the religious ideals of crusading. However, he must also have welcomed the opportunity for such an honourable chivalric adventure, in which he could act independently, free from interference by his father, and unconstrained by the hatreds and rancours of English politics.

Edward’s approach to recruiting his crusading army was methodical and businesslike. He sealed indentures (written contracts – see here) with eighteen captains, paying them to raise a total of 225 knights. These captains included his close relatives Edmund, Henry of Almain and William de Valence. The rest were mainly longstanding associates and followers, such as Roger Leyburn and the Marcher lords Roger Clifford and Hamo le Strange. He would also be accompanied by his wife, Eleanor of Castile. Only after protracted negotiations was a tax to pay for this finally agreed, in the Parliament of April 1270 – the first time the laity had made a grant of taxation since 1237. Nevertheless, taxes took months to collect, and in the meantime Edward had to borrow money from Louis IX; in return, he bound himself to be at Aigues-Mortes, on the Mediterranean coast of France, by 15 August, to serve on the crusade ‘as one of the barons of his realm’.[16] Edward had clearly come to accept the terms of the Treaty of Paris, which he had bitterly opposed at the time. That he was now prepared to subordinate himself so publicly to the King of France was a mark of the dramatic improvement in Anglo-French relations.

Unfortunately, by the time Edward eventually reached Aigues-Mortes, at the end of September, Louis’s crusade had long since departed, but for Tunis, rather than the Holy Land. In fact, it had already met with disaster – for Louis had died of dysentery in the North African heat. Edward finally caught up with the expedition only to find that, to his intense frustration, a truce had just been sealed. It was agreed that the crusaders should make their way to Acre, the last major crusader outpost in the Holy Land. However, the French fleet was wrecked in a storm, and in the face of such persistent misfortune, they gave up and went home. Stubbornly, Edward pressed on, eventually reaching Acre in May 1271.

Having come all this way, he found that without the French, his army, though very welcome, was not considered remotely large enough to persuade the defenders of Acre to risk an offensive. Over the next year, Edward led a couple of raids, and built a tower on the city walls. But such exploits achieved little, and in May 1272 Acre’s defenders negotiated a ten-year truce. An Egyptian commentator noted that Edward ‘was not pleased when the peace was made and did not become a party to it’.[17] His intransigence threatened to undermine the agreement; and it was probably for this reason that he was knifed by a Muslim assassin, on 17 June, his thirty-third birthday. According to a later – and sadly, probably apocryphal – account, Eleanor saved her husband’s life by sucking poison from his wound. By now, it was obvious even to Edward that there was no prospect of further action, and in September, when he had sufficiently recovered, he set sail for Europe.

In terms of improving the dire position of the remnants of the crusader kingdoms, Edward’s expedition achieved next to nothing. On the other hand, it did not end in outright failure, and his efforts brought him enormous prestige and renown across Christendom, with French troubadours lauding him as ‘the best lance in all the world’.[18] On his death in 1307, a verse elegy lamented: ‘Jerusalem, you have lost the flower of your chivalry.’[19] On a more practical level, his crusade gave Edward valuable experience of raising, financing and leading an expedition. And on a personal level, he formed close bonds with many of his companions, who would serve him well throughout his reign – men such as the former Montfortian rebel John de Vescy; the Savoyard Sir Otto de Grandison; and Anthony Bek, future Bishop of Durham. He had also displayed the stubbornness which would characterize the latter part of his reign, pursuing a military campaign with single-minded determination, regardless of changing circumstances and political and diplomatic realities.

The journey home was a long one. Edward had got as far as Sicily when news reached him of the death of his father, Henry III, on 16 November 1272. Back in England, after the king’s funeral in Westminster Abbey:

Gilbert and John, Earl of Gloucester and Earl Warenne, and all the clergy and the people, quickly went to the high altar and swore fealty to Edward, the king’s first-born son, though they were wholly ignorant whether he was still alive.[20]

They would have to wait for more than eighteen months before they saw their new king.

2

King and Reformer: Edward’s Government

Edward inherited the throne at the age of thirty-three, having already established himself both in English politics and on a European stage. He was evidently confident that the government of England could manage in his absence, for he was in no hurry to return to his realm. Instead, he went to Rome to visit the pope; sojourned with his relatives, the counts of Savoy; and stopped off on the way across France for a tournament, which turned so violent that it became known as ‘the little war of Chalons’. In July, he arrived at Paris, where he performed homage to the new French king, Philip III, for the duchy of Aquitaine. He spent the next year in Gascony, suppressing a revolt and attending to its affairs.

It was not until 2 August 1274 that Edward again set foot on English soil. His coronation was marked by a gesture which set the tone for his reign. When the Archbishop of Canterbury placed the crown on his head, Edward immediately removed it, declaring that he would not wear it until he had recovered all the crown lands his father had granted away. The recovery of the lands, rights and dues lost during his father’s tumultuous reign, both at home and abroad, would be central to Edward’s conception of his rule. He had seen royal authority overruled and brought low; as king, he was determined to preserve that authority. In order to do so, he was willing to learn from his father’s mistakes – and to take up the ideas of his father’s opponents.

On 11 October, barely two months after his return, Edward issued writs appointing commissioners to conduct investigations (known as the Hundred Roll inquiries), intended to uncover usurpations of the king’s rights, and corruption by royal officials. England was perhaps the most intensively governed kingdom in Christendom, and Edward was determined that its bureaucracy should be made to work for him. Corruption affected crown revenues and the efficiency of royal government, as well as bringing it into disrepute. But these inquiries also reflected the concerns of the reformers, for they were intended to answer popular complaints about the maladministration of local government, one of the factors which had aroused opposition to his father’s rule. And this was successful, to the extent that Edward was at least seen to be addressing these concerns; the Dunstable chronicle recorded that ‘the lord king sent inquirers everywhere to inquire how the sheriffs and other bailiffs had conducted themselves’. Unfortunately, the inquiries may have raised expectations beyond Edward’s power to deliver, for the chronicler added dolefully that ‘nothing useful came of it’.[1]

Edward continued his dual approach of pursuing offences against the rights of the crown, and also offences committed by crown officials, in a further inquiry of 1279 into ‘various encroachments made on us and others, rich and poor’. The survey was meant to ensure ‘that in future, that which is and ought to be ours and that which is and ought to be theirs may be clear’.[2] The behaviour of royal officials would remain a concern for much of Edward’s reign. When he returned to England in 1289 after three years in Gascony, he appointed auditors to receive complaints concerning maladministration in his absence. Over the following four years, some forty officials were imprisoned and fined for misconduct. Rather more spectacular was his purge of the highest ranks of the king’s judges: Thomas Weyland, chief justice of the Common Bench, was sent into exile, while most of the other senior judges were dismissed and fined.

This was undoubtedly a popular move, enhancing Edward’s reputation for listening to his subjects’ grievances, for it was widely reported that the judges were tried as a result of the complaints (it even inspired a satirical biblical parody, ‘The Passion of the Judges’). This was not, perhaps, entirely deserved, for the complaints appear to have been solicited to justify a purge that had already been set in motion. And Edward’s motivation was, at least in part, financial. Although the judges’ misdemeanours were mostly comparatively trivial, the fines garnered from the exercise amounted to nearly £20,000 – a huge sum, not much less than the normal annual income of the crown.

The 1274–5 Hundred Roll inquiries had revealed the extent to which numerous lords had taken advantage of Henry III’s lax government to encroach on crown rights, particularly during the civil war of the 1260s. Edward was especially perturbed by the widespread arrogation of franchises and liberties, a form of lordship which devolved many of the functions of royal government to the lord’s own officials. This amounted to a large-scale usurpation of the crown’s authority, which Edward was determined to redress. By the late thirteenth century, legal theorists were arguing that all franchises were derived from the crown, and that no lord should hold any franchise unless he could prove his right to it. This was a principle which appealed strongly to Edward’s elevated conception of kingship. To this end, in 1278, he launched the quo warranto inquiries, to discover ‘by what warrant’ such franchises were held.

Most of the nobility, however, took a somewhat different view, vigorously voiced by John de Warenne. Summoned before the royal justices, he brandished ‘an ancient and rusty sword’, proclaiming:

Here, my lords, here is my warrant! For my ancestors came with William the Bastard* and conquered their lands with the sword, and with the same sword, I shall defend those lands from anyone who wants to take them.[3]

While this tale undoubtedly improved in the telling, it summed up the widely held view that franchisal rights came not from the king, but from individual right of conquest. In fact, de Warenne had particular cause to resent the proceedings: a liberty granted him by Edward himself in 1263 was disallowed, on the grounds that Edward was not then king, and thus did not have the right to make such a grant. Another problem was that many families had held and exercised franchises for generations, without documentary proof of their right to do so. But by Edward’s reign, writing had replaced oral testimony as the predominant means of recording property rights, and so the royal courts were increasingly unwilling to recognize such rights in the absence of documents. Thus, according to the contemporary chronicler John of Oxnead, ‘a great many men, not having charters, lost liberties and free customs of which they had been in possession for a long time’.[4]

The quo warranto proceedings dragged on interminably, at the glacial pace customary for royal justice. Nor were matters helped by a distinct lack of clarity or consistency; while some judges took an increasingly hard line, Edward ensured that franchises held by his relatives and favourites were accepted. Eventually, in the face of mounting complaint, Edward agreed to a compromise: the Statute of Quo Warranto of 1290 conceded the rights to any franchise that could be shown to have been held since ‘before the time of King Richard’ (effectively fixing Richard’s accession in 1189 as the limit of legal memory).[5] And Edward finally abandoned the proceedings altogether in 1294.

While Edward was ultimately forced to accept existing franchises, regardless of proof, he did successfully curb any further such encroachments on crown rights, and firmly established the principle that franchises in England derived from royal authority. All of this demonstrated Edward’s skill as a politician and his willingness to compromise, as he managed to head off any serious dispute in an area which was potentially highly contentious – for, just like their king, magnates were notably sensitive to any perceived threat to their rights over their lands.

The Statute of Quo Warranto was only one of a series of statutes issued in Edward’s name which would establish his reputation as one of England’s greatest lawmakers. This stemmed in part simply from the way in which his legislation was issued. Previously, new laws had usually taken the form of writs (instructions sent to judges and royal officials), which were recorded only haphazardly alongside the routine business of government. Edward, however, took care to have his laws formally promulgated as statutes, generally in Parliament. This gave them authority and standing, and – on a practical level – publicity. The first of Edward’s statutes, Westminster I, was formulated in response to the Hundred Roll inquiries of 1274–5. It was issued at his first parliament, at Easter 1275, to which he summoned twice the usual number of representatives, making it one of the largest parliaments of the Middle Ages. The statute addressed many problems of misgovernment, which were of obvious concern to the assembled representatives. Another innovation ensured an even wider audience: a copy was sent to the sheriff of every county, with orders that it be proclaimed in every village and borough.

Statutes were not of themselves a novelty; Magna Carta was an obvious early example. Nor was Edward intending any radical overhaul of the law. Rather, his statutes were made within the existing legal framework, and were generally intended to reform and revise the law so that it functioned better. Much of his legislation was based on practical experience in the courts, and was intended to streamline procedures. As the preamble to the 1285 Statute of Westminster II had it:

Our Lord the King … calling together the prelates, earls, barons and his council … and considering that many of his realm were disinherited, by reason that in many cases, where remedy should have been had, there was none provided by him nor his predecessors, ordained certain statutes very necessary and profitable for his realm, whereby his people of England and Ireland, governed under his rule, have obtained more speedy justice in their oppressions than before.[6]

But despite Edward’s conservative intent, some of the measures passed were to have a huge impact. One such was the first clause of this statute, known as de donis conditionalibus (‘concerning conditional grants’). Landowners had begun to develop arrangements such as entails, by which lands might be granted to a younger son or daughter, on condition that these be returned to the main family line in the absence of a male heir; this statute made such conditions legally binding. This fundamentally altered patterns of inheritance, with consequences for generations of landowners (the plight of a certain Mr Bennett’s daughters, some five hundred years later, was owing to just such an arrangement). As with statutes such as Acton Burnell (1283) and Merchants (1285),[7] which made the collection of private debts much easier, this addressed issues which were of concern to Edward’s subjects, rather than directly benefiting the crown.

Edward’s expulsion of the Jews from England, in 1290, was similarly a response to widespread popular demand. This was driven in part by the vicious anti-Semitism so characteristic of medieval Christendom, further whipped up by crusade mania. But equally important was resentment arising from Jewish involvement in moneylending. Canon law (the law of the Church) prohibited Christians from lending money at interest. Fortunately for the state of Edward’s finances, Italian bankers had devised various ways round this. However, the majority of Edward’s subjects did not have access to the international money market. Not being subject to canon law, the Jewish community in England had long dominated the business of lending money to landholders. In turn, the crown took a predatory propriety interest in the Jewish community, taxing them ruthlessly; and many debts owing to Jews ended up in the king’s hands. Those with close connections to royal government were able to exploit the system to acquire lands, buying these debts on the cheap from the crown, and then using the royal courts to foreclose on them (in this, they were greatly aided by the new debt-collection procedures introduced under the statutes of Acton Burnell and of Merchants). Edward’s wife, Queen Eleanor, and his younger brother, Edmund, Earl of Lancaster, were both notoriously enthusiastic players of this profitable game (as a contemporary verse had it: ‘The king covets our pennies, and the queen our fine manors’[8]). The expulsion of the Jews was dictated by a cold-heartedly ruthless assessment of the crown’s best financial and political interests. The Jewish community had already been financially drained by heavy taxation; it was now more profitable to expel the Jews than to protect them.

Edward was undoubtedly determined to address the concerns of his subjects out of a sense of obligation, for this was a fundamental part of a king’s function. But there was undoubtedly also an element of hard-nosed political bargaining. The Statute of Quo Warranto and the edict expelling the Jews were just two of a series of measures conceded in 1290, in return for a desperately needed grant of taxation. And the forum for Edward’s political bargaining was Parliament. Medieval parliaments were an occasion, rather than a permanent institution, summoned at the king’s will, and dismissed once their work was completed (usually after a few weeks). They were essentially a development of the thirteenth century, though arguably their roots stretched as far back as the Anglo-Saxon witan. Under Edward’s predecessors, parliaments had been summoned only sporadically; and the reformers’ Provisions of Oxford had demanded that three parliaments be held every year, at fixed dates. Edward went a long way to meeting this, summoning parliaments more frequently than any other medieval King of England. After his return to England in 1274, he regularly held parliaments twice a year, at Michaelmas (30 September) and Easter. There were interruptions, in 1277 and again in 1282–3, when Edward was busy waging war in Wales, and in 1286–9, when he was absent in Gascony. After 1293, the timing of parliaments became somewhat more erratic, though there was at least one, and frequently two, every year until 1302. For the next three years, Edward decided he could manage without parliaments, but they were resumed in Lent 1305, followed by parliaments that autumn, in spring 1306 and January 1307.

The composition of Parliament was still very flexible. There was no fixed parliamentary peerage, and individual magnates, bishops, abbots and royal servants were summoned at the king’s discretion; this body would eventually become the House of Lords. The other body was the representatives: the knights of the shire (usually two elected from each county) and the burgesses (usually two elected from selected towns, plus four from London); together, they would eventually become the House of Commons.[9] The election of representatives from the shires was first ordered by Henry III, in 1254; and burgesses were first summoned by Simon de Montfort in 1265.

In the first half of Edward’s reign, representatives were summoned only to a minority of parliaments, depending on the business to be discussed. They were, for instance, summoned to the Shrewsbury Parliament of Michaelmas 1283 to witness the treason trial of the Welsh magnate Dafydd ap Gruffudd; but once they had witnessed Dafydd’s execution, they were dismissed, and the council conducted the rest of the Parliament’s business at the nearby manor of Acton Burnell, belonging to the chancellor, Robert Burnell. However, representatives were almost invariably summoned when a grant of taxation was required. And from the 1290s, as Edward required such grants more frequently, so they were summoned more frequently; increasingly, indeed, they were summoned even when no taxes were to be requested. By the end of the reign, precedent had hardened into custom: Parliament was settling into a regular form, and the principle had been firmly established that lay taxes could not be imposed without the consent of the Commons in Parliament.

Grants of taxation were necessary because the crown’s own regular income (roughly £27,000 a year, derived from sources such as crown lands, feudal dues, the profits of justice and customs) was sufficient only to cover routine peacetime expenses. Any additional expenditure required additional income. Henry II, Richard Cœur de Lion and King John had all resorted to racking up feudal dues and auctioning justice to fund their wars. However, such arbitrary exactions aroused bitter resentment, leading to the rebellions of John’s reign, and the outlawing of such practices under Magna Carta. By the late thirteenth century, the usual resort for trying to raise additional revenue was a form of direct taxation, known as aids or subsidies, charged as a proportion of the value of movable goods and property. A typical grant was a fifteenth and a tenth, meaning rural dwellers would be taxed at a fifteenth part of their movable wealth, and those living in towns (the boroughs) at a tenth. On occasion, town and rural dwellers might also be taxed at the same rates, as for the grants of a fifteenth in 1275, 1290 and 1301. This form of taxation had originated in Henry II’s reign, initially to fund the crusades; and each of Henry’s successors had raised similar aids, usually to fund wars. However, such a tax could not be imposed arbitrarily, and required consent (as Magna Carta had laid down); and by Edward’s reign, it was customary to obtain such consent from a parliament. Henry III had been notably unsuccessful in this regard, failing to obtain consent for any grants of taxation between 1237 and 1270, when a twentieth was granted for Edward’s crusade. By contrast, Edward wrung more such aids from his subjects than all of his predecessors put together. For the first eighteen years of his reign, his spending was relatively modest, and he raised only two aids (one of them to pay for the Welsh war of 1282–3); but between 1290 and 1306, he collected no less than seven aids, bringing in altogether nigh on £400,000.

It was the king’s need to obtain consent to taxation which enabled the Commons (albeit usually following the leadership of the Lords) to negotiate concessions such as the expulsion of the Jews. However, while Edward accepted that consent was necessary, he did not take refusal lying down. The Bury St Edmunds chronicler describes how, at the Parliament of 1296, he hectored the knights of the shire and the burgesses until they granted him a tax to fund his wars: ‘Whoever should have hesitated to comply with the king’s demand … or refused as much as he could, was publicly attacked by the king and dishonoured.’[10]

Yet parliaments were not only – or even primarily – about taxation. One truly innovative measure introduced by Edward was his acceptance of petitions in Parliament. Petitioners might request individual favours or grants; ask for allowances to be made for particular circumstances; or seek justice or redress of wrongs. In this last regard, petitions served much the same purpose as the complaints invited for the Hundred Roll inquiries, but on a regular basis. Petitions enabled individuals and communities to seek the king’s aid in matters not adequately covered by the normal procedures of royal government, or in cases where those procedures had broken down or were being abused. Previously, petitioning had been on a haphazard basis, requiring access to the king in person. Now, it was possible (at least theoretically) for any subject, or group of subjects, to submit a petition to the king and his council as a matter of routine. And they could be confident that it would be given due consideration, and, if accepted, acted upon – as witnessed by the official endorsements on surviving petitions (of which there are many hundreds from Edward’s reign alone). They could be submitted to the English Parliament not just from England, but from Edward’s other lordships, including Gascony, Ireland, Wales and – from 1305 – Scotland. However, Parliament remained an entirely English institution; aside from isolated cases in 1296 and 1305 (when Scottish nobles were summoned to English parliaments to discuss Scottish affairs), no representatives were summoned from these lands.

Edward was also active in reforming justice – an area of increasing concern to his subjects, for England was widely perceived to be facing a mounting crisis of law and order. In the Parliament of 1300, Edward conceded that ‘many more evildoers are in the land than ever there were, and innumerable robberies, arsons and homicides are committed, and the peace is less well kept’.[11] And in a memorandum to his justices of 1306, he referred to ‘the riots and outrages … which were like the beginning of war’.[12]

Since the reign of Henry II (another great reformer), royal justices had been sent on circuits round the counties, known as eyres, which saved suitors from having to come to Westminster to obtain the king’s justice. Their caseload had been steadily increasing throughout the thirteenth century, but Edward’s reign saw a huge rise. However, the eyres were suspended during the Welsh war of 1282–3, and again with the outbreak of war with France in 1294. Although Edward considered them to be of great importance in representing royal authority in the localities, they were not resumed during his reign. And this was partly because he had already introduced alternative mechanisms.

In 1304, Edward appointed special commissions to inquire into crime and disorder, known as commissions of trailbaston, from the clubs, or ‘bastons’, used by highway robbers. The following year, more such commissions were appointed, this time with the authority to hear and determine cases. This was the first time any King of England had mounted such a deliberate and concerted campaign to tackle crime on a nationwide scale. And, in keeping with Edward’s policy of making royal government more responsive, the crown had also begun to issue ad hoc commissions of oyer et terminer. These provided for the appointment of nominated local justices and knights to ‘hear and determine’ specific cases in the localities in response to individual complaints or petitions. This was a major step in the process which would, over the fourteenth century, see much of the crown’s routine legal jurisdiction devolved to the great and good of county society as justices of the peace.

However, for all the sound and fury surrounding law and order, it is hard to gauge the true extent of the problem; as with all crime statistics, there are difficulties of interpretation. There does appear to have been some increase in crime, much of it stemming from Edward’s own wars. The taking of ‘prises’ (supplies commandeered for the king’s wars) caused disputes which often turned violent; and the purveyors who seized them were often accused of theft. Soldiers frequently turned to brigandage, forced to steal in order to feed themselves because of the difficulties and delays in organising prises. And campaigns ended with the discharge of large numbers of men who had got into the habit of living by plunder and ransom. Indeed, many were already felons, for it was Edward who first initiated the grand tradition of filling the ranks of English armies with criminals. In June 1294, pardons were offered to outlaws, fugitives and prisoners who were prepared to serve in Gascony. Typically, Edward justified this as a public good, sparing criminals from punishment

because we are moved to pity for that so many and divers men of our kingdom so often incur the loss of life or limb … with the hope of the betterment of such malefactors and for the quiet of the people of our realm.[13]

In fact, he was putting a good face on an expedient forced on him by difficulties in recruiting for an unpopular campaign. Nevertheless, the measure proved so successful that it was repeated on a regular basis for future campaigns.

On the other hand, the rising tide of complaint may also simply have reflected rising expectations. As the crown took on more and more criminal cases, and people were encouraged to present their complaints, so they increasingly came to expect the crown to deal with crime. Furthermore, Edward may himself have helped to spread the impression of rising crime. For instance, the preamble of the 1275 Statute of Westminster claimed that the legislation was needed ‘because … the peace had been less kept, and the laws less used, and the offenders less punished, than they ought to be, by reason whereof the people feared the less to offend’.[14] And this statute was proclaimed throughout the realm, in every village and borough.

By the mid 1290s, Edward’s reform programme was starting to run out of steam. Now in his fifties, he was becoming increasingly isolated, both politically and personally. His uncle William de Valence had died in 1286. He lost his beloved queen, Eleanor, in 1290. Robert Burnell, his chief adviser and architect of many of his reforms, died in 1292. And in 1296, Edmund of Lancaster succumbed to illness while commanding the English forces in Gascony. Edward had lost

our dearest and only brother, who was always ready in the affairs of our realm, proving himself devoted and faithful, and in whom virtue and many gifts of grace shone forth … and by whose loss we and our whole realm are made desolate.[15]

The main reason the reform programme stalled, however, was war. Edward’s wars were prodigiously expensive. Between 1294 and 1298, he spent some £750,000 fighting the French, the Welsh and the Scots. Such spending required unprecedented levels of taxation; and unfortunately, in 1294, just as war with France was looming, Edward’s government became embroiled in an international banking crisis, partly of the king’s own making. He had previously depended heavily on credit from an Italian banking company, the Ricciardi of Lucca. Crown borrowing from Italian bankers was nothing new; what was new was the scale and long-term systematic basis of Edward’s arrangements for borrowing and repayment. The Ricciardi took over the collection of the English wool customs (and sometimes direct taxes as well), and advanced money on them to the crown when occasion demanded. They had also taken on the collection of crusade taxation in England for the pope, and, while his Holiness was deciding how the proceeds might best be employed, the Ricciardi used the money as capital for loans. Then, in 1291, the pope decided to grant the money to Edward, to fund his proposed crusade. This gave Edward a huge amount of credit with the Ricciardi, and in 1294 he attempted to draw on it to fund his war. Unfortunately, however, much of this money was tied up in long-term loans, and the Ricciardi were bankrupted.

Without the Ricciardi’s credit, Edward’s finances were left running on a desperately hand-to-mouth basis. Money was usually needed immediately, but taxes took many months to be agreed, assessed and collected. At the same time, tax yields were declining. The fifteenth granted by the laity in 1290 raised nearly £115,000 – one of the most lucrative taxes in England in the Middle Ages. However, following repeated tax grants over the next decade, the fifteenth granted in 1301 raised just £45,000. This was partly because tax evasion was becoming more widespread (some surviving monastic financial accounts meticulously record the costs of bribing tax collectors); but it may also have been simply because the country was becoming impoverished by relentless taxation.

Whatever the cause, from the middle of the 1290s Edward’s government was rapidly racking up debt – a problem exacerbated when the accounting system of the king’s household (the department responsible for war finance) collapsed under its excessive workload. Correspondingly, Edward’s demands for money became ever more pressing. In 1294, he bullied the clergy into granting an aid of no less than one half of their movable wealth, which yielded some £80,000. And he imposed a new export duty of £2 per sack of wool, on top of the existing custom of 6s 8d. Over the following three years, this raised more than £110,000. However, much of the cost was passed on by wool merchants, who cut the prices they paid to producers – and these included many landowners, who wielded significant political clout. So controversial was the new custom that it soon became known as the maletolt (‘bad tax’, in the form of French spoken in England).

Another exaction was prises, the compulsory purchase of supplies and commodities. This was based on a long-standing right to obtain supplies for the king’s household; Edward took advantage of this right to obtain supplies for royal armies, on the grounds that they were organized from within the household. Again, this was not a new practice, but dated back at least as far as the reign of Henry II. However, Edward’s use of prises was on an altogether larger and far more frequent scale, and payment was invariably made belatedly or – all too often – not at all. Furthermore, the collection of prises was wide open to abuse and corruption, while much of the food that was collected went to waste, left to rot in barns.

Grievances about Edward’s increasingly rapacious government came to a head in 1297. At the Parliament at Bury St Edmunds the previous November, he had demanded a tax from the clergy of a fifth. The pope had just prohibited the payment of taxes by the Church to secular authorities, and so in January, under the assertive leadership of Robert Winchelsey, Archbishop of Canterbury, the clergy refused to cough up. Edward’s response was that ‘since you do not hold to the homage and oath that you made to me … nor shall I be bound to you in any way’.[16] He then outlawed them en masse, and seized all of the Church’s secular property, while allowing individual clerics to pay fines for the restoration of their lands – fines which matched what they would have paid in tax.

At the same time, Edward’s repeated demands for military service were arousing the opposition of his nobility. In the Lent Parliament at Salisbury, he demanded that they serve in Gascony. Led by Roger Bigod, Earl of Norfolk, the hereditary marshal of the king’s army, they refused to go, unless the king himself headed the expedition. According to one account, Edward swore at him, ‘By God, sir Earl, you shall either go or hang’; but the earl swore back, ‘By the same oath, lord King, I shall neither go nor hang.’[17] In the event, the earl neither went nor hanged.

Edward now demonstrated his political acumen, fending off the Church’s opposition by coming to a settlement with Archbishop Winchelsey. He could afford to do so anyway, because he had collected nearly as much by fining the clergy as he had hoped to gain by taxing them. However, he still desperately needed more money, for he was now planning an expedition to Flanders. In July, following yet another parliament, he announced that he been granted an unprecedentedly generous aid of an eighth and a fifth by the laity. In return, he promised to reissue Magna Carta. However, the Commons had not been summoned to this parliament, nor had the lords been summoned in proper form; indeed, the author of a contemporary English chronicle, the Flowers of History, claimed that Edward had obtained the consent only of ‘the people standing around in his chamber’.[18] To add insult to injury, he also ordered a prise of 8,300 sacks of wool, for resale at a profit. The collectors met with such recalcitrance and evasion that fewer than 800 sacks could be collected; and it caused such disruption to the wool trade that more may have been lost from reduced customs than was gained from the sale of the wool.

On the morning of 22 August, a large force of men led by the Earls of Hereford and Norfolk, and including five prominent barons, turned up at the Exchequer. Claiming to speak for the whole community of the realm, Hereford harangued the clerks:

nothing sooner puts men in bondage than … to be tallaged at will, and that if the eighth were so levied it would lead to the disinheritance of them and of their heirs; and … that such a tallage and prise of wool were quite insufferable and they would in no wise suffer them.[19]

A tallage was an arbitrary tax levied by a lord on his feudal tenants; in effect, Hereford was arguing that, by imposing taxes without proper consent, Edward was treating his subjects like serfs.

For Edward, this must have seemed uncomfortably reminiscent of the events of 1258, when his father had been confronted by angry nobles. Yet, in the face of this overt opposition, he embarked for Flanders anyway, determined that nothing should be allowed to impede his expedition. In fact, there was a world of difference between nobles haranguing royal clerks at the Exchequer, as happened in 1297, and haranguing the king in his own court, as had happened in 1258. Meanwhile, Edward agreed that the levying of the eighth should not be taken as a precedent; as for the prise of wool, he justified it on the grounds that ‘it seems to us that we ought to be as free to buy wool in our country as anyone else’.[20]

Some chroniclers would later claim that the country had teetered on the brink of civil war. But Edward had no intention of allowing any such breakdown; in his absence – but undoubtedly on his authority – his government prepared the way for a settlement with his opponents. On 5 September, just two weeks after his departure, another parliament was convoked; and on the 15th, writs were issued for knights of the shire to be summoned, so that they could receive copies of royal confirmations of Magna Carta and the Charter of the Forest, a public acknowledgement that the king was prepared to make concessions. Magna Carta had come to be revered as a touchstone of good governance, a statutory barrier against the arbitrary exercise of royal power. The Charter of the Forest (originally issued alongside Magna Carta in 1215) was similarly regarded as a check on the administration of forest law, a jurisdiction which imposed onerous burdens on those living within the royal forest, which covered extensive parts of England.

By now, the need for a settlement was even more pressing, for the Scots had inflicted a devastating defeat on the English at Stirling Bridge on the 11th. But the necessary concessions had already been set in train by the time news of this disaster reached London. When Parliament met, Edward’s council issued the Confirmatio Cartarum (‘Confirmation of the Charters’), conceding that he would not take

aids … or prises from our realm henceforth except with the common assent of all the realm and for the common profit of the same realm, saving the ancient aids and prises due and accustomed.[21]

The council also agreed to abolish the maletolt, and to review the boundaries of the royal forest. In return, Parliament granted a desperately needed – though pointedly reduced – tax of a ninth, in place of the offending eighth. These measures were formally confirmed by Edward from Flanders, ‘after talking the matter over with his magnates who were there with him’[22] – ostentatiously playing the good king, who acted with the counsel of his nobility and advisers.

Nevertheless, Edward proved notably reluctant to implement many of the concessions he had granted, particularly regarding the royal forest. Once again, as during the political crises of the 1260s, his good faith came into question. At the Parliament of March 1299, he went to the lengths of secretly leaving London overnight (for the benefit of his health, he subsequently insisted), to avoid giving a reply to the demands for further concessions. It is not perhaps surprising, then, that the following year, when Edward once again agreed to confirm Magna Carta and the Charter of the Forest, the bishops and the earls requested that these be issued under their own seals, to prevent him from reneging on his promise. Edward indignantly refused, demanding: ‘Do you think that I am a child, or a liar?’[23] Nevertheless, he was constrained to make a further set of concessions, the Articuli super Carta (‘Articles additional to the Charter’ – i.e. Magna Carta), in return for an aid of a twentieth. In the event, he refrained from collecting it, seemingly because he considered that the conditions attached were too binding.

The need for money proved too pressing, however, and at the Lincoln Parliament in January 1301, Edward was forced to accept a bill demanding reform, in return for a fifteenth. In particular, he (again) conceded that the bounds of the forest should be reviewed. This time, the review actually happened; and as the inquiries were conducted by local juries, the predictable result was that the extent of the forest was reduced by about half. Edward also accepted limitations on his rights of prise, which severely restricted its use in supplying royal armies.

These concessions were enough to head off further opposition, and the rest of the reign saw comparative political peace. Edward sidestepped the thorny issue of taxation by the simple expedient of not paying his bills. Nevertheless, the concessions he had been forced to make continued to rankle. He got his chance to overturn them in 1305, when one of his clerks, the Gascon Bertrand de Got, was elected Pope Clement V. Within six months, Clement issued a papal decree absolving Edward from his oaths to observe ‘certain various and unjust concessions relating to the forests and other rights pertaining of old to the crown and the honour of your royalty’.[24] The following year, Edward duly revoked the 1301 concessions on the forest, reinstating the former bounds. However, he tried to make this more palatable by passing an ordinance limiting the powers of the royal foresters, and making them more accountable for their actions.

There was more to all this than just political gamesmanship. Edward’s opponents accused him of imposing arbitrary, unaffordable and intolerable demands and exactions, well beyond reasonable bounds, and of reneging on his promises. But as Edward saw it, it was the duty of his subjects to assist and serve him to the utmost in maintaining and defending the lands and rights which had descended to him by Divine Providence as King of England. He was not prepared to compromise on matters affecting the property and rights of the crown, such as the bounds of the royal forest. While – however reluctantly – he could accept the political limitations to his kingship imposed by his opponents, he was determined that the crown’s estate should be preserved intact, to be passed on to his heirs. This was a matter of principle, of maintaining the rights of the crown undiminished, in keeping with the promise he had made at his coronation. And this was perhaps the guiding principle behind his government and his reforms.

3

Britain and France: Overlordship and War

Now the islanders are all joined together,

And Albany reunited to the kingships,

Of which King Edward is proclaimed lord.

Cornwall and Wales are in his domain,

And great Ireland at his will.

There is no king, nor any prince, in all these countries

Save King Edward, who has united them thus.

Arthur never held these fiefs so fully!

Now all he has to do is prepare his expedition

Against the King of France, conquer his inheritance,

And take the cross to where Jesus Christ was born.[1]

So wrote Peter Langtoft, a chronicler from Bridlington Priory in Yorkshire, recording Edward’s victory over Scotland in 1296. Nor was he the only commentator to make the comparison with Arthur. This was an age in which Arthur, the greatest of the kings of the Britons, was generally regarded as a historical figure, largely due to one of history’s most successful hoaxes, Geoffrey of Monmouth’s History of the Kings of the Britons (completed c.1138). Geoffrey dragged Arthur from the realms of Welsh legend into the (pseudo-)historical record, with an inspiring account of his conquest of Britain and much of Western Europe. Edward, too, succeeded in bringing the entire British Isles under his direct rule, seizing (albeit briefly) ‘the old monarchy of the whole of Britain, for so long torn and truncated’, as the Bury St Edmunds chronicler put it – a reference back to the supposed rule of the kings of the Britons.[2] Of course, a certain irony attaches to the comparison, given that Arthur was a Welshman who fought against English invaders.

Edward’s relations with England’s neighbours in Britain and France were driven by issues of overlordship and sovereignty, concerning the rights of a superior lord to interfere in the government of his vassals’ territories. This was an area of legal and political theory which had been clarified and developed over the course of the thirteenth century, drawing on ideas derived from the law of the Roman Empire. Nevertheless, when Edward returned to England as king in 1274, few would have predicted that this would lead him to conquer Wales, invade Scotland and go to war with France. England and Scotland had been at peace since 1217, and Alexander III, King of Scots, was married to Edward’s sister, Margaret. As for France, most grounds of contention appeared to have been settled by the Treaty of Paris. Although not all of its terms had been implemented, the strength of the Anglo-French détente was clear from Edward’s enthusiastic participation in the crusade led by his uncle, Louis IX. Indeed, Edward enjoyed an international reputation as a peacemaker, and was called upon to arbitrate a number of disputes on the continent. While he was in Gascony in 1287, for instance, he brokered a truce in the Franco-Aragonese war, going to considerable trouble and expense to secure the release of his cousin, Charles of Salerno, from Aragonese captivity. Such efforts were inspired in large part by Edward’s plans for leading another crusade. The same year, he took the cross again, intending to mount an expedition to the Holy Land with the aid of his fellow kings and princes. This would require peace across Western Christendom.

It was in Wales that trouble was most obviously brewing. When Edward succeeded to the English throne, he also became the overlord of Llywelyn ap Gruffudd, Prince of Wales. Native Welsh political society was dominated by a number of competing dynasties; Llywelyn was the head of the most powerful, as ruler of Gwynedd, based in Snowdonia and Anglesey. Seizing the opportunity afforded by civil war in Henry III’s England, Llywelyn had built up an unprecedented degree of authority across Wales, imposing dominion over his fellow Welsh rulers, and leading highly successful campaigns against the English. In 1267, he had forced the Treaty of Montgomery on Henry III, which confirmed many of his gains against the English (who included Lord Edward, whose Welsh lands bordered Gwynedd). More significantly, he had gained recognition as hereditary Prince of Wales, and overlord of all the other native Welsh rulers – though he himself remained subject to the overlordship of the kings of England.

However, Llywelyn’s position was inherently unstable, dependent as it was on a settlement extracted from the English while they were weakened by civil war. Much of southern and central Wales was ruled by Englishmen, as lords of the Marches; though their lordships remained jurisdictionally separate from the kingdom of England, they owed allegiance to the English kings, and not to the new Prince of Wales. Many of them had lost lands to Llywelyn, and were determined to recover them, whatever Henry might have agreed. Llywelyn soon became embroiled in a number of private wars, as he tried – and failed – to fend off efforts by the Marcher lords to reassert their authority. These losses threatened to undermine Llywelyn’s authority. Under the terms of the Treaty of Montgomery, in return for the concessions granted to him, he had agreed to pay 25,000 marks (£16,666 13s 4d) to the English crown, at 3,000 marks (£2,000) a year; but by 1274 he was refusing to pay any further instalments until Edward had compelled the Marcher lords to restore ‘the lands by them unjustly occupied and more unjustly retained’.[3] However, Llywelyn had himself been encroaching on English lands in Wales; in the teeth of the objections of Edward’s government, he built a castle at Dolforwyn, almost overlooking the English royal castle at Montgomery, by the border with Shropshire.

The title of Prince of Wales was an innovation, and one not necessarily welcome to Llywelyn’s Welsh subjects. Although there was a strong sense of Welsh identity in thirteenth-century Wales, there was little sense of Welsh nationhood. For many Welsh, there was no obvious reason why the exacting overlordship of Llywelyn ap Gruffudd should be preferred to that of the King of England. Welsh opposition manifested itself in a conspiracy to assassinate Llywelyn, in 1274, led by his younger brother Dafydd ap Gruffudd, who felt he had not been provided with his fair share of the family lands. The plot failed, and Dafydd fled to England, where he was received by Edward – further provoking Llywelyn’s ire. In turn, Edward was angered by Llywelyn’s betrothal to Eleanor, the daughter of Simon de Montfort. He put a stop to the marriage by having Eleanor captured while she was sailing to join her fiancé in Wales, and took her into his custody.

But Edward’s principal concern was Llywelyn’s repeated failure to perform homage. This stemmed from fundamentally incompatible interpretations of the relationship embodied in the Treaty of Montgomery. Llywelyn refused to pay homage because he considered that Edward was not properly observing the treaty. Edward, however, demanded Llywelyn’s homage as of right; from his point of view, he could only address the prince’s complaints once his own authority had been recognized. These differences proved irreconcilable, and on 9 November 1276 Edward declared Llywelyn a rebel. The English feudal host was summoned to muster on 1 July the following year, while the Marcher lords took up arms immediately, supported by the knights of the royal household. They enjoyed considerable success, and many Welsh lords, who entertained little enthusiasm for Llywelyn’s rule, submitted before the royal expedition had even set out. Indeed, some even provided contingents to serve with Edward against Llywelyn.

In July, the royal army advanced along the northern coast of Wales, and new castles were built at Flint, just across the border from Chester, and at Rhuddlan, on the River Clwyd. Hopelessly outnumbered, Llywelyn could only respond with small guerrilla raids. Nevertheless, Edward’s army did not advance beyond Rhuddlan. The uplands of Snowdonia were difficult country for the heavily armoured knights and men-at-arms that comprised the core of English armies, and previous invasions had usually failed because it was so difficult to attack the Welsh in the mountains. Edward cut through this Gordian knot by occupying the island of Anglesey, the heart of Llywelyn’s lordship – and its breadbasket. The occupying force was accompanied by 360 labourers to gather in the harvest. Edward thus threatened the Welsh in Snowdonia with starvation, while supplying his own army for free.

Llywelyn had no choice but to come to terms, and finally pay homage to Edward. He was allowed to keep the title of Prince of Wales, but as overlord of just five Welsh rulers. He was forced to cede the Four Cantrefs, and fined the colossal sum of 50,000 marks (£33,000 13s 4d). However, Edward soon remitted this, and even allowed Llywelyn to marry Eleanor de Montfort, paying for the festivities himself (an act of largesse which pointedly served to highlight Llywelyn’s subordination).

By 1283, however, Edward had gone to war in Wales again, dismembered Llywelyn’s principality (and his brother), and, for the first time, imposed direct English rule over the whole of Wales. The 1278 settlement failed in part because Edward chose to extend the authority of the royal courts into his newly conquered Welsh lands, riding roughshod over existing local jurisdictions. The many Welsh rulers who had supported him against Llywelyn saw little return for their efforts; rather, it seemed, they had merely exchanged one oppressive lord for another. In particular, Llywelyn’s brother Dafydd did not secure the lands in Gwynedd he coveted, and which had prompted his alliance with Edward in the first place.

Consequently, on Palm Sunday of 1282, Dafydd stormed the Marcher castle of Hawarden in a revolt co-ordinated with risings by several other Welsh lords, and was soon joined by Llywelyn. In response, Edward followed the blueprint of the war of 1277–8, leading a royal army into Gwynedd, and leaving the Marcher lords to subdue the south of Wales. A force was landed on Anglesey under Sir Luke de Tany, a knight of the royal household, and a pontoon bridge was constructed across to the mainland. During peace negotiations sponsored by an optimistic John Pecham, Archbishop of Canterbury, de Tany launched an unauthorized raid across the bridge. He came to grief when he ran up against a Welsh force, and was killed along with many of his men. However, this defeat did little to set back Edward’s slow but relentless progress. Then, Llywelyn made a sudden advance into the Welsh Marches, only to be killed in battle at Irfon Bridge, on 11 December. Dafydd carried on the struggle, but his position was hopeless. He was eventually captured by his own countrymen in June, and handed over to Edward, who had him executed as a traitor.

In the aftermath of this second Welsh war, Edward ordered the construction of the still forbiddingly impressive – and hugely expensive – state-of-the-art castles at Harlech, Conwy and Caernarfon. Conwy and Caernarfon were built with integrated walled towns, populated with English settlers, to provide secure islands of English influence and civilization. However, the conquered lands in Wales remained entirely separate from the kingdom of England. The major Welsh dynasties were disinherited, and their lands doled out to Edward’s chief supporters, becoming part of the Welsh Marches; some of the more minor Welsh lords kept their lands, but were reduced to the status of country gentry. As for Gwynedd, Edward renamed it the principality of Wales, and annexed it to his family lands. Although the new principality was divided into shires on the English model, it was to be administered from Chester (another of the family estates), and remained largely separate from the crown administration at Westminster. And while English criminal law was introduced, the Welsh were allowed to retain their own land law. Nor did Edward make any change to the status of the English lords of the Welsh Marches – apart from making it abundantly clear that his authority ultimately overrode their privileges as Marchers.

War with Wales was perhaps a conflict waiting to happen; war with Scotland, however, was not so obviously on the cards. Although the kings of England had long claimed overlordship, the two realms had enjoyed peace for most of the thirteenth century. Unlike the Welsh, who were widely regarded as uncivilized, the Scots (or, at least, English-speaking Scots) were considered to be part of the Francophile mainstream of the culture of Western Christendom. There were close links between England and Scotland: Alexander III was Edward’s brother-in-law; many English and Scottish nobles held lands in both nations; and a contingent of Scottish knights were sent to support Edward at Evesham (though they arrived too late, and missed the battle). In 1278, Alexander did homage to Edward in a ceremony at Westminster. The English chronicler Thomas Wykes crowed that ‘the triumph of so great a surrender should not be hidden from our countrymen for the future’.[4] Crucially, however, this ‘great surrender’ apparently pertained only to the lands which the kings of Scots held in England, and not for the realm of Scotland. Nevertheless, though the precise terms remained a matter of dispute, Edward’s relations with Alexander remained cordial.

Then, one stormy night in March 1286, Alexander fell off his horse and broke his neck. He left his kingdom in crisis, for his heir was his three-year-old granddaughter, Margaret, who was living in Norway with her father, the king. There was no firmly settled law of succession for the Scottish kingship, and no precedent for the rule of a queen; and if Margaret’s claim were rejected, the succession devolved to the descendants of Alexander’s great-uncle David, younger brother of King William the Lion (1165–1214). The two main contenders were John Balliol, grandson of David’s eldest daughter, and Robert Bruce (grandfather of the Bruce who would seize the Scottish kingship in 1306), son of David’s second daughter. Bruce argued that his claim was superior because, as David’s grandson, he was a nearer relative than Balliol (David’s great-grandson) and, as a man, he had a better right than Margaret.

Facing the prospect of civil war, the Scots approached Edward for help and advice. It was the obvious course to take, given Edward’s familial connections and his international renown as an arbiter of disputes. In fact, Edward was busy in Gascony, and took no interest in Scottish affairs until his return to England in 1289. Negotiations then began for the marriage of Margaret to Edward’s five-year-old son and heir, Edward of Caernarvon (the future Edward II). This offered the prospect that the couple’s first-born son would succeed to the kingships of both England and Scotland. Edward could therefore afford to sidestep the issue of overlordship, and in 1290 he agreed to the match on terms which guaranteed the continued sovereignty of Scotland, ‘separated and divided and free in itself, without subjection, from the kingdom of England’.[5] Had the marriage come off, the Union of the Crowns might well have come about early in the fourteenth century (some three hundred years before James VI, King of Scots, succeeded to the English kingship as James I, King of England), and the history of Britain would have been very different. But it all came to nothing, for, on her voyage to Scotland, Margaret died.

As far as the Scots were concerned, the question of succession now boiled down to a straightforward dispute between Balliol and Bruce, and they turned again to Edward as an independent arbitrator. Edward, however, had other ideas. The prospect of an English succession to the Scottish kingship had died with Margaret; but the Bruce/Balliol dispute offered an unparalleled opportunity to put English overlordship into immediate effect. Indeed, according to one English chronicle, Edward summoned his magnates and councillors in 1291 to inform them that ‘he had it mind to subdue Scotland to his authority, just as he had recently subjugated Wales to his rule’[6] (though this account may, of course, have been influenced by hindsight).

Edward summoned Scottish magnates and prelates to a parliament to be held in May 1291 at Norham Castle, on the English bank of the Tweed. Upon arrival, they were informed that he wished ‘to do right to all those who can make any claim to the inheritance of the kingdom of Scotland’, and that, in order to do so, it was necessary that they now recognize his overlordship.[7] Instead of a neutral arbitration between Balliol and Bruce, he was offering judgment in his court to all parties with a claim. And judgment in a court required the parties to recognize the overarching lordship of the judge. Edward had calculatedly muddied the waters by encouraging other claimants to come forward. In total, he was able to muster nine additional claimants (including himself, on the grounds of his descent from Maud, daughter of Malcolm III – the adversary of Shakespeare’s Macbeth), with four more emerging later.

Appalled by this turn of events, the Scottish representatives argued that they lacked the necessary authority to agree to this; only ‘he who shall be king’ had the right to make decisions affecting the sovereignty of the realm.[8] Edward, however, turned this argument back against them; on the assumption that ‘he who shall be king’ must logically be one of the claimants, he promptly demanded that they all recognize his overlordship. Most of the claimants readily agreed, including Robert Bruce; Balliol thus had little choice but to fall into line. Having obtained recognition of his overlordship, Edward quietly dropped his own claim – for he could hardly judge a case in which he was a party. The hearings to decide the succession (known to historians as the ‘Great Cause’) began at Berwick-upon-Tweed in August 1291. They were very protracted; and there can be little doubt that Edward deliberately drew them out, in order to entrench his overlordship before the inauguration of the next King of Scots. Eventually, in November 1292, Edward gave his judgment: that king was to be John Balliol.

There is no reason to doubt Edward’s impartiality. He did not particularly care who became King of Scots, as long as his authority over the Scottish kingship was acknowledged. In this he was successful. On 26 December, the newly inaugurated King John came to Newcastle upon Tyne, and did homage to Edward I as his sovereign overlord, for the realm of Scotland.

Contemporary legal theory held that overlordship entailed the right of supervision of justice. Once his overlordship had been recognized, Edward needed to demonstrate its reality by exercising such rights to the full. To this end, he accepted an appeal from the Scottish courts in December, even before John had performed his homage; and there can be little doubt that this had been set up in advance. However, the Scots regarded this as an unwarranted infringement of their sovereignty. Scottish resentment was further enflamed in 1294, when Edward demanded that Scottish forces should serve on an expedition he was planning to France, to relieve Gascony. And from this point, events in Britain were to become increasingly caught up with events on the continent.

Gascony had always been important to Edward. It was here that he made his debut in public affairs; and on his succession to the throne, of all his dominions he turned to Gascony first. He would return there from the autumn of 1286 until the summer of 1289 (the last King of England to actually visit the lordship before it finally fell to the French in 1453). Henry III had conceded that the King of France was his overlord in Gascony, under the Treaty of Paris. This led to the awkward situation that the King of France was Edward’s overlord in the latter’s capacity as Duke of Aquitaine, but not in his capacity as King of England. Edward had duly performed homage to Philip III of France for Gascony at Paris in 1273, on his way back from crusade, even before his coronation.

As overlord, the King of France had the right to hear legal appeals from Gascony in his court of appeals, the Parlement of Paris (the same right that Edward claimed in Scotland). And this had serious consequences for English lordship: any Gascon who lost a case in the Gascon courts could appeal over Edward’s head to have the judgment overturned. This was not necessarily a problem, so long as the King of France made allowance for the sensibilities of the English king, which Philip III generally did. In 1285, however, he was succeeded by Philip IV, who – unfortunately for Anglo-French relations – did not. The new French king shared Edward’s elevated conception of kingship and, in particular, his maximalist interpretation of the rights of an overlord. Indeed, a distinct parallel could be drawn between Edward’s insistence on his rights over Scotland and Philip’s insistence on his rights over Gascony. Such a parallel would not, however, have been admitted by Edward. From his point of view, John Balliol, even as King of Scots, was wholly subordinate to him, as he owed him homage for his kingdom. By contrast, Edward owed homage to Philip only as Duke of Aquitaine, for Gascony; as King of England, he was a sovereign lord of equal standing to the King of France, and owed nothing. Edward and Philip thus held incompatible views of their relationship; and conflict soon followed.

The casus belli was a violent dispute which flared up in 1292, between sailors from Normandy and from Gascony and England. It escalated to the point where a naval battle was arranged, in May 1293, which the English and Gascons won. Flushed with triumph, the Gascons stopped off on their way home to sack the French port of La Rochelle. This was an entirely private war, and both Edward and Philip made efforts to halt the fighting. Nevertheless, the Gascons’ behaviour provided Philip with the opportunity to enforce his overlordship. In October, Edward was duly summoned to the Parlement in Paris, to answer for their actions.

Edward regarded a summons to appear before a French court as a humiliating derogation of the English kingship, to be avoided at all costs. Early the following year, he sent his brother, Edmund of Lancaster, to France to try to reach an alternative accommodation, and a deal was eventually thrashed out, through the mediation of the French queen. Various towns in Gascony would be temporarily handed over to Philip, who would revoke the summons; and to ensure good relations for the future, Edward would marry Philip’s fifteen-year-old half-sister, Margaret. However, to appease an alleged anti-English mood in France, the deal was to be kept secret, and it was arranged that the duchy of Aquitaine would be formally handed over to the French, on the understanding that it would then quickly be restored. Edward, who well understood the value of a political gesture, was prepared to go along with the charade for the sake of good relations with France (a prerequisite for his long-cherished crusade plans). However, once the duchy had been surrendered, Philip announced that it would not, after all, be restored, and once again he summoned Edward to appear before the Parlement. Unsurprisingly, Edward refused the summons; and so the duchy was declared forfeit. He promptly renounced his homage, and England and France were at war. Some chroniclers, seeking to explain how Edward had apparently been so thoroughly duped, could only conclude that he must have been blinded by lust for Philip’s young sister.[9]

For all the rebellions faced by the English dukes of Aquitaine, they retained a considerable degree of loyalty in Gascony. Its people had owed allegiance to the dukes of Aquitaine for far longer than to the kings of France; more pragmatically, many Gascons preferred the rule of a distant duke in England to that of a French king near at hand. Consequently, the French met with significant opposition when they occupied Gascony, and Edward hurriedly despatched a small English force as a stopgap to bolster this resistance.

This was not a war to be undertaken lightly, for France was widely held to be the premier military power in Christendom. Accordingly, Edward planned on a large scale, recruiting a number of allies from the Holy Roman Empire, a policy which entailed vast expenditure, for their support had to be bought with generous subsidies. The most prominent of his allies was Adolf of Nassau, King of the Germans, promised £40,000 by Christmas 1294, plus another £20,000 when Edward landed on the continent. Others included Count Florence of Holland (whose son John was married to one of Edward’s daughters), promised £20,000; and Count Guy of Flanders, offered £50,000 plus the marriage of Edward’s heir to his daughter. The allegiance of the Counts of Holland and Flanders was particularly vital if Edward was to launch a campaign in northern France – and so it was particularly unfortunate that Philip IV then contrived to draw them both back over to his side.

Notwithstanding this blow, Edward continued preparations for a more substantial expedition to Gascony in autumn 1294, to be led by his brother Edmund. Many troops were recruited in Wales; but in September, on the very day the Welsh contingents were supposed to muster, a series of revolts broke out. The most serious was led by Madog ap Llywelyn in the principality of Wales, where Edward’s half-built castle at Caernarfon was overrun. Like Dafydd ap Gruffudd, Madog was disaffected by Edward’s lack of generosity to his Welsh supporters. Having been robbed of his lands by Llywelyn ap Gruffudd, he had sided with Edward in 1277; yet the ungrateful king had not allowed him to recover them. The disgruntled Madog now proclaimed himself Prince of Wales. Edward was forced to divert the army he had recruited for the French war, and spent an uncomfortable winter besieged in his new castle at Conwy. The chronicler Walter of Guisborough records approvingly Edward’s insistence that the last of his own supplies of wine be shared out among the garrison.[10] He survived these privations, and the revolt was suppressed in the spring.

The Welsh campaign was hugely expensive – not least because Edward ordered the construction of Beaumaris, another huge state-of-the-art castle, on Anglesey (in fact, it was never completed, for the money ran out). More significantly, the revolt forced the cancellation of the expedition to Gascony. At the same time, Edward’s diplomatic position was rapidly deteriorating. The Scots had allied with the French against the English before, notably during the reigns of Henry II and John; faced with the increasing intrusiveness of Edward’s overlordship it was natural that they should do so again. A Franco-Scottish treaty was duly sealed at Paris in October 1295; the ‘Auld Alliance’ against England (as it came to be known) would be a mainstay of the foreign policies of both countries for the next two hundred and fifty or so years.

By this time, however, Edward was already bent on war with Scotland. Just cause (in his eyes, at least) was afforded by King John’s failure to provide justice to Macduff, a dispossessed relative of the Earl of Fife, who had appealed to Edward following a judgment against him in the Scottish courts. The war was thus presented as the conclusion of due legal process. Edward summoned his magnates to muster at Newcastle upon Tyne the following March (1296), at the beginning of the campaigning season. The composition of his army was a striking demonstration of the power he wielded across the British Isles, including as it did men from England, Wales, Ireland and, indeed, Scotland. Edward marched on Berwick, demanding its inhabitants submit to his authority; and when they refused, he took the town by assault. Contemporary customs of war held that the inhabitants of any town that refused to come to terms with their overlord were rebels and, as such, had no right to quarter. Nor did they get any. A terrible massacre followed, and the surviving inhabitants were expelled. Nevertheless, an English Franciscan friar, author of the ‘Lanercost’ chronicle, commended the mercy which ‘this most clement prince exhibited towards the dead’, in paying his men to bury them.[11]

Soon after, a Scottish army was routed near Dunbar by John de Warenne (who happened to be Balliol’s son-in-law – an indication of the close ties linking the aristocracy of England and Scotland). King John had not taken the field, and, in the absence of any effective leadership, Scottish resistance now collapsed. Edward was able to lead his army on a tour of Scotland, receiving the submissions of Scottish nobles as he went. At the beginning of July, King John was forced to admit his rebellion and surrender his kingdom; he was ceremonially deposed and despatched to the Tower of London.

By this stage, Robert Bruce, the claimant of 1291, was dead. According to a later Scottish chronicler, his like-named son now asked Edward to grant him the kingship, by virtue of the family claim. Edward’s retort was typically blunt: ‘Have we nothing else to do but to win kingdoms for you?’[12] Instead, he effectively abolished the Scottish kingship. Scotland was now ruled as a ‘land’, by an administration staffed by Englishmen and based at Berwick for ease of communication with Westminster. Edward’s opinion of the Scots is summed up by his comment as he handed over custody of their country to John de Warenne: ‘he does good business, who rids himself of shit’.[13]

Edward must have been delighted by the apparent ease with which he had conquered Scotland, for he could ill afford to be distracted from the war with France – which was not going well. Edmund of Lancaster’s expedition to Gascony had finally set off in January 1296, but met with little success. An attempt to recapture Bordeaux failed, and Edmund himself died of dysentery in June. Then, the following January, an English detachment was ambushed and defeated at Bonnegarde. Nevertheless, the remaining English forces managed to hang on, resisting French attempts to drive them out.

Meanwhile, the English treasurer of Scotland, the ambitious and avaricious Hugh Cressingham, had set out to extract as much money as possible for his royal master. By April 1297, his exactions had provoked rebellion across Scotland, led by men of the minor landowning classes, most notably one William Wallace. Initially, the greater Scottish magnates remained aloof, cowed by their defeat at Dunbar. Then, in May, Edward summoned some fifty-seven Scottish nobles to serve with him in Flanders against the French. This pointed reminder of their subjection prompted many of the Scottish nobility to join the revolt, including Robert Bruce, Earl of Carrick (the grandson of the claimant, and the future King Robert I).

Edward, however, was unmoved; having beaten the Scots so easily in 1296, he did not regard the revolt as a serious problem, and his attention remained focused on the French war. Having raised an army for an expedition to Flanders (in the teeth of the opposition of his English subjects), he sailed for the continent on 24 August, to link up with his dearly bought German allies. He left John de Warenne to subdue the Scots. This, however, de Warenne signally failed to do. On 11 September, his army drew up on the bank of the River Forth, by Stirling Bridge. Facing them across the water was a Scottish force led by Wallace. After lengthy negotiations, Cressingham (de Warenne’s deputy) lost patience and started to lead the English across the narrow bridge. The Scots simply waited until the vanguard had crossed, and then slaughtered them, while the rest of the English watched, helpless, from the opposite bank. Cressingham was killed; his body was reputedly flayed, and his skin made into a belt for Wallace. Edward’s administration in Scotland rapidly collapsed. And, after all his efforts, his Flanders campaign was proving something of a damp squib. He had been able to raise only 900 men-at-arms and fewer than 8,000 foot soldiers from his recalcitrant English subjects. And, despite the huge sums Edward had spent on his German allies, not one of them turned up. Consequently, there was no realistic prospect of achieving anything. However, the French were now suffering financial problems of their own, and so a truce was agreed in October. The only significant fighting done by Edward’s forces was a fierce naval battle between gangs of English sailors from the rival towns of Yarmouth and the Cinque Ports, and rioting by Welsh soldiers against their Flemish allies.

Edward returned to England in March 1298. With the French war stalled, he now turned his attention to the dire situation in Scotland. In May, he moved the royal government to York, to help administer his war effort (though this may also have been a pointed message to the citizens of London, who had enthusiastically supported his opponents during the political crisis of 1297). At the end of June, an army of over 28,000 men mustered at Roxburgh, just over the Scottish border. Edward was determined to bring the Scots to battle; and at Falkirk, on 22 July, Wallace obliged him, reputedly telling his men, ‘I have brought you to the dance, now hop if you can.’[14] But the English mounted men-at-arms easily drove off their outnumbered Scottish counterparts; and Edward did not allow them to hare off after their vanquished foes (the mistake he had made at Evesham). Instead, they stayed to support the foot soldiers, and after a hard-fought battle, the Scottish foot were routed, with massive casualties.

This victory enabled Edward to re-establish his authority in south-east Scotland and the borders. However, he could do little more because his huge army was too big to feed, and had to be disbanded. The next few years saw a series of royal campaigns which gradually extended the area of English control. But it was a slow and halting process, punctuated by truces, which Edward was forced to concede as chronic financial difficulties, and widespread desertion among his soldiers, undermined his efforts to keep his armies in the field for more than a few months at a time. And there were no more great victories, for the Scots wisely avoided risking battle again. As the author of the ‘Lanercost’ chronicle commented on Edward’s campaign of 1300:

the King did nothing remarkable this time against the Scots whose land he entered, because they always fled before him, skulking in moors and woods; wherefore his army was taken back to England.[15]

Meanwhile, after protracted negotiations, an agreement to end the Anglo-French war had been reached in June 1299. The planned marriage alliance was revived, and on 10 September, attended by great pomp and ceremony, Edward took Margaret of France as his second wife. Nevertheless, the French continued to support the Scots, and gave shelter to the exiled John Balliol, in whose name the Scots were resisting. Both sides lobbied for the support of the papacy, backing their cases with appeals to ancient history: Edward claimed an English overlordship stretching back beyond the time of King Arthur, while the Scots countered that their kings, who they claimed were descended from Scota, the daughter of a Pharaoh, had always enjoyed full sovereignty.

In the summer of 1302, however, events conspired to dramatically improve Edward’s position in France – and, consequently, in Scotland – for a revolt broke out in Flanders, where the French were attempting to impose direct rule. The flower of France’s chivalry suffered an unexpected and shattering defeat at the hands of common Flemish townsmen, at Courtrai (news of the battle was received with enormous satisfaction in England). In the face of this disaster, and the urgent need to reimpose French control in Flanders, Philip IV was impelled to settle his remaining differences with his new brother-in-law. In May 1303, the duchy of Aquitaine was formally restored to Edward. Furthermore, Philip now abandoned his support for the Scots; in return, Edward renounced any support for the Flemings. In effect, the status quo ante was restored; Edward thus finally managed to emerge from war with France with his French lands undiminished. If this was, perhaps, as much down to luck as judgement, it was certainly more than his father or grandfather had been able to achieve.

Finally, Edward had a free hand in Scotland; in June 1303, he mustered another army at Roxburgh, of some 7,500 foot soldiers and 580 men-at-arms. Serving with him was Robert Bruce, Earl of Carrick, who had submitted in February 1302, unwilling to continue fighting for the restoration of Balliol’s kingship. For the first time, Edward managed to keep a substantial force in Scotland over the winter. Allowed no respite, abandoned by Philip and the pope, and with their king still languishing in exile, increasing numbers of Scots came to the conclusion that there was nothing to be gained by prolonging their resistance. Early in 1304, John Comyn, the leader of Edward’s Scottish opponents, yielded. Stirling Castle, the last outpost of Scottish resistance, finally surrendered on 20 July. And Edward was, once again, ruler of all the British Isles.

Having learned the lessons of 1296–7, Edward’s settlement with the Scots was pragmatic, rather than vindictive, working with the grain of Scottish political society. Admittedly, his ordinance ‘for the good order of the land of Scotland’ relegated the kingdom to the status of a ‘land’;[16] but the Scots were now allowed greater influence in its government. Although the highest-ranking offices were reserved for Englishmen (with Edward’s nephew, John of Brittany, as king’s lieutenant and warden of the country), many Scots were employed in positions of real authority. And so, Edward allowed the Comyn family, the most powerful of the Scottish magnates, and staunch supporters of John Balliol, to retain their lands and much of their influence (although the terms of the settlement pointedly excluded William Wallace). The ordinance also went some way towards meeting Scottish demands that Scottish law be maintained. A committee of Englishmen and Scots was set up to examine and reform Scottish law – although Edward himself had the final say on what should be rejected as ‘displeasing to God’. Clearly, God was displeased by the ‘custom of the Scots and the Brets’ (i.e. Gaelic customary law), for Edward ordained that it be abolished.[17]

Unfortunately, Edward’s settlement preserved the fault lines of Scottish politics. Robert Bruce submitted to Edward long before the Comyns, but gained very little by this. And, as in Wales, Edward’s failure to reward support provoked rebellion. On 10 February 1306, in the Greyfriars church at Dumfries, Bruce killed his great rival John Comyn. He then had himself inaugurated as King of Scots. Edward was, predictably, incandescent. Having spent eight years, and a colossal sum of money, in conquering Scotland, he was now faced with having to do it all over again. His health was also failing, a fact which gave hope to Bruce and his supporters. The following year, an English official in Scotland reported that ‘false preachers’ were spreading a prophecy of Merlin, that ‘after the death of the “Covetous King”, the Scottish people and the Britons, by which should be understood the Welsh, shall league together and have the sovereign hand and their will’.[18]

Old and sick though he was, Edward was still a force to be reckoned with. In short order, he persuaded the pope to excommunicate Robert, and sent English forces back into Scotland. Bruce was defeated at Methven near Perth. The castles he had taken were quickly regained, and many of his supporters were captured. He himself only narrowly escaped, hiding out either in Ireland or the Western Isles. Yet he was able to stage a comeback, landing in Carrick early in 1307, and beating an English force at Loudon Hill that May.

Edward had spent the winter sick at Lanercost Priory in Cumberland. He rallied sufficiently to attend Parliament at Carlisle in January to April, but his health was clearly deteriorating. Nevertheless, he grimly led yet another army northwards. But he only got as far as the border. On 7 July, near the Cumbrian village of Burgh by Sands on the shores of the Solway Firth, Edward died.

Edward I was hailed as a great war leader by contemporaries – ‘a king well versed in war’, as an elegy composed after his death had it.[19] In fact, he only fought in three full-scale pitched battles in his life: Lewes (1264), Evesham (1265) and Falkirk (1298). This lack of experience was entirely typical for medieval military commanders, for major battles were very rare. Contemporary military doctrine held that battle was far too risky and unpredictable, and should be avoided wherever possible. Edward was not, in fact, a particularly daring or imaginative commander; and English armies were not, at this time, particularly effective. Rather, his campaigns were won by the careful marshalling of resources and supplies, and by sheer, grimly relentless perseverance. It was, for instance, customary in this period to halt campaigns for the winter, due to the difficulty of keeping armies fed; however, on a number of occasions, Edward insisted on fighting on through the winter, employing resources from across all of his lands to feed his men.

He was also able to mobilize far larger armies than any of his predecessors. The army that marched to Scotland in 1298, after the disaster at Stirling Bridge the previous year, included some 25,700 foot soldiers, nearly 11,000 of them from Wales. This was perhaps the largest single army raised in Britain before the civil wars of the seventeenth century (though this does reflect the fact that England’s population was at its pre-Black Death height, so there were more men to recruit). Edward’s predecessors, Henry II, Richard and John, had relied heavily on the services of foreign mercenaries. Edward, however, succeeded in mobilizng the knights and local landowners of England to serve him as mounted men-at-arms on a regular basis. This ‘“re-militarization” of the gentle-born’ (as a modern historian has termed it)[20] was to prove one of the cornerstones of England’s war effort during the Hundred Years War.

Edward was able to raise so many men partly because he adopted new methods of recruitment. Foot soldiers were raised by commissions of array, composed of royal clerks and local grandees appointed to conscript specified numbers of men from each county or region. From the 1290s, he also used written contracts (known as indentures) for recruiting men to serve in garrisons, by which captains contracted to raise a fixed number of men, to serve for a fixed term, at a fixed fee. Edward had used such contracts to raise an army for his crusade of 1270, probably following French practice. This would become the standard means of raising English armies for the rest of the Middle Ages; and Edward was the first King of England to adopt it.

At his coronation, Edward had declared that he would not wear his crown again until he had recovered what his father had granted away. The same spirit drove his relations with his neighbours in Britain. One of the primary duties of any medieval king was to preserve and pass on – and indeed to pursue – the hereditary rights and claims that went with his kingship. It was this imperative that led to war with Wales. Llywelyn’s reluctance to perform the homage he owed Edward was, from Edward’s point of view, a derogation of his overlordship. To let this go unchallenged would be an abdication of the rights of the English crown. As for Scotland, had Alexander III left an adult male heir, had Margaret not died – indeed, had Alexander managed not to fall off his horse in the first place – then Anglo-Scottish relations would probably have carried on in the same peaceful vein as they had for most of the previous century. However, the Scottish succession crisis presented a unique opportunity to make the longstanding English claim to overlordship a reality. And once Edward had obtained an unequivocal admission of this overlordship, with Balliol’s homage of 1292, he was determined to make it effective, by exercising it to the full. From Edward’s point of view he was merely enforcing his ancient rights as King of England to the overlordship of Wales and Scotland, rights which had descended to him by Divine Providence. It was just unfortunate for him that Philip IV of France took a similar view of Gascony.

4

Edward’s Kingship: Patronage, Punishment and Political Theatre

The art of medieval kingship was very much the art of patronage. A king had to know how to dispense rewards for services rendered – and to be rendered – without arousing jealousy and discontent, and without giving away too much. Henry III’s prodigal generosity to a clique of favourites had been one of the main causes of the crisis of 1258. Edward learned this lesson well, and his patronage was carefully considered. The principle that inherited crown lands should not be granted out had been drummed into him before he was king, and he observed it scrupulously once he ascended the throne.

This presented Edward with a dilemma when it came to endowing his sons with estates. Unlike most medieval kings of England, he never faced any rebellion within his realm, and so did not have any ready supply of lands forfeited by rebels. Instead, he resorted to some distinctly underhand tactics to acquire lands by other means. In 1302, he did a deal with the ageing, childless and heavily indebted Roger Bigod, Earl of Norfolk, who granted his extensive estates to the king (thereby disinheriting his own relatives), on condition that they were granted back to him for life, along with a £1,000 annuity. In fact, Edward may well have imposed the deal on Bigod in revenge for his role in the crisis of 1297. At any rate, it proved a bargain, as Bigod died in 1306. His estates duly reverted to the crown, and were immediately earmarked for Edward’s young son Thomas, born in 1300.

Even more dubious was the sharp practice which had brought Edward the lands of the earldom of Aumale (centred around Holderness and Skipton in Yorkshire). The last countess, Aveline de Forz, died childless in 1274. One John de Eshton put forward a distinctly questionable claim to be her heir; as soon as this was accepted by the crown, he quitclaimed the entire estate to the king in return for an annuity of £100. As there were several other heirs with rather better claims, it appears that Eshton was put up to it by Edward, who thus acquired the lands on the cheap. In 1293, Edward also acquired the Isle of Wight from Aveline’s mother, the dowager countess, by means of a charter she was induced to seal on her deathbed.

Edward made few grants of English lands to his supporters, though he was open-handed with grants such as hunting rights, or game from his lands, forms of patronage which cost him very little. He was rather more generous with lands in Wales and Scotland. As he had obtained these himself by conquest, contemporary custom allowed him a free hand to dispose of them as he wished. Even so, his grants were judicious, generally made to those who had served with distinction in his wars. Such grants also gave their recipients a direct personal vested interest in Edward’s conquests, thus ensuring that English magnates would be prepared to devote their own resources to defending them on a long-term basis. A standing testament to the success of this policy in Wales is provided by the elaborate castle and town walls at Denbigh, built by Henry de Lacy, Earl of Lincoln, when the lordship was granted to him in 1282.

The situation in Scotland proved rather more complicated. Edward made grants to followers who served him there, from lands forfeited by Scots he deemed to be rebels. However, under the terms of the agreement reached with John Comyn and his supporters in 1304–5, these lands were supposed to be restored to their erstwhile holders. In the event, Robert Bruce would shortly render the question of rights to lands in Scotland academic, by driving out the English and their Scottish supporters. But legal disputes over lands in England which had been forfeited by Scots, and granted out to Englishmen, only to be restored again to their original owners, would provide gainful employment for generations of lawyers.

Another major factor in provoking opposition to Henry III was the perception that he failed to consult widely enough, relying too much on the same narrow clique who monopolized his patronage. Again, Edward was determined to avoid repeating his father’s mistake. He recognized the value of expert advice, to the extent that he was sometimes reluctant to act without it. In 1302, for instance, during negotiations with the French, the Earl of Lincoln and the Count of Savoy asked Edward for instructions; he replied that he was unwilling to make an immediate decision, ‘because we have no one with us whom we can consult about agreeing to such business’.[1] And in 1296, when he was planning the resettlement of Berwick, he ordered the election to the Parliament at Bury St Edmunds of burgesses

who shall best know how to dispose and order a new town for the greatest advantage of the king and of the merchants coming thither and of others who shall reside there.[2]

Clearly, Edward was genuinely concerned to consult as widely as possible on issues which affected the realm. Equally clearly, he wished to be seen to be consulting as widely as possible. This was partly why he so regularly held parliaments, which gave a voice to his subjects, and were a public demonstration of his willingness to take counsel.

Edward certainly knew the value of propaganda and persuasion. The officials appointed to collect the controversial tax of an eighth in July 1297 were instructed to address taxpayers ‘in the most civil and the most courteous way’, thanking them for their contribution, and pointing out that the king

could not do more for them than endanger his person and his life for them as for those he truly cares for and wishes to do his utmost to protect and maintain in honour for as long as his own body can bear it or is equal to it.[3]

At the same time, Edward had his leading nobles and prelates swear fealty to his son and heir, the thirteen-year-old Edward of Caernarvon, at a ceremony at Westminster Abbey – a none-too-subtle reminder of the risks of campaigning and the possibility that he might not survive. Similarly, he sought to emphasize the dangers facing the realm, thus underlining the necessity for his subjects to contribute to its defence. In the writ summoning the bishops and leading abbots to the Parliament of 1295, Edward claimed that the King of France ‘now proposes to destroy the English language altogether from the earth’ (in a letter composed in Latin, for a parliament which would discuss this threat to the English language in French).[4]

Undoubtedly, Edward relied heavily on the advice of particular members of his council and his household knights, many of whom had served him since before he became king. Robert Burnell (d. 1292) had joined Edward’s household by 1257, was appointed chancellor in 1274, and became Bishop of Bath and Wells (with Edward’s help) the following year. Sir Otto de Grandison (d. 1328), a Savoyard, was serving Edward by 1265, and went on crusade with him; after Edward’s succession, he served him as a soldier and diplomat across his dominions. Sir John de St John had first joined Edward’s household in the 1250s. He accompanied him on crusade; served on the expeditions to Wales of 1277 and 1282; led diplomatic missions to the papacy; served in Gascony from 1293 to 1297, where he was captured; and, after his release in 1299, served in Scotland, dying there (of natural causes) in 1302. Antony Bek (d. 1311), who also accompanied Edward on crusade, was elected Bishop of Durham on Edward’s recommendation, and personally led military retinues to Scotland and Flanders.

These men were certainly well rewarded. Nevertheless, they did not arouse the hostility of the wider political classes. In the first place, this was no clique of undeserving favourites; rather, they were recognized as competent and hard-working servants of the crown. As a preacher put it, in a sermon delivered before the pope to commemorate Edward’s death:

he did not rule in a frivolous state of mind, nor under the influence of flatterers and evil counsellors … but with his mind full of energy and wisdom and with the prudent counsel of good and wise men.[5]

But perhaps more importantly, Edward’s generosity was not excessive: his patronage was kept well within reasonable bounds, and rewards were earned through loyal and hard service. Nor were these men favoured to the exclusion of others. And they were by no means treated as being above the law. Edward could be quite ruthless with those he felt had let him down. In 1302, when Bek laid siege to the monks of his cathedral priory, in a dispute over his diocesan rights, Edward seized the bishopric’s lands. And Bek never regained his favour.

Edward’s intervention in an ecclesiastical dispute accorded with contemporary expectations of kingship, for the support and protection of the Church was a vital and inherent part of a king’s role. Edward’s piety had the political bent – and, indeed, the competitive edge – typical of a medieval ruler. His major act of religious patronage was the foundation of the Cistercian abbey of Vale Royal, which provided two occasions for public demonstrations of piety, both at the outset of military adventures. He had issued the foundation charter shortly before setting off on crusade in 1270. And on the eve of his invasion of Wales in 1277, he staged an elaborate ceremony for the laying of the foundation stone. According to the abbey’s own account, Edward intended ‘that there should be no monastery more royal than this one, in liberties, wealth and honour, throughout the whole world’.[6] Even its name, Vale Royal, was a deliberate echo of the Abbey of Royaumont (‘Royal Mount’) founded by his saintly uncle, Louis IX of France. However, Edward’s enthusiasm soon waned, and the money and masons initially devoted to the project were diverted to the construction of castles in Wales.

Unlike his father, who had spent a fortune on rebuilding Westminster Abbey in the latest fashionable Gothic style, Edward was no great patron of ecclesiastical architecture. He did, however, commission an elaborate series of monuments, superbly executed in the height of fashion, to commemorate the death of his beloved queen, Eleanor of Castile. These included the twelve Eleanor Crosses that marked the route her body passed on its way from Lincoln, where she died, to Westminster Abbey. Even this gesture, though, may have been made in emulation of the monuments that had been erected in France, to mark the passage of the corpse of Louis IX, on its way to Paris.

Generally, Edward respected the rights of the Church – but only up to the point where they came into conflict with his own God-given prerogatives. He expected the Church, an extremely wealthy institution, to contribute its share to the expenses of the realm to which it was, by Divine Providence, subject. If the clergy failed to meet these obligations, then he was quite ruthless in enforcing his will, as they discovered when he outlawed them en masse in 1297. According to the Evesham chronicle’s account of these events, ‘the king took great delight in the despoiling of monks’.[7] This was a rhetorical exaggeration (written by a monk) but Edward did, in fact, have form on this dating back to before he was king; the chronicle of Dunstable Priory recorded that, in 1264, the prior had had to pay £10 to buy Edward off when he threatened to burn one of the priory’s manors. Similarly, a dispute over the appointment of a royal clerk led Edward to confiscate the secular estates of the Archbishop of York in 1303. It was said that the archbishop’s death the following year was brought about by the king’s ruthless pursuit of the case in the royal courts.

A hard-line approach to those who offended him was entirely characteristic of Edward’s rule. By the thirteenth century, long-established dictates of chivalry and custom ensured that rebels against the king were not punished too harshly. Edward, with his exalted vision of kingship, had other ideas, even before he became king. This was made abundantly clear at the Battle of Evesham, in 1265, where he determined on dealing with Simon de Montfort once and for all. According to a well-informed contemporary account, he appointed a squad of ‘twelve of the strongest and most intrepid men-at-arms’, who were given specific instructions

to kill the earl of Leicester [i.e. de Montfort], and break through the ranks forcibly and rapidly in such a way that they would look at no one nor let anyone come between them until they reached the person of the earl.[8]

They ensured that the earl was killed during the battle, thus sidestepping the convention which demanded mercy for defeated rebels. His dismembered head and genitals were subsequently presented to the wife of one of Edward’s principal supporters, Roger Mortimer (sadly, history does not record her reaction to this thoughtful gesture).

As king, Edward’s punishments for treason were acts of political theatre, intended to highlight the penalties for those guilty of the heinous crime of rebelling against their divinely ordained lord and king. When the Welshman Dafydd ap Gruffudd was captured in June 1283, a parliament was summoned (including representatives from the shires and the towns) to witness his trial. He was hanged and disembowelled, his body was quartered, and the parts were despatched for display, as the author of the ‘Lanercost’ chronicle approvingly recorded, ‘the right arm with a ring on the finger in York; the left arm in Bristol; the right leg and hip at Northampton; the left [leg] at Hereford’, to serve as grim symbols of the king’s judgment upon traitors. The same chronicler noted the practical detail that ‘the villain’s head was bound with iron, lest it should fall to pieces from putrefaction’; thus reinforced, it was then stuck on a pole in London.[9]

When Edward reached a settlement with the Scots in 1304, the garrison of Stirling Castle continued to hold out against him. After a long siege, they asked for terms; but he refused to let them surrender until he had tried out the ‘Warwolf’, his new and expensive siege engine. William Wallace, who had always refused to submit to Edward, was pointedly excluded from the 1304 settlement. Instead, Edward insisted that the Scots demonstrate their new-found loyalty by hunting him down. He was eventually captured the following year, and taken to London. Condemned for treason (a charge which Wallace repudiated, on the grounds that he had never taken any oath to Edward), he was hanged, disembowelled and quartered. Other treason cases were also exploited for their propaganda value. Sir Thomas de Turberville was caught spying for the French in 1295. The offence was all the greater because he was one of Edward’s household knights, and he was summarily tried and hanged – probably the first person in England to be executed as a spy. Edward made a point of widely publicizing the incident, distributing copies of Turberville’s treasonable correspondence with the King of France, as a means of emphasizing the perils besetting the realm, at a time when he was attempting to raise more taxes to pay for his wars.

Edward took a particularly vindictive stance against the supporters of Bruce’s 1306 coup, whom he regarded as rebels against the hard-won settlement of 1304. Those who had the misfortune to fall into his hands were treated not as prisoners of war, but as recidivist traitors, and many were duly strung up. Among them was John of Strathbogie, Earl of Atholl; taken in August 1306, he was brought to London where he was hanged, decapitated and his body burned. He had pleaded that he was descended from a bastard son of King John of England, and was thus Edward’s cousin; in deference to this illustrious lineage, Edward had him hanged from a gallows thirty feet higher than standard. Atholl thus enjoyed the distinction of being the first earl to be executed by a King of England since 1076. However, even Edward drew the line at executing ladies; so when Bruce’s sister Mary and Isabella, Countess of Buchan (who had assisted at Bruce’s inauguration as king), were captured, they were instead exhibited in cages, specially constructed on the walls of Roxburgh and Berwick castles.

The severity of such punishments was unprecedented. In all of these cases, however, Edward was condemning those whom he considered to be persistent and recidivist rebels, or who had shown flagrant personal disloyalty. Thus the writs summoning the Parliament for Dafydd ap Gruffudd’s trial described him as

the last survivor of the family of traitors … whom the king received as an exile, nourished as an orphan, and endowed with lands, and cherished with clothing under his protection, placing him among the greater ones of the palace.[10]

Similarly, Edward had spent eight years subduing Scotland before agreeing to a settlement in 1304 by which he received his enemies into his peace, and made what he considered to be generous and significant concessions. From his perspective, therefore, the Scots who supported Bruce in 1306 had proved themselves incorrigible rebels, and an example had to be made of them. And it is significant that, while some contemporary English commentators expressed surprise at the severity of the punishments, none expressed disapproval; rather, most considered them richly deserved. Indeed, a verse was composed, in English, to celebrate the execution of Sir Simon Fraser, a Scot who had served as a knight of Edward’s household, and who was therefore guilty of a personal betrayal of the king. Its author complained that despite the hanging and quartering of William Wallace, ‘to warn all the gentle-born men that are in Scotland’, many of them had nevertheless proved to be basely disloyal:

To the king Edward they fasten their faith,

False was their promise as frost is in May.[11]

In fact, the ritual execution of traitors was part of a European-wide trend, as lawyers and political theorists increasingly argued that armed resistance to a king was fundamentally illicit, and should be met with condign punishment. The reign of Edward II and its aftermath would see a veritable culling of the English nobility. Edward I, however, never faced an uprising against his authority in England; consequently, few of his English subjects were charged with treason. Nevertheless, Edward proved notably vindictive against some of his opponents. He held Archbishop Winchelsey in particular opprobrium for his leading role in the crisis of 1297, and he got his opportunity for revenge with the election of one of his former clerks as Pope Clement V. In 1306, at Edward’s bidding, Clement suspended Winchelsey, charging him with conspiring against the king; shortly afterwards, the archbishop went into exile. He would not return until after Edward’s death.

Indeed, Edward went to some lengths to maintain a reputation for harshness. The bill demanding reform at the Parliament of 1301 was presented by the Lancashire knight of the shire Sir Henry Keighley. When Edward eventually got round to ordering his arrest, in 1306, he told Walter Langton, the treasurer, to hold him in the Tower. Because he knew Keighley had only been acting at Winchelsey’s behest, he saw no need to treat him too harshly. However, he did not wish this to be common knowledge, instructing Langton that

we wish the said Henry to be kept courteously and safely in the said Tower, without irons, but this courtesy and this confinement to be so arranged that it can be understood to proceed from your grace and not from ours.[12]

Edward was not, then, entirely implacable. His vindictiveness was often tempered by pragmatism, and he was capable of learning both from his enemies and from his own mistakes – even in old age. Eight years of war in Scotland brought home to him that the triumphalist settlement imposed in 1296 had been a mistake; consequently the agreement negotiated in 1304–5 gave the Scots a much greater stake in their own government.

As his preference for ritualistic public executions demonstrates, Edward was a king who appreciated the value of symbolism and political theatre. When he went to meet Alfonso III of Aragon, in Gascony in 1287, he brought along a lion, from the menagerie at the Tower of London. The savage beast escaped, killing a horse before it could be recaptured. However, it was more than just a fearsome and exotic pet. The heraldic device of the kings of England was three lions, on a red background; and so Edward’s lion served as a form of living heraldry.

Similarly, when Edward was hailed by contemporaries as another Arthur, it was at least in part because he had carefully stage-managed this association. In 1278, Edward and Eleanor visited Glastonbury Abbey, where Arthur and Guinevere were popularly supposed to be buried. Their tomb was solemnly opened, and, at Edward’s command, the bones found there were reburied before the high altar with great ceremony. But there was an additional political purpose to the performance, aside from burnishing Edward’s Arthurian credentials. Welsh legend had it that Arthur was not dead, but only sleeping, and that he would return to drive out the English. In the aftermath of Edward’s defeat of the Welsh, the exhumation and reburial of Arthur’s bones was a public demonstration that, on the contrary, rumours of his death had not been exaggerated. It also served as a pointed reminder that Arthur’s royal authority had passed not to the Welsh princes, but to the kings of England.

In 1284, a year after the conquest of Wales, Edward reinforced the point by holding a round table in the remote village of Nefyn, in Gwynedd, with jousting and feasting, in conscious imitation of Arthurian romance. A ceremony at Winchester in 1285, when he knighted forty-four of his subjects, may have been the occasion for the construction of the round table still preserved at the castle there (which dendrochronology has dated to Edward’s reign).[13] Even Edward’s tomb showed the influence of Arthurian ‘history’. In a radical break with tradition, it was plain marble, with no effigy. This was probably in imitation of the tomb of King Arthur in Glastonbury which Edward himself had commissioned in accordance with accounts of Arthur’s burial.

Edward’s castle at Caernarfon was also designed with deliberate symbolic reference to the past. It was built round the motte of an old Norman castle, which had marked the furthest extent of the Norman advance into Gwynedd in the late eleventh century – thus casting Edward’s occupation as the reclamation of existing rights, rather than simple expansionism. The castle was built with polygonal towers (instead of the more fashionable round towers employed at other new royal castles, such as Conwy or Harlech), and the walls had bands of coloured stone, in imitation of Roman building styles. This served to link the castle with the ruins of the neighbouring Roman fort of Segontium, which was associated with tales of King Arthur, and of the Roman emperor Constantine. To reinforce the point, the tomb of Constantine’s supposed father was conveniently discovered while the castle was being built, and the body transferred to the local church, on Edward’s orders.

At around the same time, Edward took from Wales the crown of ‘the famous Arthur, king of Britons’. And so, the author of the Flowers of History commented, ‘by God’s providence, the glory of the Welsh was transferred to the English’.[14] Caernarfon Castle was a powerful symbol of this transfer, set in stone. And if anyone missed the point, they could hardly miss the castle; Caernarfon, along with Conwy, Harlech and Beaumaris, was one of the largest and most forbiddingly impressive buildings in Wales, dwarfing even the Welsh cathedrals. Edward even went to the lengths of ensuring that his son and heir was born at Caernarfon, bringing the heavily pregnant Eleanor of Castile to the half-built castle in 1284. A later tradition had it that King Edward promised the Welsh a prince born in Wales who spoke no English – meaning, as it turned out, his own baby son. In 1301, Edward created him Prince of Wales, the title forfeited by Llywelyn ap Gruffudd (thus starting the tradition that the English monarch’s eldest son should hold this title).

In 1296, Scotland’s royal insignia, including the Stone of Scone (used in the inauguration of kings of Scots), joined ‘Arthur’s Crown’ in Edward’s trophy cabinet at Westminster Abbey. And when John Balliol was deposed in July of that year, he was ritually stripped of his kingship, in a ceremony which included the symbolic stripping of the lining of his cloak – an act which would be remembered in Scotland by John’s derisory nickname of ‘Toom Tabard’ (empty tabard).

In the wake of Henry III’s humiliating subordination by Simon de Montfort, Edward needed to restore the full majesty of English kingship. Medieval kingship was very much a performance; a king needed to be seen to be acting as a king. Most of Edward’s public acts were carefully staged to project the image of an illustrious, just and formidable sovereign lord. The great seal of England showed the king enthroned in judgment on one side, and as a warrior knight on the other. And these were the roles which Edward would be remembered for.

Conclusion

A Great King?

This king stirred up war as soon as he had become a knight, and lashed the English with awful scourgings; he troubled the whole world by his wickedness, and roused it by his cruelty; by his wiles, he hindered the passage to the Holy Land; he invaded Wales; he treacherously subdued unto him the Scots and their kingdom; John of Balliol, the king thereof, and his son, he cast into prison; he overthrew churches, fettered prelates, and to some he put an end in filthy dungeons; he slew the people, and committed other misdeeds without end.[1]

Such was the verdict of a Scottish chronicler in his obituary of Edward I of England. It is a view which – as Braveheart’s Edward shows – still has currency. Unsurprisingly, English writers tended to be rather more complimentary; the chronicler Peter Langtoft effused:

After King Arthur, King Edward

Was the Christians’ flower of chivalry.

He was so noble and great, so potent in arms, That a man could talk of him for as long as the world endures.

For he had no equal as a knight in armour For vigour and valour.[2]

In keeping with his martial reputation, Edward’s immediate legacy to his son was war with Scotland. This was a war which would persist, on and off, for most of the following two and a half centuries – a war which has been characterized by historians as unwinnable. And Edward II’s ability to wage this war was severely hampered by another of his father’s bequests, crippling debts of some £200,000. Even as late as 1328 (the second year of Edward III’s reign), an Exchequer document recorded that over £60,000 of Edward I’s debts had still not been paid.

But, in fact, Edward I had managed to win this ‘unwinnable war’ (which he and his English subjects regarded, rather, as a rebellion) in 1296 and 1304; and came close to winning it a third time in 1306. The following year, Edward died at the head of another army he was leading into Scotland against Robert Bruce. His son promptly disbanded this army, and then simply ignored Scotland for the first three years of his reign – a political choice, rather than one dictated by financial necessity. By the time he did turn his attention north of the border, the war had already been lost. And the political difficulties of Edward II’s reign were not inherited from his father, but were largely of his own making.

Ultimately, any assessment of Edward I’s reign must be founded on an understanding of contemporary expectations of kingship, and on Edward’s own perspective (shaped by his experience of his own father’s reign). A king’s duty, under God, was to provide good government, and to recover and preserve the crown’s rights. Edward has sometimes been characterized by historians as an autocrat; however, a degree of autocracy was inherent in the very nature of medieval kingship. ‘Tyrant’ was, indeed, one of the most damning charges that could be brought against a medieval ruler; but tyranny was defined as acting without fitting counsel. The basis of good government was taking good counsel from worthy advisers. And this was an expectation that Edward usually fulfilled – and certainly took great care to be seen to be fulfilling. Thus, though often ruthless and hard-headed, Edward’s government was not tyrannical, according to contemporary standards. He was undoubtedly very stubborn, determined to get his own way and to protect the rights of his kingship, but at the point of crisis he was willing to compromise – or, at least, to make a reasonably convincing show of compromise. Consequently, he was one of the few medieval kings who never faced an armed rebellion against his rule in England – though, of course, he did face risings in Gascony, Wales and Scotland, while Ireland remained in a chronic state of low-level war between the English of Ireland and the Gaels.

Edward also recognized and promoted men of talent and ability, and acted on their advice. The groundwork for his reforms may well have been laid before his return to England as king in 1274 by Robert Burnell, who was effectively in charge of the government in his absence. And the role played by Edward’s chief justices in the formulation of his statutes was revealed when Ralph Hengham, one of their number, slapped down a lawyer: ‘Do not gloss the statute, we know it better than you, for we made it.’[3] Similarly, the legal casuistry employed by Edward against the Scots in the ‘Great Cause’ of 1290–91 undoubtedly drew on the advice of expert and experienced lawyers. But while he may not have devised the detail of many of his government’s measures, it was Edward himself who initiated them, Edward who directed them, and Edward who pushed them through.

However, in an age where custom and precedent conferred legitimacy, novelty was mistrusted; accordingly, most of Edward’s reforms were not, of themselves, hugely innovative. Many had already been tried by Henry III or Simon de Montfort, or were adopted from the demands of the opposition during Henry’s reign. Similarly, Edward’s inquiries into landholding and prerogatives were part of a trend of such governmental initiatives across Western Christendom. What was new was the grand scale and systematic basis on which Edward implemented his initiatives. Not that they were always wholly successful: the records of the Hundred Roll inquiries have proved rather more useful to historians than they ever were to Edward’s administration.

Yet, through his legal reforms, and his development of Parliament, Edward transformed the government of England, making it markedly more responsive to his subjects. He consolidated the role of Parliament as a representative forum where grievances could be aired; and he took advantage of this wider representation to gain consent for vastly increased and more regular tax grants. In this way, Edward established a new basis for royal taxation, diverting far more of England’s wealth into the royal coffers than had any of his predecessors (with the possible exception of Richard and John): this was the system which would finance the Hundred Years War. Edward also restructured government in the regions, recruiting the great and the good of county society to its service, and helping to establish the landed gentry in the privileged position that they would enjoy for centuries. He thus set the pattern of English government for the rest of the Middle Ages.

Edward’s reforms did much to foster an increased sense of an English state among his subjects. Parliaments brought together representatives from across the length and breadth of the realm – and not just to Westminster: parliaments were also held in towns such as Gloucester, Shrewsbury, York, Lincoln and Carlisle (indeed, the royal government was based in York between 1298 and 1304). Afterwards, these representatives returned to their homes with news of the affairs of the realm, and helped to disseminate royal propaganda. Military service brought even more men together, as soldiers and labourers were recruited in vast numbers to serve in the wars of the King of England. Taxation and purveyance were undoubtedly the cause of enormous disaffection and protest; nevertheless, they brought the population into touch with royal administration on an unprecedentedly regular basis. On a more positive note, many came into contact with government through Edward’s inquiries, while ever increasing numbers actively sought the crown’s help through petitions, or turned to the royal courts to seek redress, or to pursue property disputes.

This extension of the reach of the English state did not, however, encompass Edward’s dominions beyond England. Indeed, his settlement of Wales and Scotland was essentially conservative, and, like most of his reforms, followed precedent. He made no attempt to recreate Arthur’s supposed ‘former kingdom of Britain’,[4] and the borders of England remained unchanged. Rather, he imposed English lordship over existing Welsh and Scottish political geography, and Welsh and Scottish law were in large part retained. Edward made no attempt to create any overarching power structure, or to bring political unity to his dominions.

Leadership in war, in the defence of the realm and in the recovery of its rights, was a prime – indeed, perhaps the prime – duty of a medieval ruler. And crucially, unlike John and Henry III, whose prodigiously expensive wars ended in abject failure, Edward delivered. He permanently subjected Wales to English rule (arguably the longest-lasting change to the power structure of the British Isles since 1066); and briefly, in 1296–7 and 1304–6, he ruled over the entire British Isles. No monarch had managed to do so before him. None would do so again until the seventeenth century. And in the eyes of his English subjects, this went a long way towards justifying his exactions. Whatever the Welsh and Scots might have thought of Edward (and many co-operated with him or, at least, were prepared to tolerate his rule), there is no doubt that his English subjects considered his conquests to be glorious feats of chivalry. The overwhelming costs of Edward’s wars might be fiercely criticized; the necessity for waging them was rarely questioned. And his success gave him a degree of leeway denied to his predecessors. For John and Henry III, military disaster abroad was invariably followed by political crisis at home. After the defeat at Stirling Bridge in 1297, however, Edward’s subjects rallied round, notwithstanding their recent grievances; and he was able to recruit a huge army to lead to Scotland the following year.

In 1484, William Caxton printed The Book of the Ordre of Chyualry, exhorting the knights of England to resume the chivalric calling of a lost golden age. Edward I’s reign was commended as an era of ‘noble chivalry’, alongside that of Richard Cœur de Lion, Edward III, Henry V and the Arthurian heroes Lancelot, Galahad and Tristram.[5] Writing soon after Edward’s death, an English chronicler eulogized him as ‘the worthiest knight of all the world in his time’.[6] And few of his countrymen would have disputed such verdicts. In the panoply of English kings, Edward I came closer than most to fulfilling the medieval ideal of a great king.

Illustrations

1. The portrait of a king, c.1308, thought to represent Edward I, in Westminster Abbey.

2. Edward I and Eleanor of Castile, perhaps showing Edward’s drooping eyelid, from the Rochester chronicle (mid fourteenth century).

3. John, King of Scots, being brought before Edward I, from a late fourteenth-century French chronicle.

4. Edward granting audience to a party of bishops and monks, from a manuscript produced during his reign. Note the scribes seated at the king’s feet.

5. The English lion and the French fleur de lys. Marginal drawing on the Exchequer Memoranda Rolls, showing Edward I and Philip IV of France, identified respectively by their heraldic symbols, 1297.

6. Marginal drawing on the Exchequer Memoranda Rolls, showing Edward pointing to a copy of a writ ordering the treasurer and barons of the Exchequer to observe Magna Carta, 1300.

7. Edward presents Magna Carta to his prelates and magnates. The illuminated initial ‘E’ of ‘Edward’ in the text of his 1297 reissue of the charter, in a fourteenth-century book of statutes.

8. Edward I creates his son Prince of Wales and Earl of Chester, at the Lincoln Parliament, 7 February 1301, from the Rochester chronicle.

9. The front of Edward’s Great Seal (left) shows Edward enthroned, with crown and sceptre; on the reverse (right) is Edward the knight.

10. Edward I Silver Penny. This conventional form is the only image of Edward that most of his subjects would ever have seen.

11. Flint Castle, built in 1277–86 to constrain the power of Llywelyn ap Gruffudd.

12. Caernarfon Castle, constructed 1283–92, showing the polygonal towers and the coloured bands of the stonework. Built in imitation of Roman building styles, it was intended as a statement of Edward’s inheritance of the authority of the Romans and of Arthur, greatest king of the Britons.

13. The Eleanor Cross, Geddington, Northamptonshire. One of only three that survive of the original twelve crosses erected by Edward in memory of his first queen.

Appendix

Surviving Buildings Associated with Edward I

It is characteristic of Edward that his most lasting monuments are the castles he built as means of imposing his authority. Of the castles he built after the Welsh war of 1276–7, nothing remains of Builth except for earthworks. However, there are substantial remains of Aberystwyth, on the west coast, and Flint and Rhuddlan in north Wales. Conwy, Caernarfon and Harlech, built in Gywnedd in the aftermath of the conquest of Wales in 1283, and Beaumaris, built on Anglesey after the Welsh rebellion in 1294–5, are among the best-preserved medieval castles in Britain (even though Beaumaris was never actually finished), and have been designated World Heritage Sites. They still project an intimidating aura of overwhelming power. It is also worth noting that Edward took over and rebuilt some of Llywelyn’s own castles; substantial ruins survive of Dolwyddelan, Criccieth and Castell y Bere, all in north Wales. The small scale of these Welsh castles compared to the huge edifices constructed by Edward is a striking testament to the vast disparity of wealth between the kings of England and the Welsh princes.

His religious buildings have fared less well. His sole religious foundation, the Cistercian abbey of Vale Royal in Cheshire, was rebuilt as a mansion following the Dissolution of the Monasteries under Henry VIII. The mansion still stands (now serving as the club house of a private golf course), but little survives of the medieval buildings except for the refectory and kitchen, which were incorporated into the new house. Of the twelve Eleanor Crosses, only three are still standing: at Geddington and Hardingstone, Northamptonshire, and Waltham Cross in Hertfordshire (of which that at Geddington is the best preserved). A Victorian replica now stands at Charing Cross in London, in lieu of the original. On a more secular note, a huge oaken round table, which seems to have been made at Edward’s behest for an Arthurian feast, can still be seen in the Great Hall at Winchester (though it was repainted during Henry VIII’s reign).

Finally, many of the bastides established by Edward in Gascony retain their original street plans and some of their original buildings; Monpazier, on the Dordogne, still has the market hall built on Edward’s instructions in 1284.

Further Reading

The standard academic account of Edward’s reign remains Michael Prestwich, Edward I (New Haven, Conn., and London: Yale University Press, 1988; 2nd edn, 1997), a work of great scholarship, but eminently readable. A more concise account is provided by Marc Morris, A Great and Terrible King: Edward I and the Forging of Britain (London: Hutchinson, 2008). Andrew M. Spencer, Nobility and Kingship in Medieval England: The Earls and Edward I, 1272–1307 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2013), provides a lively re-examination of Edward’s relations with his nobles, offering a positive evaluation of his political skills. The workings of Edward’s government are analysed in detail by Caroline Burt, Edward I and the Governance of England, 1272–1307 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2012). Edward I’s role in developing Parliament is emphasized by J. R. Maddicott, The Origins of the English Parliament, 924–1327 (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2010). The impact of Edward’s government on the emerging county gentry is a central theme of Peter Coss, The Origins of the English Gentry (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2003). Their military service under Edward is subject to lively analysis by David Simpkin, The English Aristocracy at War from the Welsh Wars of Edward I to the Battle of Bannockburn (Woodbridge: Boydell Press, 2008).

A good, concise survey of England’s society, economy and government in this period is provided by Sandra Raban, England under Edward I and Edward II, 1259–1327 (Oxford: Blackwell, 2000). For the wider background and historical context, see Michael Prestwich, Plantagenet England 1225–1360 (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2005), which includes a summary of his views of Edward’s reign; and David Carpenter, The Struggle for Mastery: Britain 1066–1284 (London: Allen Lane, 2003), which provides an overview of British history, and a very upbeat assessment of Edward’s government. For a somewhat less favourable overview of Edward’s rule, see M. T. Clanchy, England and its Rulers, 1066–1307, 4th edn (Chichester: Wiley-Blackwell, 2014). All three provide illuminating accounts of the conflicts of Henry III’s reign. The politics and conflicts of the 1250s and 1260s, and Edward’s role in them, are analysed in detail by J. R. Maddicott, Simon de Montfort (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1994); Margaret Howell, Eleanor of Provence: Queenship in Thirteenth-Century England (Oxford: Blackwell, 1998); and Adrian Jobson, The First English Revolution: Simon de Montfort, Henry III and the Barons’ War (London: Bloomsbury, 2012).

Since the 1980s, understanding of England’s relations with its neighbours has been transformed by a school of British history. The background of English expansion into the rest of Britain is analysed by R. R. Davies, The First English Empire: Power and Identities in the British Isles, 1093–1343 (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2000), and Robin Frame, The Political Development of the British Isles, 1100–1400 (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1990). The Welsh perspective of the events leading to Edward’s conquest is covered in detail by J. Beverley Smith, Llywelyn ap Gruffudd: Prince of Wales, 2nd edn (Cardiff: University of Wales Press, 2014). For the wider Welsh background, see the masterly study by R. R. Davies, The Age of Conquest: Wales, 1063–1415 (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1991). A good, wide-ranging account of Scotland is provided by Michael Brown, The Wars of Scotland, 1214–1371 (Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press, 2004). The background to the ‘Great Cause’, and England’s claims to the overlordship of Scotland, are examined by A. A. M. Duncan, The Kingship of the Scots, 842–1292: Succession and Independence (Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press, 2002) – a dense and demanding work, but a rewarding one. Edward’s wars in Scotland are analysed by Fiona Watson, Under the Hammer: Edward I and Scotland, 1296–1306 (East Linton: Tuckwell Press, 1998), a fascinating and lively account which emphasizes the hand-to-mouth nature of Edward’s war effort. Gascony and Anglo-French relations are covered in depth by Malcolm Vale, The Origins of the Hundred Years War: The Angevin Legacy, 1250–1340, 2nd edn (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1996). Various aspects of Edward’s castle-building programme are discussed in the wide-ranging and generously illustrated essays in Diane M. Williams and John R. Kenyon (eds), The Impact of the Edwardian Castles in Wales (Oxford: Oxbow, 2010). Finally, much vital and groundbreaking work on Edward’s reign and its wider context has appeared in the biannual series of volumes Thirteenth Century England (Woodbridge: Boydell Press, 1986– ).

Notes

For ease of reference, I have made use of modern translations of the primary sources whenever possible (with some occasional slight adjustments). Otherwise, quotations are my own translations from the original Latin or Anglo-Norman French, or – in a couple of cases – modernized from Middle English.

ABBREVIATIONS

Ann. Mon.

Annales Monastici, ed. Henry Richards Luard, Rolls Series 36, 5 vols (London: 1864–9)

ASR

Anglo-Scottish Relations, 1174–1328: Some Selected Documents, ed. and trans. E. L. G. Stones, 2nd edn (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1970)

Bury St Edmunds

The Chronicle of Bury St Edmunds, 1212–1301, ed. and trans. Antonia Gransden (London: Nelson, 1964)

EHD

English Historical Documents: Volume III: 1189–1327, trans. Harry Rothwell (London: Eyre and Spottiswoode, 1975)

Flores Historiarum

Flores Historiarum, ed. Henry Richards Luard, Rolls Series 95, 3 vols (London: 1890)

Fœdera

Fœdera, Conventiones, Litteræ, et Cujuscunque Generis Publica, ed. T. Rymer, 4 vols in 7 parts (London: Record Commission, 1816–69)

Guisborough

The Chronicle of Walter of Guisborough, ed. H. Rothwell, Camden Society, 3rd Series, 89 (London: 1957)

Lanercost

The Chronicle of Lanercost, 1272–1346, trans. Herbert Maxwell (Glasgow: James Maclehose and Sons, 1913)

Langtoft

The Chronicle of Pierre de Langtoft, ed. and trans. Thomas Wright, Rolls Series 47, 2 vols (London: 1866–8), II

M. Parisiensis

Matthaei Parisiensis, Monachi Sancti Albani Chronica Majora, ed. Henry Richards Luard, Rolls Series 57, 7 vols (London: 1872–83), V

Statutes

Statutes of the Realm (1101–1713), ed. and trans. A. Luders et al., 11 vols (London: Record Commission, 1810–28)

PREFACE

1. Edward Jenks, Edward Plantagenet (Edward I): The English Justinian, or, The Making of the Common Law (New York and London: G. P. Putnam’s Sons, 1902), p. iii.

PROLOGUE: A EUROPEAN KING

1. Nicholai Triveti, Annales Sex Regum Angliae, ed. Thomas Hog (London: English Historical Society, 1845), pp. 281–2.

2. Guisborough, p. 382.

1. LION OR LEOPARD? APPRENTICESHIP IN CIVIL WAR

1. EHD, p. 936.

2. Calendar of Charter Rolls: Henry III: 1226–1257, ed. H. C. Maxwell-Lyte (London: HMSO, 1903), p. 389.

3. M. Parisiensis, p. 383.

4. M. Parisiensis, p. 450.

5. Calendar of Charter Rolls: Henry III, p. 447.

6. Fœdera, I.i, p. 297.

7. M. Parisiensis, p. 597.

8. M. Parisiensis, p. 614.

9. M. Parisiensis, p. 598.

10. ‘Annals of Tewkesbury’, in Ann. Mon., I, p. 164.

11. Quoted in D. A. Carpenter, ‘The Lord Edward’s Oath to Aid and Counsel Simon de Montfort, 15 October 1259’, Bulletin of the Institute of Historical Research, 58 (1985), p. 235.

12. ‘Annals of Burton’, in Ann. Mon., I, p. 471.

13. ‘Continuation of Gervase of Canterbury’s Gesta Regum’, in The Historical Works of Gervase of Canterbury, ed. William Stubbs, Rolls Series 73, 2 vols (London: 1879–80), II, pp. 220–21.

14. Bribery: Flores Historiarum, II, pp. 484–5; ‘Annals of Dunstable’, in Ann. Mon., III, p. 225. Persuasion: ‘Chronicle of Thomas Wykes’, in Ann. Mon., IV, p. 137.

15. Documents of the Baronial Movement of Reform and Rebellion 1258–1267, ed. and trans. R. E. Treharne and I. J. Sanders (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1973), p. 295.

16. Fœdera, I.i, p. 481.

17. Quoted in Marc Morris, A Great and Terrible King: Edward I and the Forging of Britain (London: Hutchinson, 2008), p. 100.

18. Quoted in F. M. Powicke, King Henry III and the Lord Edward, 2nd edn (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1966), p. 688.

19. Anglo-Norman Political Songs, ed. and trans. Isabel S. T. Aspin, Anglo-Norman Text Society, 11 (Oxford: Blackwell, 1953), p. 84.

20. Flores Historiarum, III, p. 28.

2. KING AND REFORMER: EDWARD’S GOVERNMENT

1. ‘Annals of Dunstable’, in Ann. Mon., III, p. 263.

2. Calendar of Patent Rolls: Edward I: 1272–1281, ed. H. C. Maxwell Lyte (London: HMSO, 1901), p. 343.

3. Guisborough, p. 216.

4. Chronica Johannis de Oxenedes, ed. Henry Ellis, Rolls Series 13 (London: 1859), p. 266.

5. Statutes, I, p. 107.

6. Statutes, I, p. 71.

7. The Statute of Acton Burnell was so-called because it was passed at the Parliament held at Acton Burnell (see pp. 34–5). The Statute of Merchants was enacted at the Westminster Parliament of Easter 1285; it was known by its subject matter to distinguish it from the Statute of Westminster II, passed at the same Parliament.

8. Guisborough, p. 216.

9. There is little evidence of the procedure for electing representatives, but it appears that they were usually chosen by consensus, by the great and the good of the shires and boroughs, from among their own number.

10. Bury St Edmunds, p. 135.

11. EHD, p. 503.

12. Calendar of Close Rolls: Edward I: 1302–1307, ed. H. C. Maxwell Lyte (London: HMSO, 1908), p. 454.

13. Quoted in Naomi D. Hurnard, The King’s Pardon for Homicide before 1307 (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1969), p. 248.

14. Statutes, I, p. 26.

15. Fœdera, I.ii, p. 842.

16. Bartholomæi de Cotton, Historia Anglicana, ed. Henry Richards Luard, Rolls Series 16 (London: 1859), p. 318.

17. Guisborough, pp. 289–90.

18. Flores Historiarum, III, p. 296.

19. EHD, p. 482.

20. EHD, p. 483.

21. EHD, p. 486.

22. Bury St Edmunds, p. 142.

23. Willelmi Rishanger, Chronica et Annales, ed. Henry Thomas Riley, Rolls Series 28 (London: 1865), p. 405.

24. Fœdera, I.ii, p. 978.

3. BRITAIN AND FRANCE: OVERLORDSHIP AND WAR

1. Langtoft, pp. 264–6.

2. Bury St Edmunds, p. 133.

3. Calendar of Ancient Correspondence Concerning Wales, ed. J. Goronwy Edwards (Cardiff: University Press Board, 1935), p. 93.

4. Ann. Mon., IV, p. 277.

5. Printed in G. W. S. Barrow, ‘A Kingdom in Crisis: Scotland and the Maid of Norway’, Scottish Historical Review, 49 (1990), p. 138.

6. ‘Annals of Waverley’, in Ann. Mon., II, p. 409.

7. ASR, p. 103.

8. ASR, p. 109.

9. Bury St Edmunds, pp. 118–20; Langtoft, pp. 197–9.

10. Guisborough, pp. 251–2.

11. Lanercost, p. 135. It should be noted that the ‘Lanercost’ chronicle (so called by its nineteenth-century editor) was probably compiled not at Lanercost (a house of Augustinian canons), but at the Franciscan Friary at Carlisle.

12. Johannis de Fordun: Chronica Gentis Scotorum, trans. William F. Skene, 2 vols (Edinburgh: Edmonston and Douglas, 1871–2), II, p. 319.

13. Sir Thomas Gray: Scalacronica (1272–1363), ed. and trans. Andy King, Surtees Society, 209 (Woodbridge: Boydell Press, 2005), p. 39.

14. Rishanger, ed. Riley, p. 385.

15. Lanercost, p. 169.

16. ASR, p. 240.

17. For the quotes, see ASR, p. 251.

18. Calendar of Documents Relating to Scotland, ed. Joseph Bain, 4 vols (Edinburgh: HM General Register House, 1881–8), II, no. 1926.

19. Anglo-Norman Political Songs, ed. Aspin, p. 84.

20. Andrew Ayton, ‘English Armies in the Fourteenth Century’, in Arms, Armies and Fortifications in the Hundred Years War, ed. Anne Curry and Michael Hughes (Woodbridge: Boydell Press, 1994), p. 29.

4. EDWARD’S KINGSHIP: PATRONAGE, PUNISHMENT AND POLITICAL THEATRE

1. Quoted in Michael Prestwich, Edward I, 2nd edn (New Haven, Conn., and London: Yale University Press, 1997), p. 440.

2. Calendar of Close Rolls: Edward I: 1288–1296, ed. H. C. Maxwell Lyte (London: HMSO, 1904), p. 515.

3. EHD, p. 476.

4. Select Documents of English Constitutional History, trans. George Burton Adams and H. Morse Stephens (New York and London: Macmillan, 1901), no. 46.

5. Quoted in D. L. d’Avray, Death and the Prince: Memorial Preaching before 1350 (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1994), p. 72.

6. The Ledger Book of Vale Royal Abbey, ed. John Brownbill, Record Society of Lancashire and Cheshire, 68 (Manchester: 1914), p. 4.

7. Printed in J. H. Denton, ‘The Crisis of 1297 from the Evesham Chronicle’, English Historical Review, 93 (1978), p. 571.

8. Translated in Olivier de Laborderie, J. R. Maddicott and D. A. Carpenter, ‘The Last Hours of Simon de Montfort: A New Account’, English Historical Review, 115 (2000), p. 411.

9. Lanercost, p. 35.

10. Calendar of Various Chancery Rolls: 1277–1326, ed. H. C. Maxwell Lyte (London: HMSO, 1912), pp. 281–2.

11. The Political Songs of England, from the Reign of John to that of Edward II, ed. Thomas Wright, Camden Society, 1st Series, 6 (London: 1839), pp. 213, 214.

12. EHD, pp. 525–6.

13. Marc Morris, ‘Edward I and the Knights of the Round Table’, in Foundations of Medieval Scholarship: Records Edited in Honour of David Crook, ed. Paul Brand and Sean Cunningham (York: Borthwick Institute, 2008).

14. Flores Historiarum, III, p. 59. The origins of ‘Arthur’s Crown’ are obscure – as is its eventual fate; it appears already to have been missing when the Crown Jewels were destroyed in 1649.

CONCLUSION: A GREAT KING?

1. Johannis de Fordun, trans. Skene, II, p. 336.

2. Langtoft, p. 380.

3. Year Books of the Reign of King Edward the First, ed. and trans. Alfred J. Horwood, Rolls Series 31, 5 vols (London: 1863–79), V, p. 82.

4. Bury St Edmunds, p. 133.

5. The Book of the Ordre of Chyualry, ed. Alfred T. P. Byles, Early English Text Society, Original Series 168 (London: 1926), pp. 122–3.

6. The Brut, ed. Friedrich W. D. Brie, Early English Text Society, Original Series 131 and 136, 2 vols (London: 1906–8), I, p. 204.

Picture Credits

1. The portrait of a king, c.1308, thought to represent Edward I, Westminster Abbey, London (Werner Forman Archive/Bridgeman Images)

2. Edward and Eleanor of Castile, from the Rochester chronicle, mid fourteenth century. The British Library, London (© British Library Board. All Rights Reserved/Bridgeman Images)

3. Edward and John, King of Scots, from Les Chroniques de France ou de St Denis, late fourteenth century. The British Library, London (© British Library Board. All Rights Reserved/Bridgeman Images)

4. Edward with bishops and monks, from The Decrees of Kings of Anglo-Saxon and Norman England, fourteenth century. The British Library, London (© British Library Board. All Rights Reserved/Bridgeman Images)

5. Edward and Philip IV of France, marginal drawing on the Exchequer Memoranda Rolls, 1297 (The National Archives, Kew. E 368/69, m. 56d)

6. Edward points to a copy of a writ, marginal drawing on the Exchequer Memoranda Rolls, 1300 (The National Archives, Kew. E 368/72, m. 12)

7. Edward presents Magna Carta to his prelates and magnates, initial letter from a fourteenth-century book of statutes (The Bodleian Library, University of Oxford. MS Douce 35, f.25r)

8. Edward I creates his son Prince of Wales and Earl of Chester, at the Lincoln Parliament, 7 February 1301, from the Rochester chronicle. The British Library, London (© British Library Board. All Rights Reserved/Bridgeman Images)

9. Edward’s Great Seal, front and reverse. Göteborgs Konstmuseum, Sweden (De Agostini Picture Library/G. Dagli Orti/Bridgeman Images)

10. Edward I Silver Penny (Jerry Woody/Wikimedia Commons)

11. Flint Castle, Flintshire (Andy King)

12. Caernarfon Castle, Gwynedd (Alamy)

13. The Eleanor Cross, Geddington, Northamptonshire (Lofty/Wikimedia Commons)

Acknowledgements

I was taught by Michael Prestwich as an undergraduate and postgraduate. He never did a course on Edward I (he once told me he could not face the thought of seeing his own words quoted back at him), but my development as a historian owes much to his influence. Similarly, my views on British – as opposed to English – history owe a great deal to Robin Frame. Over the years, my understanding of late medieval Britain, and Edward I in particular, has benefited enormously from discussion with many historians, not least among them Rémy Ambühl, Andrew Ayton, Gary Baker, Adrian Bell, Richard Britnell, Michael Brown, Anne Curry, Gwil Dodd, Chris Given-Wilson, David Green, Simon Harris, Matt Holford, Craig Lambert, Aly Macdonald, Mark Ormrod, Michael Penman, Tony Pollard, Len Scales, David Simpkin, Andrew Spencer and Sarah Tebbit. More specifically, Louise Wilkinson kindly sent me a copy of her unpublished paper on Edward’s daughters; and Anthony Musson helped with illustrations. I have also learned much from the students who took my ‘Edward I’ course at the Oxford University Department of Continuing Education in 2014. Discussing Edward with them was a great help in shaping this book.

I have to thank John Gillingham who recommended me for the task of tackling Edward I. And, at Penguin, Simon Winder has shown enormous tact and patience, while the process of transforming my deathless prose into a proper book has been expedited with efficiency and grace by Anna Hervé, Kate Parker and Cecilia Mackay.

Thanks also to my daughter Freya, who has promised she may even read this; and my son Lewis, who hasn’t … And, as ever, thanks to my parents, Beth King and Ted Hutchinson, without whose unstinting support I would never have been in a position to start this book.

Most of all, though, I have to thank my other half, Dr Claire Etty, who subjected the entire text to a criticism that was minute, thoroughgoing and ruthless – but always fair, constructive and encouraging; and I could not have finished the thing without her help. It is to her that the book is dedicated, with much love.

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UK | USA | Canada | Ireland | Australia India | New Zealand | South Africa Penguin Books is part of the Penguin Random House group of companies whose addresses can be found at global.penguinrandomhouse.com

First published 2016

Copyright © Andy King, 2016

The moral right of the author has been asserted Cover design by Pentagram ISBN: 978-0-141-97878-9

* The ‘Bastard’ was William the Conqueror – a soubriquet which refers to his paternity, rather than his character.