* Rymer, vol. ii. p. 706. Heming. vol. i. p. 104.
** Heming, vol., i. p. 107. Trivet, p. 296. Chron. Dunst.
vol. ii p. 652
*** Hemming. vol. i. p. 107.
1297.
The clergy had seen, in many instances, that Edward paid little regard to those numerous privileges on which they set so high a value. He had formerly seized, in an arbitrary manner, all the money and plate belonging to the churches and convents, and had applied them to the public service;[*] and they could not but expect more violent treatment on this sharp refusal, grounded on such dangerous principles. Instead of applying to the pope for a relaxation of his bull, he resolved immediately to employ the power in his hands; and he told the ecclesiastics that, since they refused to support the civil government, they were unworthy to receive any benefit from it; and he would accordingly put them out of the protection of the laws. This vigorous measure was immediately carried into execution.[**] Orders were issued to the judges to receive no cause brought before them by the clergy; to hear and decide all causes in which they were defendants; to do every man justice against them; to do them justice against nobody.[***] The ecclesiastics soon found themselves in the most miserable situation imaginable. They could not remain in their own houses or convents for want of subsistence; if they went abroad in quest of maintenance, they were dismounted, robbed of their horses and clothes, abused by every ruffian, and no redress could be obtained by them for the most violent injury. The primate himself was attacked on the highway, was stripped of his equipage and furniture, and was at last reduced to board himself with a single servant in the house of a country clergyman.[****] The king, meanwhile, remained an indifferent spectator of all these violences: and without employing his officers in committing any immediate injury on the priests, which might have appeared invidious and oppressive, he took ample vengeance on them for their obstinate refusal of his demands. Though the archbishop issued a general sentence of excommunication against all who attacked the persons or property of ecclesiastics, it was not regarded; while Edward enjoyed the satisfaction of seeing the people become the voluntary instruments of his justice against them, and inure themselves to throw off that respect for the sacred order by which they had so long been overawed and governed.
* Walsing. p. 65. Heming. vol. i. p. 51.
** Walsing. p. 69. Heming. vol. i. p. 107.
*** M. West. p. 429.
**** Heming. vol. i. p. 109.
The spirits of the clergy were at last broken by this harsh treatment. Besides that the whole province of York, which lay nearest the danger that still hung over them from the Scots, voluntarily, from the first, voted a fifth of their movables, the bishops of Salisbury, Ely, and some others, made a composition for the secular clergy within their dioceses; and they agreed not to pay the fifth, which would have been an act of disobedience to Boniface’s bull, but to deposit a sum equivalent in some church appointed them, whence it was taken by the king’s officers.[*] Many particular convents and clergymen made payment of a like sum, and received the king’s protection.[**] Those who had not ready money, entered into recognizances for the payment. And there was scarcely found one ecclesiastic in the kingdom who seemed willing to suffer, for the sake of religious privileges, this new species of martyrdom, the most tedious and languishing of any, the most mortifying to spiritual pride, and not rewarded by that crown of glory which the church holds up with such ostentation to her devoted adherents.
But as the money granted by parliament, though considerable, was not sufficient to supply the king’s necessities, and that levied by compositions with the clergy came in slowly, Edward was obliged, for the obtaining of further supply, to exert his arbitrary power, and to lay an oppressive hand on all orders of men in the kingdom. He limited the merchants in the quantity of wool allowed to be exported; and at the same time forced them to pay him a duty of forty shillings a sack, which was computed to be above the third of the value.[***] He seized all the rest of the wool, as well as all the leather of the kingdom, into his hands, and disposed of these commodities for his own benefit;[****] he required the sheriffs of each county to supply him with two thousand quarters of wheat, and as many of oats, which he permitted them to seize wherever they could find them: the cattle and other commodities necessary for supplying his army, were laid hold of without the consent of the owners;[*****] and though he promised to pay afterwards the equivalent of all these goods, men saw but little probability that a prince, who submitted so little to the limitations of law, could ever, amidst his multiplied necessities, be reduced to a strict observance of his engagements.
* Heming. vol. i. p. 108, 109. Chron. Dunst. p. 653.
** Chron. Dunst. vol. ii. p. 654.
*** Walsing. p. 69. Trivet, p. 296.
**** Heming, vol. i. p. 52, 110.
He showed at the same time an equal disregard to the principles of the feudal law, by which all the lands of his kingdom were held: in order to increase his army, and enable him to support that great effort which he intended to make against France, he required the attendance of every proprietor of land possessed of twenty pounds a year, even though he held not of the crown, and was not obliged by his tenure to perform any such service.[*]
These acts of violence and of arbitrary power, notwithstanding the great personal regard generally borne to the king, bred murmurs in every order of men; and it was not long ere some of the great nobility, jealous of their own privileges, as well as of national liberty, gave countenance and authority to these complaints. Edward assembled on the sea-coast an army which he purposed to send over to Gascony, while he himself should in person make an impression on the side of Flanders; and he intended to put these forces under the command of Humphrey Bohun, earl of Hereford, the constable, and Roger Bigod, earl of Norfolk, the mareschal of England. But these two powerful earls refused to execute his commands, and affirmed that they were only obliged by their office to attend his person in the wars. A violent altercation ensued: and the king, in the height of his passion, addressing himself to the constable, exclaimed, “Sir Earl, by God, you shall either go or hang.” “By God, Sir King,” replied Hereford, “I will neither go nor hang.”[**] And he immediately departed with the mareschal and above thirty other considerable barons.
Upon this opposition, the king laid aside the project of an expedition against Guienne, and assembled the forces which he himself purposed to transport into Flanders. But the two earls, irritated in the contest and elated by impunity, pretending that none of their ancestors had ever served in that country, refused to perform the duty of their office in mustering the army.[***] The king, now finding it advisable to proceed with moderation, instead of attainting the earls, who possessed their dignities by hereditary right, appointed Thomas de Berkeley and Geoffrey de Geyneville to act in that emergence as constable and mareschal.[****]