And yet, remember this, even a king could not make war without money, to pay and feed his troops and to get munitions of war and horses and so on. The kings of England often found themselves in want of money for their wars. They tried once or twice to impose, of their own authority, a tax—over and above the taxes which had grown out of ancient usage and were recognised as the king's right—to pay these expenses, but the people and the barons always proved too strong for the king when he attempted these exactions. If they did not actually force him to give up the new tax, they at least compelled him to accord them some further liberties and privileges in return for their consenting to pay the extra contribution demanded of them. It was largely in this way, because of the necessity for money in which the king found himself, that the "rights of the people," as we call them, were conceded.
So it is possible to argue that out of the evils and miseries of the wars this good did come, and that it might not have come but for these evils and miseries, because it was through them, or through the wars that caused them, that the needs of the king became so pressing.
Henry III., succeeding the wretched John, gave his subjects further offence, besides that of the money which he made them subscribe for his wars, by the number of foreign counsellors and officials that he had about him. And the effect of this again was perhaps not altogether evil, for it helped the English people to a stronger idea that they were one nation—to a stronger idea of their national unity, as we say. While the kings were trying to be both English kings and French kings, the people grew more and more purely English.
Because of Henry III.'s money difficulties, he had often to summon that Great Council which had grown out of the Anglo-Saxon "witanagemote" or "meeting of the wise men" of the nation. It began to be written of by its present name of "parliament," and exercised, as we have seen, one of the most important powers of parliament, namely, allowing the king to collect money from the people. And this very phrase, that it seems natural and right to use, "allowing the king," shows how the power of the king was already limited. It was very different in France; and it was largely because the French people had not been able to put any such check on their king's power that the horrors of the French Revolution had to happen. The English counties sent up representatives, chosen by themselves, to the Councils or Parliaments; and so government by the representatives of the people began.
Charters for free trading and immunity from certain taxes were granted by the king at these Councils, but he broke his word as readily as he gave it, and his barons soon came to open war against him. The barons had the better of the fighting. Twice they defeated him and extorted promises from him as a condition of letting him continue on the throne at all, but the last and deciding battle at Lewes, went in the king's favour. By that time he was perhaps softened by age. His terms were not severe and the last years of his long reign were the best.
When he died in 1272 his son Edward, his heir, was on Crusade, and it was not until two years later that he returned. That no claimant to the throne came forward in that interval seems to show that the idea of hereditary succession to the throne was at length fully recognised.
First Prince of Wales
It looks as if Edward had learnt wisdom from his father's folly. He did not attempt expensive foreign adventures, except as he was compelled to them by his difficulties with his feudal lords in Aquitaine and Gascony. He had the King of France as his own feudal overlord in respect of those lands. But he did undertake, and successfully, an enterprise against a foe nearer home—Wales, whose prince refused him the homage due. He conquered Wales and, although it rebelled against him about ten years after, and again against a later king, he really had conquered it once for all. From that time forward the eldest son of the King of England has had the title of Prince of Wales.
He was not nearly so fortunate in his attempt to settle the affairs of Scotland. He was called in as an umpire over the question of who was the rightful heir to the Scottish throne, and trouble quickly arose because he claimed that he had given this decision as the overlord of Scotland, whereas the Scottish view was that he had merely been invited, as an independent party, to arbitrate in a case of difficulty.