Outlines of Universal History, Designed as a Text-book and for Private Reading

by George Park Fisher

CHAPTER I. ENGLAND AND FRANCE: SECOND PERIOD OP RIVALSHIP: THE HUNDRED YEARS' WAR (A.D. 1339-1453).

PHILIP III. OF FRANCE (1270-1285).—In France royalty made a steady progress down to the long War of a Hundred Years. Philip III. (1270-1285) married his son to the heiress of Navarre. His sway extended to the Pyrenees. He failed in an expedition against Peter, king of Aragon, who had supported the Sicilians against Charles of Anjou; but the time for foreign conquests had not come.

PHILIP IV. OF FRANCE (1285-1314): WAR WITH EDWARD I. OF ENGLAND.— Philip IV. (the Fair) has been styled the "King of the Legists." He surrounded himself with lawyers, who furnished him, from their storehouse of Roman legislation, weapons with which to face baron and pope. In 1292 conflicts broke out between English and French sailors. Philip, in his character as suzerain, undertook to take peaceful possession of Guienne, but was prevented by the English garrisons. Thereupon he summoned Edward I. of England, as the holder of the fiefs, before his court. Edward sent his brother as a deputy, but the French king declared that the fiefs were forfeited in consequence of his not appearing in person.

In the war that resulted (1294-1297), each party had his natural allies. Philip had for his allies the Welsh and the Scots, while Edward was supported by the Count of Flanders and by Adolphus of Nassau, king of the Romans. In Scotland, William Wallace withstood Edward. Philip was successful in Flanders and in Guienne. Edward, who was kept in England by his war with the Scots, secured a truce through the mediation of Pope Boniface VIII. Philip then took possession of Flanders, with the exception of Ghent. Flanders was at that time the richest country in Europe. Its cities were numerous, and the whole land was populous and industrious. From England it received the wool used in its thriving manufactures. To England its people were attached. Philip loaded the Flemish people with imposts. They rose in revolt, and Robert d'Artois, Philip's brother, met with a disastrous defeat in a battle with the Flemish troops at Courtrai, in 1302. The Flemish burghers proved themselves too strong for the royal troops. Flanders was restored to its count, four towns being retained by France.

CONFLICT OF PHILIP IV. AND BONIFACE VIII.—The expenses of Philip, in the support of his army and for other purposes, were enormous. The old feudal revenues were wholly insufficient for the new methods of government. To supply himself with money, he not only levied onerous taxes on his subjects, and practiced ingenious extortion upon the Jews, but he resorted again and again to the device of debasing the coin. His resolution to tax the property of the Church brought him into a controversy, momentous in its results, with Pope Boniface VIII.

Boniface's idea of papal prerogative was fully as exalted as that formerly held by Hildebrand and Innocent III. But he had less prudence and self-restraint, and the temper of the times was now altered. If Philip was sustained by the Roman law and its interpreters, whose counsels he gladly followed, Boniface, on the other hand, could lean upon the system of ecclesiastical or canon law, which had long been growing up in Europe, and of which the Canonists were the professional expounders. The vast wealth of the clergy had led to enactments for keeping it within bounds, like the statute of mortmain in England (1279) forbidding the giving of land to religious bodies without license from the king. The word mortmain meant dead hand, and was applied to possessors of land, especially ecclesiastical corporations, that could not alienate it. The jurisdiction of ecclesiastical courts, which kings, because they happened to have a less liking for feudal law, had often favored, had now come to be another great matter of contention. In 1296 Boniface VIII., in the bull clericis laicos,—so named, like other papal edicts, from the opening words,—forbade the imposition of extraordinary taxes upon the clergy without the consent of the Holy See. Philip responded by forbidding foreigners to sojourn in France, which was equivalent to driving out of the country the Roman priests and those who brought in the obnoxious bull. At the same time he forbade money to be carried out of France. This last prohibition cut off contributions to Rome. The king asserted the importance of the laity in the Church, as well as of the clergy, and the right of the king of France to take charge of his own realm. There was a seeming reconciliation for a time, through concessions on the side of the Pope; but the strife broke out afresh in 1301. Philip arrested Bernard Saisset, a bold legate of the Pope. Boniface poured forth a stream of complaints against Philip (1301), and went so far as to summon the French clergy to a council at Rome for the settlement of all disorders in France. The king then appealed to the French nation. On the 10th of April, 1302, he assembled in the Church of Notre Dame, at Paris, a body which, for the first time, contained the deputies of the universities and of the towns, and for this reason is considered to have been the first meeting of the States General, The clergy, the barons, the burghers, sided cordially with the king. The Pope then published the famous bull, Unam Sanctam, in which the subjection of the temporal power to the spiritual is proclaimed with the strongest emphasis. Boniface then excommunicated Philip, and was preparing to depose him, and to hand over his kingdom to the emperor, Albert I.

DEATH OF BONIFACE VIII.—Meantime Philip had assembled anew the States General (1303). The legists lent their counsel and active support. It was proposed to the king to convoke a general council of the Church, and to summon the Pope before it. William of Nogaret, a great lawyer in the service of Philip, was directed to lodge with Boniface this appeal to a council, and to publish it at Rome. With Sciarra Colonna, between whose family and the Pope there was a mortal feud, Nogaret, attended also by several hundred hired soldiers, entered Anagni, where Boniface was then staying. The two messengers heaped upon him the severest reproaches, and Colonna is said to have struck the old pontiff in the face with his mailed hand. The French were driven out of the town by the people; but from the indignities which he had suffered, and the anger and shame consequent upon them, Boniface shortly afterwards died.

THE "BABYLONIAN CAPTIVITY" (1309-1379).—From the date of the events just narrated, the pontifical authority sank, and the secular authority of sovereigns and nations was in the ascendant. After the short pontificate of Benedict XL, who did what he could to reconcile the ancient but estranged allies, France and the Papacy, a French prelate, the Archbishop of Bordeaux, was made pope under the name of Clement V., he having previously engaged to comply with the wishes of Philip. While the Papacy continued subordinate to the French king, its moral influence in other parts of Christendom was of necessity reduced. Clement V, was crowned at Lyons in 1305, and in 1309 established himself at Avignon, a possession of the Holy See on the borders of France. After him there followed at Avignon seven popes who were subject to French influence (1309-1376). It is the period in the annals of the Papacy which is called the "Babylonian captivity." Philip remained implacable. He was determined to secure the condemnation of Boniface VIII., even after his death. Clement V. had no alternative but to summon a council, which was held at Vienne in 1311, when Boniface was declared to have been orthodox, at the same time that Philip was shielded from ecclesiastical censure or reproach.

SUPPRESSION OF THE KNIGHTS TEMPLARS.—One of the demands which Philip had made of Clement V., and a demand which the council had to grant, was the condemnation of the order of Knights Templars, whose vast wealth Philip coveted. On the 13th of October, 1307, the Templars were arrested overall France,—an act which evinces both the power of Philip, and his injustice. They were charged with secret immoralities, and with practices involving impiety. Provincial councils were called together to decree the judgment preordained by the king. The Templars were examined under torture, and many of them were burned at the stake. A large number of those who were put to death revoked the confessions which had been extorted from them by bodily suffering. Individuals may have been guilty of some of the charges, but there is no warrant for such a verdict against the entire order. The order was abolished by Clement V.

LAW STUDIES: MERCENARY TROOPS.—During the reign of Philip the Fair, it was ordained that Parliament should sit twice every year at Paris (1303). A university for the study of law was founded at Orleans. The king needed soldiers as well as lawyers. Mercenary troops were beginning to take the place of feudal bands. Philip brought the Genoese galleys against the ships of Flanders.

THE THREE SONS OF PHILIP: THE "SALIC LAW."—Three sons of Philip reigned after him. Louis X. (1314-1316) was induced to take part in an aristocratic reaction, in behalf of "the good old customs," against the legists; but he continued to emancipate the serfs. He was not succeeded by his daughter, but by his brother. This precedent was soon transformed into the "Salic law" that only heirs in the male line could succeed to the throne. The rule was really the result of the "genealogical accident" that for three hundred and forty-one years, or since the election of Hugh Capet, every French king had been succeeded by his son. In several cases the son had been crowned in the lifetime of the father. Thus the principle of heredity, and of heredity in the male line, had taken root.

Under Philip V. and his successor, Charles IV. (1322-1328), there was cruel persecution of the Jews, and many people suffered death on the charge of sorcery.

EDWARD I. OF ENGLAND (1272-1307): CONQUEST OF WALES: WILLIAM WALLACE.—Edward, who was in the Holy Land when his father died, was a gallant knight and an able ruler,—"the most brilliant monarch of the fourteenth century." Llywelyn, prince of Wales, having refused to render the oath due from a vassal, was forced to yield. When a rebellion broke out several years later, Wales was conquered, and the leader of the rebellion was executed (1283). Thus Wales was joined to England; and the king gave to his son the title of "Prince of Wales," which the eldest son of the sovereign of England has since worn. Edward was for many years at war with Scotland, which now included the Gaelic-speaking people of the Highlands, and the English-speaking people of the Lowlands. The king of England had some claim to be their suzerain, a claim which the Scots were slow to acknowledge. The old line of Scottish princes of the Celtic race died out. Alexander III. fell with his horse over a cliff on the coast of Fife. Two competitors for the throne arose, both of them of Norman descent,—John Baliol and Robert Bruce. The Scots made Edward an umpire, to decide which of them should reign. He decided for Baliol (1292), stipulating that the suzerainty should rest with himself. When he called upon Baliol to aid him against France, the latter renounced his allegiance, and declared war. He was conquered at Dunbar (1296), and made prisoner. The strongholds in Scotland fell into the hands of the English. The country appeared to be subjugated, but the Scots were ill-treated by the English. William Wallace put himself at the head of a band of followers, defeated them near Stirling in 1292, and kept up the contest for several years with heroic energy. At length Edward, through the skill acquired by the English in the use of the bow, was the victor at Falkirk in 1298. Wallace, having been betrayed into his hands, was brutally executed in London (1305).

Edward carried off from Scone the stone on which the Scottish kings had always been crowned. It is now in Westminster Abbey, under the coronation chair of the sovereign of Great Britain. There was a legend, that on this same stone the patriarch Jacob laid his head when he beheld angels ascending and descending at Bethel. Where that stone was, it was believed that Scottish kings would reign. This was held to be verified when English kings of Scottish descent inherited the crown.

ROBERT BRUCE.—The struggle for Scottish independence was taken up by Robert Bruce, grandson of the Bruce who had claimed the crown. His plan to gain the throne was disclosed by John Comyn, nephew of Baliol: this Comyn young Bruce stabbed in a church at Dumfries. He was then crowned king at Scone, and summoned the Scots to his standard. The English king sent his son Edward to conquer him; but the king himself, before he could reach Scotland, died.

PARLIAMENT: THE JEWS.—Under Edward, the form of government by king, lords, and commons was firmly established. Parliament met in two distinct houses. Against his inclination he swore to the "Confirmation of the Charters," by which he engaged not to impose taxes without the consent of Parliament. The statute of mortmain has been referred to already. The clergy paid their taxes to the king when they found, that, unless they did so, the judges would not protect them. Edward had protected the Jews, who, in England as elsewhere, were often falsely accused of horrible crimes, and against whom there existed, on account of their religion, a violent prejudice. At length he yielded to the popular hatred, and banished them from the kingdom, permitting them, however, to take with them their property.

Edward II. (1307-1327).—Edward II., a weak and despicable sovereign, cared for nothing but pleasure.

He was under the influence of the son of a Gascon gentleman, Peter of Gaveston, whom, contrary to the injunction of his father, he recalled from banishment. Gaveston was made regent while the king was in France, whither he went, in 1308, to marry Isabel, daughter of Philip the Fair. After his return, the disgust of the barons at the conduct of Gaveston, and at the courses into which Edward was led by him, was such, that in 1310 they forced the king to give the government for a year to a committee of peers, by whom Gaveston was once more banished. When he came back, he was captured by the barons, and beheaded in 1312.

BRUCE: BANNOCKBURN: DEPOSITION OF EDWARD II.—After various successes, Robert Bruce laid siege to Stirling in 1314. This led to a temporary reconciliation between the king and the barons. Edward set out for Scotland with an army of a hundred thousand men. A great battle took place at Bannockburn, where Bruce, with a greatly inferior force of foot-soldiers, totally defeated the English. He had dug pits in front of his army, which he had covered with turf resting on sticks. The effect was to throw the English cavalry into confusion. Against the Despencers, father and son, the next favorites of Edward, the barons were not at first successful; but in 1326 Edward's queen, Isabel, who had joined his enemies, returned from France with young Edward, Prince of Wales, and at the head of foreign soldiers and exiles. The barons joined her: the Despencers were taken and executed. The king was driven to resign the crown. He was carried from one castle to another, and finally was secretly murdered at Berkeley Castle, by Roger Mortimer, in whose custody he had been placed.

On the suppression of the Knights Templars by Pope Clement V., their property in England was confiscated. The Temple, which was their abode in London, became afterwards the possession of two societies of lawyers, the Inner and Middle Temple.