This is Caernarfon Castle in North Wales.
Its vast walls are built
out of layers of different-coloured stone
in imitation of the walls of the imperial city of Constantinople,
while, on top of the battlements of the great tower there,
now worn to stumps by the sea winds and the rain,
perch stone sculptures of imperial eagles,
for this castle was built by a man
whose ambitions were truly imperial:
King Edward I, conqueror of Wales
and Hammer of the Scots.
(Horse neighing)
'Edward was the founder of a line of kings,
'father, son and grandson
'who all bore the Anglo-Saxon name Edward
'and they carried England to new heights of power.
'They would conquer Wales, Scotland and even France -
'or at least the first and third Edwards would
'but the second Edward unconventional and self-indulgent
'would open the old debate about royal power.
'His weaknesses brought the monarchy to the brink of disaster
'and may have inflicted a uniquely horrible death on the king.'
Nor was it all gore and glory,
for the Edwards were law givers as well as soldiers
parliamentarians as well as conquerors,
with the result that by the end of the Edwardian century,
the shape of an England ruled by king, lords and commons
was already becoming clear.
'In 1272, Edward I inherited the crown
'from his father Henry III,
'but his inheritance was flawed.
'During the later years of his father's reign,
'the Crown had sunk to its lowest depths.
'Edward and his father had been kept under house arrest
'and the king forced to rule through a group of barons.
'Edward would never forget this humiliation.
'lt was Edward who led the Royalist fightback,
'and it was Edward who learned the painful lesson
'of what could happen to a weak king.
These were Edward's first battles.
He learned early that he had to fight for the rights of the Crown.
When he was young, he fought like the leopard,
with speed and cunning.
When he got older, he fought like the lion,
with awe-inspiring power.
'There's a story told that at his coronation in 1274
'he removed the crown from his head
'and swore that he'd never wear it again
'until he'd regained what his father had lost.'
'To do this, Edward's first task was to reunite his realm
'divided by the barons' revolt.
'But, instead of waging a vendetta against his surviving opponents,
'he forgave them,
'allowing them to buy back the property that his father had confiscated.
'The result made Edward appear magnanimous
'but it also raised money for the Crown.
'Edward had learned from the rebel barons as well
'and understood that it was in the towns and villages of England
'that the roots of his power lay.
'So he decided to reinforce the bonds between king and people
'by ordering a huge nationwide investigation into official corruption.
'lt would be king and people versus the fat cats.
'The results were recorded in what are known as the Hundred Rolls.'
Here, for instance, in the Stamford Roll
is a bit of local dirt on the bailiff of the town
Hugo Bunting.
One of the things he is accused of is levying an illicit toll
of five shillings on a certain William Gabercockie
when he took his millstones through the middle of the town.
"Duxit per medium ville."
Now, this is just for Stamford.
Multiply for all England and you get information overload,
so very few actual prosecutions took place.
But it's the PR that was most important.
Edward was showing that he cared,
that the king's rights complemented the rights of his subjects
and that he was able to guarantee equal justice for all his subjects,
no matter how humble.
It would be hard to think of a better beginning for a reign
or of a more effective answer to those who
like the baronial revolutionaries of his father's reign,
claimed that strong royal government
meant oppressive royal government.
'Edward's next task was to restore the authority of the king of England
'over the whole of Britain.'
'In different ways, the rulers of Wales and Scotland
'had taken advantage of Henry III's weakness
'to regain power and independence at the expense of their English overlord.
'In 1276, from his wild fastness in north Wales
'Llywelyn ap Gruffudd had extended control over most of Wales.'
'But Edward was loath to accept the rise of Wales as an independent power
'so he insisted on the homage or ritual submission
'which the rulers of Wales traditionally paid to the king of England.'
'There resulted a struggle of wills.
'For Llywelyn, his homage was a bargaining counter
'in a relationship of semi-equals.'
For Edward, it was a non-negotiable acknowledgement
of his superiority over a subject
and inferior.
Three more times, Prince Llywelyn was summoned to perform homage
and three times he refused.
Finally, and with plenty of time to make his preparations,
Edward declared war.
'Edward mobilised the whole country.
'Merchants and craftsmen laboured to supply the army.
'Huge arsenals of weapons were stockpiled
'and Llywelyn was no match for the resources of England.
'But it took two campaigns,
'in 1277 and 1282, to subdue the Welsh.'
'Edward effectively laid siege to Llywelyn in Snowdonia
'and starved him out.
'Edward was not the first king of England to fight the Welsh,
'but Edward carried the old policy to new extremes.
'There would be no more native princes of Wales
'acknowledging the vague overlordship of a king of England.
'Instead, Wales was crushed under the heel of a brutal military occupation
'whose symbol was the mighty castles
'which still dominate the landscape
'and the Welsh were treated as second-class citizens
'ruled over by an English-speaking elite.'
It was Edward's treatment of the rebel leaders that shows most clearly
that he was a new kind of king
with a new, harder attitude to kingship,
which he'd learned during the struggles of his father's reign.
Ever since the Norman Conquest,
barons and kings had fought each other with few hard feelings on either side.
No longer,
because Edward now declared that to wage war against the king
was treason.
Treason was effectively a new crime
for which a new terrible punishment was devised.
The first to suffer it was Dafydd ap Gruffudd, Prince Llywelyn's brother.
'Because he'd betrayed the king,
'he was dragged to the place of execution by horses.
'Because he'd killed noblemen he was hanged,
'and because he had committed murder at Easter
he was cut down while still alive
'castrated
'disembowelled
'and his entrails burned
'and because he'd committed crimes in different parts of the kingdom,
'his body was hacked into four
'and the quarters distributed throughout the realm.'
'The fate of Wales was scarcely less brutal.
'lf the Hundred Rolls had shown that Edward was an astute politician,
'the conquest of Wales demonstrated
'his brutal, lion-like strength.'
This is Beaumaris Castle
on the island of Anglesey,
built by Edward I
to set the seal on his final crushing of Welsh resistance.
Edward's empire now stretched secure
from east to west across the British Isles.
But, in the south, the King of France was threatening Edward's lands in Gascony,
whilst in the north
Scotland, at last seemed about to fall into his grasp.
This struggle, on two fronts, to subdue Scotland
and to preserve his lands in France,
was to dominate the rest of Edward's reign
and, for better and for worse
to shape the reigns of his son
and his grandson as well.
'Behind me lies Edinburgh,
'the capital city of Scotland.'
With devolution, it's once again the seat of a Scottish parliament
and the focus of a revived and intensified sense
of Scotland's separate nationhood.
But, when Edward came to the throne
that sense of separate identity was not nearly so clear.
Scotland was an ancient monarchy,
but its kings were much intermarried with the English royal house.
They had vast land-holdings in England.
They swore fealty to the English kings.
They fought for them as well as with them
and they sat in English councils and parliaments.
In short, were they separate monarchs
or were they the greatest subjects of the kings of England?
It was a highly ambiguous relationship,
but Edward with his sharp lawyer's mind
and his acute awareness of his own rights,
hated ambiguity.
When he could he would make the relationship
of the king of Scotland and the king of England clear
on his own terms
and in his own interests.
'Edward's opportunity came in 1291.
'The sole heir of the Scottish throne was the little Norwegian princess,
'the granddaughter of the deceased King of Scots.
'She was brought back to Scotland but died on the way.
'As feudal overlord of the country,
'Edward claimed the right to choose the next king.
'Edward would be kingmaker in Scotland
'and he would remake the relations between the two kingdoms.'
'Of the 13 candidates Edward chose John Baliol.
'Baliol had a good claim, but he was also the most anglicised of the candidates,
the founder of an Oxford college and a major landowner in England.'
Moreover, Edward was clear
that even after he'd chosen Baliol as king,
he remained sovereign lord of Scotland.
He, Edward, was finally responsible
forjustice and good government in Scotland
and he would enforce those responsibilities
as he enforced his laws in England
in his own English courts.
'Knowing Edward's attitude, Scotsmen appealed to him
'to have their own king's judgements overruled.
'Even Baliol's acquiescence was tested,
'but when Baliol complained,
'Edward informed him that he could summon even Baliol himself
'to appear before him at Westminster.
'Before long, he did just that.
'For Baliol, it was a humiliation too far.
'The Scots were provoked into rebellion,
'Edward to invasion.'
'Berwick was the first town to fall.
'lt was said that Edward was so angry that the town had dared to resist him
'that he fell on it with the anger of a wild boar pursued by dogs.
'From Berwick Edward pushed up the coast to Dunbar.
'The Scots taunted the English troops, calling them "tailed dogs".
'The castle fell after only a few days.
'Edward then took his army on a military promenade through Scotland.
'The great fortress of Edinburgh fell after only five days' siege,
'and Stirling before Edward even arrived.
'He boasted that Scotland was conquered in only 21 weeks.
'Now Edward had achieved what he'd probably always wanted -
'the direct rule of Scotland.
'So, in a cruel inversion of a coronation
'the vestments symbols and regalia of kingship
'were stripped off Baliol.
'Edward literally un-kinged him.'
'Even more radically,
'Edward decided to un-kingdom Scotland.'
Take this piece of sandstone here.
It looks ordinary enough,
but then why the glass and the high security?
Because it's the stone, rich with legend,
on which, for 400 years, the kings of Scotland were crowned.
After the conquest, Edward took the stone to England,
where it remained, under the coronation throne in Westminster Abbey
for the next 700 years.
By removing the Stone of Destiny,
Edward was declaring that Scotland had ceased altogether to be a kingdom,
and become a mere province of England.
Edward was now at the pinnacle of power.
He was an English Caesar,
a new Arthur
a mightier, mightier conqueror.
'Finally, Edward took on the King of France,
'who, in the first example of what became known as the Auld Alliance
'had allied with John Baliol
and confiscated Edward's French territories.'
To fight his great wars, Edward needed taxation
and the only effective way of raising taxation was to summon a parliament,
usually to Westminster here.
A parliament was necessary constitutionally,
because Magna Carta had laid down
that no one could be taxed without their consent.
It was also necessary practically,
because it had proved impossible to raise taxes any other way
without the taxpayers going on strike.
'As usual, the most important group of taxpayers were the middle earners,
'the knights, the country gentlemen and the leading townsfolk,
'so, in 1295 on the eve of the Scottish invasions
'Edward summoned representatives of these groups
'to what became known as the Model Parliament.
'They'd have a stake in Edward's vision for England,
'but they'd have to pay for it.'
The result was that Edward the most naturally autocratic of kings,
followed in the footsteps of the great rebel Simon de Montfort
to become the Father of Parliament.
'lt was a shrewd gesture,
'but fierce guerrilla resistance to the English conquest
'broke out in Scotland
'and Edward was forced into war on two fronts.
'As the costs escalated
'the king faced broad-based opposition led by an important group of nobles.
'To appease them, he was forced to reissue Magna Carta
'and to promise once more
'that there would be no taxation without consultation of the whole realm.
'Neverrtheless, to pursue his obsession of conquering Scotland,
'Edward resorted to any means to raise money.
'Finally, in 1305, William Wallace, the leader of Scottish resistance
'was betrayed
'and Edward decided to make an example of him.'
Wallace was brought on horseback
here, to the place of judgement,
in Westminster Hall, for his trial.
As was usual in cases of treason
there was no jury or counsel for the accused.
Otherwise, both the facts of the case
and the forms of law were carefully observed.
The judges accused Wallace of having encouraged the Scots
to ally with Edward's enemies, the French
of having invaded England
and killed women children and churchmen
and, above all, of having traitorously conspired the king's death
and marched in war with banners flying against him.
Wallace indignantly denied that he'd ever been a traitor
presumably meaning that he'd never recognised Edward as king.
This only made his crime the worse,
and he was sentenced to the worst punishment
that the law could give.
'At Smithfield now London's meat market
'Wallace was horrifically tortured
'and killed.
'Like the Welsh rebel Dafydd, he too was hanged,
'disembowelled, beheaded
'and quartered.'
'lt was a graphic message
'of what happened to those who crossed King Edward.'
'No sooner had Edward dealt with Wallace
'than a new enemy took his place, Robert the Bruce.
'Despite the absence of the Scottish crown
'and the Stone of Destiny,
'Bruce had himself crowned King of Scots in 1306.
'Bruce continued to terrorise the English.
'Edward retaliated with punitive campaigns,
'and it was on his way north, in 1307,
'to wage yet another campaign against Bruce
'that Edward died, at the age of 68.
There's a story that his last wish was that his body should be boiled
until the bones were clean of flesh
and his skeleton be carried at the head of every English army
until the Scots were finally crushed.
It didn't quite work out like that.
Instead, his body was buried
in his father's great church at Westminster Abbey.
But, inscribed on his tomb
was the words "Malleus Scotorum" -
Hammer of the Scots.
What Edward had done was right and just by his standards,
but he had the weakness of his strength.
If he had been less rigid and less hammer-like
the union of England and Scotland, then so close
might have come about quickly and naturally
and both countries would have been spared centuries of war,
bloodshed and devastation.
'Edward was a supremely self-confident king
'with a clear sense of the power and the rights of the Crown.
'He may be remembered for his wars but his legacy is much greater.
'At home, Edward reaffirmed the direct bonds between Crown and people.
'Abroad, his victories began to foster a sense of national pride.
'But how would England cope with his successor
'a man ruled by private obsessions rather than royal ambition?'
'Edward I was a difficult act to follow for any son,
'but Edward II was particularly ill-equipped
'to step into his father's shoes.
'He may have looked like his father, tall, handsome and strong,
'but, in fact, they'd little in common.
'Disturbingly, it was noted
'that Edward shunned the traditional pastimes of princes,
'preferring instead common pursuits like rowing, swimming and boat-building.'
At the beginning of Edward's reign,
the contrast in character with his father wasn't necessarily seen as a bad thing.
Edward I had undoubtedly been a great king,
but, especially towards the end,
his realm had paid a terrible price for his driving ambition,
and men were looking forward to a quieter life
under his apparently more accommodating son.
The symbol of the change was the new coronation oath
which Edward swore here in Westminster Abbey.
Out went Edward I's promise to defend the rights of the crown.
In came a new oath
that the king would uphold and defend
the laws and righteous customs
which the community of the realm shall choose.
"I so agree and promise," Edward swore.
In those few words
he'd abandoned any claim to absolute royal power,
and he undertook instead to rule by consent
and in cooperation with the nobles.
'A brave new world it seemed, had dawned.
'Edward, the hope was,, would be a conciliator
'not an authoritarian monarch.
'But he lacked his father's strength of will,
'and had, for contemporaries, an even more worrying personality flaw,
'which was evident even at his coronation.
'Edward was crowned with his wife, Queen Isabella, by his side,
'but it was his childhood friend Piers Gaveston, who stole the show.
'Edward had eyes and ears only for Piers,
'and Piers, in turn, gave himself the airs and graces of a royal favourite.
'At the coronation he openly flouted convention
'by wearing purple robes rather than the traditional gold.
'To add injury to insult, Edward presented Piers
'with the best of his new wife's jewels and wedding presents.'
Whether or not the relationship between Edward and Piers
was actively homosexual is unclear.
No contemporary explicitly says that it was.
Instead, they use phrases like,
"The love that surpasseth the love of a woman."
'One wrote...'
(Reader) "I do not remember to have heard that one man so loved another.
"Jonathan cherished David
"but we do not read that they were immoderate.
"Our king, however, was incapable of moderate favour,
"and, on account of Piers was said to forget himself."'
In short, Edward and Piers
were breaking the rules and they were offending those
who saw themselves as the guardians of the rules -
the English nobility.
'Only two months after the celebrations of the coronation
'the nobility delivered an ultimatum to their new king,
'either exile Piers or face civil war.
'Piers was sent to France
'but Edward wasn't to be browbeaten.
'Edward had inherited his father's determination as well as his looks.
'Just as Edward I had conquered Wales and Scotland
'so Edward II would have Piers by his side.
'He cajoled, bribed and threatened his nobles
'until they relented and allowed Piers to return.
'The king rode to Chester to be reunited with his friend
'but Piers had learnt nothing from his exile.
'He continued to treat the leading magnates of the country with contempt,
'by giving them nicknames like Bursbelly,
'Joseph the Jew, the Cuckold's Bird,
'and the Black Dog of Arden.
'This amused Edward, but it made deadly enemies of Piers' targets.'
Piers' mockery of the nobility
was the classic response of the outsider
confronted by a clique of crusty old insiders,
because the English nobility saw government as being rather like a club.
Membership, they felt, should be limited to people of the right background.
In other words to nobles like themselves -
and everybody should obey the rules,
including the king himself.
Rule number one was to respect the rights and privileges,
the sensitivities and values of the right sort of people,
by which, once again, the nobility meant themselves.
Now, of course, this attitude was selfish and class-ridden
but it was also the only way
that the idea of royal government as responsible government
could be given real meaning.
Only the nobility were strong enough to hold the king to account,
and that, in the circumstances of 1312
meant forcing him, by violence, if necessary,
to get rid of Piers Gaveston.
'Edward and Piers fled north
'Edward abandoning his pregnant wife Isabella to his enemies.
'She would not forget the insult.
'But it was all for nothing.
'Piers was caught and taken prisoner by the Earl of Warwick,
'the man whom he'd mocked as The Black Dog.'
'There was no formal trial.
'Instead, Warwick and four nobles decided Piers' fate.
'The verdict was death.'
Edward was grief-stricken at Gaveston's murder
but it was more than a personal loss.
He'd also lost face as king.
Gaveston was the thing in the whole world that mattered most to him
but he'd not been powerful enough or feared enough to protect his life
or to avenge his death.
What was the authority of such a king worth?
'But now, Edward, under attack at home
'had the opportunity to recoup his position abroad.
'Bruce's long guerrilla campaign in Scotland was at last bearing fruit.
'He drove the English from their key castles,
'and he even dared to strike across the English border
'with increasingly devastating raids.
'By 1313, war was unavoidable.'
Edward and his nobles sank their differences sufficiently
to mount a vast punitive expedition against Scotland.
Here, in the field of battle
Edward might yet redeem himself.
'The English and Scottish armies met on the 23rd of June 1314
'just outside Stirling.
'Much to the English surprise, the Scots took the initiative.
'At daybreak, it was they who advanced,
'but then Edward's surprise turned to amazement.
'Edward was reported to say, "They kneel and ask for mercy."
'One of his Scottish officials knew his countrymen better and replied,
"'They ask for mercy, but not from you.
"'To God they pray. For them, it's death or victory."'
'The battle began and the English knights charged the Scots' front line,
'but the Scots held firm.
'Unable to break the front rank the English retreated,
'but their retreat turned into a rout.
'Encumbered by their armour, many men drowned in the boggy ground.
'The losses were huge,
'and Bannockburn became infamous
'as England's most shameful defeat by the Scots.'
Leaving his troops to be massacred, Edward fled from the battlefield
and, with only a handful of followers,
rode desperately for Dunbar.
He took refuge overnight in the castle here, which was in friendly hands,
and then, the following morning,
set sail for England.
The war with Scotland had given Edward
the opportunity to redeem his reputation.
Instead the shattering defeat of Bannockburn sent it to new depths.
He'd proved to be as bad a general as he was a politician,
and his flight made him seem like a coward as well.
He now appeared to be un-manly as well as un-kingly.
"How," people asked, "could such a creature as this
"be the son of the great Edward?"
They answered their own question by saying that he wasn't,
that he was a changeling and not royal at all.
Thus began the rumours about the king's birth,
which his own fondness for such peasant activities as rowing,
thatching, fishing and boat-building
seemed only to confirm.
'Nor was Edward any more successful as a husband.
'Enraged by his neglectful treatment,
'Edward's wife Isabella had taken a lover, Mortimer
'and fled to France with him.
'lt was from there that they planned their invasion of England.
'In September 1326, Isabella landed in England
'and met with little resistance.
'She seized the crown in the name of her and Edward's eldest son
'a third Edward.'
Isabella and Mortimer may have had no difficulty in seizing the throne
but it proved less easy to justify it
because there was no constitutional machinery
to depose a crowned and anointed king.
Instead, they resorted to the astonishing legal innovation
of the Articles of Accusation
which convicted the king, the fount of justice,
of a series of high crimes against his country.
'Instead of good government by good laws,
'he'd been ruled by evil counsel.'
Instead of justice, he'd sent noblemen to shameful and to illegal deaths.
He'd lost Scotland and Gascony
and he had depressed and impoverished England.
In short he had broken his solemn contract
with his people and his country
and he must pay the price.
'For the first time in English history,
'a reigning monarch was formally deposed from the throne.
'Edward's miserable state was described in a poem
'which he may have written himself.'
(Reader) "In winter, woe befell me
"By cruel fortune threatened
"My life now lies a ruin
"Once was I feared and dreaded
"But now all men despise me
"And call me a crownless king
"A laughing stock to all"
'Edward was imprisoned here
'in this guardroom in the keep of Berkeley Castle.'
He soon escaped, but was recaptured.
Thereafter his imprisonment became stricter
and heavy locks and bolts were bought for the doors.
Finally, he was murdered.
It couldn't be seen as murder, of course
and pains were taken to leave as few marks as possible on the body.
According to most contemporary accounts,
he was pressed down with a table with heavy weights and suffocated.
But this story, first written down about 30 years after the king's death,
suggests a more horrible end.
The king was held down
and then a hollow instrument like the end of a trumpet
was forced into his fundament
and a red-hot poker thrust up through it
into his bowels.
The Articles of Accusation had been an inversion
of Edward's coronation oath.
If this story is correct,
his death was a vile parody
of the pleasures he was supposed to have enjoyed with Piers Gaveston.
'In April 1331,
'a three-day tournament was proclaimed
'in the name of the new king,
'Edward III.
'His father had banned the tournament.
'Edward III excelled at the joust.
'Indeed, whilst Edward II had disappointed
'the traditional expectations of what a king should be,
'Edward III was the perfect image of kingship.
'Like Elizabeth I and Queen Victoria after him
'Edward III personified the values of his age.
'Edwardian England was an age of knights and fantasy castles,
'of honours and arms.
'lt was a culture rooted in war
'and leading the country into battle was a hero king.'
After the disasters of his father's reign, it was natural
that Edward would model himself on his grandfather,
the heroic warrior king, Edward I,
but it was a return with a difference.
Edward had none of his grandfather's ruthless, driving energy
or his stiff-backed authoritarianism either.
Instead, he cultivated an easy, winning charm.
He was a good family man with a pretty wife
and a rapidly growing brood of fine sons.
He was capable of striking populist gestures,
as, when he entered a town in triumph,
not on horseback, but on foot
and leading his wife and eldest son by the hand.
He would meet the humblest knight in the tournament, man to man
and win.
In short Edward was the perfect gentleman,
affable, sporting and brave, who would rule England
as one of the club
as first amongst the equals of his nobility.
'This was a quiet revolution.
'For Edward, there would be no divisive upstart favourite like Piers.
'Instead, Edward, unlike his father
'or even grandfather, truly accepted
'that he had to work in harmony with the nobility.
'Indeed, to do so was a pleasure as well as a duty.
'The result was that Edward encouraged aristocratic culture
'which bound the kings and nobles together.
'lts most vivid expression was in heraldry.
Originally, your coat of arms had a purely practical function
of identifying you on the battlefield when you were encased in a suit of armour,
but soon a whole world of meaning was added.
Your coat of armour showed who your ancestors were,
who you'd married, whether you were a younger or an elder son
and what honours you'd won.
Edward III was an aficionado of all this
and he established a new order of chivalry
based on King Arthur and the Knights of the Round Table,
called the Order of the Garter.
The story goes that, at a court ball,
a lady let slip her garter, which fell to the floor.
Amidst the laughter, the king himself bent down,
retrieved it and silenced the titters by saying,
"Honi soit qui mal y pense."
"Shame be to him that thinks evil of it."
Be that as it may,
the garter, with its blue and gold ribbon encircling your coat of arms,
became the supreme mark of noble honour.
'But all this glamour and glitz masked a darker imperative.'
Edward and his nobles belonged to a killing culture
in which you gained honour and respect by slaughter.
Sport in particular was all about the kill.
You killed animals in the hunt
and you came near to killing human beings in the joust
and the tournament
and war, where you killed for real,
was the noblest sport of them all.
But war was also a political necessity as well.
'As the chronicler Froissart noted...'
(Reader) "The English will never love and honour their king
"unless he be victorious and a lover of arms, and war against their neighbours,
"and especially against such that are greater and richer than themselves."
'Edward's first target was Scotland.
'Scotland had eluded his grandfather Edward I
'and defeated and humiliated his father Edward II.
'So, for Edward III
'war with Scotland was a matter of honour.'
'Edward took personal charge of his armies
'and managed to instil his own military enthusiasm
'from the nobles at the top to the common soldier at the bottom.
'And it was the common soldier who largely won the wars,
'thanks to the powerful new weapon, the longbow.
'Edward understood the value of the longbow,
'and later in his reign, he passed an act
'which banned other sports such as football and bowls
'to force a concentration on archery.
'The border town of Berwick now back in Scottish hands
'was Edward's first target.
'On Halidon Hill, just outside Berwick,
'the English and Scots met.
'lt was a first victory for Edward and the longbow.
'As the Scots approached,
'the English archers fired their deadly wave of arrows with devastating impact.
'England's honour, lost at Bannockburn, was restored
'and balladeers celebrated.'
(Reader) "Scots out of Berwick and Aberdeen
"At the burn of Bannock you were far too keen
"King Edward has avenged it now
"And fully too, I ween"
Edward's victory, high up here on Halidon Hill,
was the making of him, as a man and as a king.
He'd smashed the Scots
even more completely than his grandfather,
the imperial Edward I, the Hammer of the Scots, had ever done.
He'd won Berwick-on-Tweed over there
then Scotland's main port and trading city,
and, for the first time in over 20 years,
he'd freed the north of England from the risk of invasion.
But his personal gains were even greater.
He showed himself to be a natural general and leader of men
and a master of the new tactics of the longbow,
and he'd done all this at the age of 21.
Already, he was hailed as a new Arthur.
Would he, like Arthur, reunify Britain?
Or would he seek for wider fields to conquer?
'Edward chose the wider fields
'and his next target would be France,
'the country with which England had been intertwined
'in peace and war since the Norman Conquest.
'War with France offered the chance of rich booty, vast ransoms
'and controlling the lucrative trade in the English Channel.
'But not even Edward could have guessed
'that he was about to start a war that would last 100 years.
'But if Edward and his nobles fought the war,
'it was the grey men of parliament who paid for it.'
From here, high up on the London Eye, you can see the Houses of Parliament.
Their proper name is still the Palace of Westminster.
Back in Edward's reign, it was the king's real palace
but it was also becoming the home of parliament too,
with a special parliament chamber.
What was turning parliament into a regular institution
was Edward's need for money to fight his wars with France -
that and his willingness to do whatever was necessary to persuade parliament
to dig their hands deep into their constituents' pockets.
It meant doing deals, greasing palms,
slapping backs.
Edward's victories were reported in detail to parliament.
Parliament was consulted on the war diplomacy,
and parliament ratified the peace treaties with France.
It was good politics, but it was more,
because it turned Edward's wars into a joint enterprise
between the king and the English nation.
It made the English monarchy a national monarchy as well,
of which Englishmen could be proud,
and in which they felt they had a stake
and an investment.
'Edward's war became England's war.
'Bishops and priests led patriotic services and prayed for success.
'Dispatches from the front were read out in every town
'and triumphant peals of bells celebrated victory.
'lt was in August 1346
'that Edward's style of kingship was fully vindicated.
'The English and French met at Crecy near Calais.
'The French were confident that victory was theirs
'for they outnumbered the English eight to one.
'But Edward unleashed the full martial potential of his country.
'Now the training of the longbow and the promise of rich plunder
'all under the command of the king created a truly terrifying force.
'By nightfall, the battle was over and a witness described the scene.'
(Reader) "When no more shouting or cries could be heard
"the English concluded that the enemy were routed
"so they lit great numbers of lanterns and torches as it was very dark.
"They hailed it as a glorious victory
"and several times that night, they gave thanks to God
"for showing them such great mercies."
'The French fled leaving behind 4,000 dead knights.
'Edward's armies had gone into battle wearing the cross of St George,
'and St George, the patron saint of soldiers and nobles,
'became the patron saint of England.'
This great window in Gloucester Cathedral
is known as the Crecy Window.
It was built to commemorate the victory
and it contains the shields of King Edward and his companions.
There, in the middle, is the coat of arms of King Edward himself,
now showing the lilies of France as well as the lions of England.
There's Lord Berkeley's,
who'd been forgiven for having acted as gaolor to Edward's father.
There's Lord Baddestone's who probably paid for the window
out of the fortune he made from the war in France.
The war in France made England rich.
It also remade England.
England had been culturally in the shadow of France
ever since the Norman Conquest,
but now that France was, shattered and defeated
England had got the confidence to strike out on its own
as in the architecture here.
The window is an early masterpiece
of the new English perpendicular style,
so it's more than a window.
It's a kind of symphony
in which architecture, heraldry and religion all come together
in a single hymn of praise to England's god, to England's king
and to England itself.
'After Crecy, Edward's popularity reached its zenith.
(Reader) "The English thought a new sun had risen
"because of the abundance of peace in England,
"the plentitude of goods and the glory of the victories."
(Starkey) 'The century of Edwards had reshaped the English monarchy.
'The king was now more closely identified with the interests of his people
'and he would never again be able to rule effectively
'without the consent of parliament.
'He was expected to fight wars, but they had to be wars in the national interest.
'The most memorable legacy of the Edwards
'was the forging of a nation that defined itself through war
'symbolised by the flag of the soldier saint.
'A superman like Edward I could manage it
'or a man's man, like Edward III
'but could their successors?'