Hence came war, and repeated war, with Scotland—repeated, because after more than one conquering invasion Scotland appeared to be defeated, and at the conqueror's mercy, but always its spirit revived, first under the leadership of William Wallace, then under that of Robert Bruce; and Bruce was the effective ruler of Scotland when Edward I. died, in 1307. Seven years later, in Edward II.'s reign in England, Bruce won the decisive battle of Bannockburn, which made Scotland secure in her independence during all the years of Bruce's life, and left her a constant menace to England until the happy union of the nations was accomplished by the succession of the Scottish king—James, the first Stuart King of England—to the English throne. But that was not for many a long year beyond the date that this book tells of.
Of the three Edwards who succeeded each other at this time as kings of England, the first was the best and most statesmanlike, the second the least worth, and the third, bold and chivalrous, committed many of the sins of the father of Edward I. and wasted the country's strength and resources in foreign war. In his reign began that of which history speaks of as the Hundred Years' War: and indeed it lasted for more than a hundred years, seeing that it had its commencement before the middle of the fourteenth century and did not end until just after the middle of the fifteenth. That long-drawn-out war was of course with France, and France had Scotland ever ready to help with a stab from the north of England when England was in trouble.
The war was almost forced upon the kings of the unfortunate countries, France and England, by the circumstance that the English king was the lawful feudal holder, under the King of France, of Aquitaine and the Gironde in the south of France. It was a possession far from the English centre, and immediately attached to France. Geographically it was a part of France.
Therefore, in defence of these and other claims to territory on the Continent, England was practically obliged to fight, seeing that France was scarcely less obliged, for her own safety and settlement, to endeavour to win this territory to herself. The long war was fought with very varying success, and not without intervals of peace. The feudal lords of the disputed districts were willing to play off one king against the other, proclaiming themselves now under allegiance to the one and now to the other, as they found it to their best advantage.
The Black Death
Edward began by winning a great naval victory, which made his fleet unquestioned mistress of the sea for twenty years or more, and at the end of the first ten years of the war, from 1337-1347, all the gains seemed to be with him. He made a truce with the French king, after winning a great victory at Crécy, after capturing Calais, and after his armies had been no less victorious in the south. We can never know how matters might have gone, when the time of that truce ended, had not an awful calamity, far worse than war, fallen upon England and upon all the Western world. It was that calamity known by the dreadfully suitable name of the Black Death.
It seems to have been the same disease as that which is now called the plague, and it was so terribly deadly that actually one-third of the population in England is said to have died from it, and the loss of life on the Continent was no less. Most countries had far fewer inhabitants then than they have now, and they could less afford the loss. The result, in England—and it must have been much the same elsewhere—was that much of the cultivated land went back to wild waste land, for want of workers to keep it tilled. This lack of labourers led to a general change in the system on which agriculture was carried on. It led to the system that is still in use.
According to the old way, the workers were practically bound to stay and work on the manors. They were called villeins, and their condition was quite different from that of the serfs. The condition of serfdom itself was dying out. The villeins could not, at all events, be bought and sold, like chattels or cattle. They were protected by law. But they were obliged to give so many days' work, and do other services, to the lord of the manor on which they lived. They had to till the lord's land for him. The rest of their time they might employ in working for their own livelihood.