On the 13th of October, the king celebrated the feast of St. Edward, and on the same day obeyed the injunctions of the prophet (Isa. lviii. 6) by issuing a proclamation, that all persons who had been aggrieved or oppressed by the judges or other ministers should come before him at the ensuing parliament, and exhibit their complaints. The result showed that the people put their trust in the king, and felt assured that his promise would be kept. A fearful case was established against the judges; and the chancellor, Burnel, whose whole course commands our respect, “brought forward very serious charges against those high functionaries for taking bribes and altering the records.” All except two—John de Metingham and Elias de Bokingham—were convicted. The chief baron Stratton was fined 34,000 marks; the chief justice of the king’s bench, 7000 marks; the master of the rolls, 1000 marks; while Weyland, the chief justice of the common pleas, who was the greatest delinquent, fled to the convent of the Friars Minor at Bury St. Edmunds, where he took sanctuary. The king, when informed of this, sent a knight with a guard, not to violate the sanctuary, but to blockade it till the judge should surrender. After holding out for two months, Weyland submitted, and petitioned for leave to abjure the realm. This, which involved the forfeiture of all his goods, was granted to him; and his property, when taken possession of, was found to amount to 100,000 marks—“an almost incredible sum,” says Blackstone, being, indeed, equal to about one million sterling at the present day. Nothing could more fully establish the guilt of the accused judge, or more strikingly show the enormous extent to which his criminal practices had been carried.
“These sentences,” says lord Campbell, “had on the whole a very salutary effect.” The example was a terrible one; yet in our own day we have seen heavier sentences, such as transportation or penal servitude, inflicted for lighter offences. The king, however, immediately added a new precaution, by ordering that, in future, every judge on his appointment should take an oath to accept no gift or gratuity from any one.
Another class of offenders was about the same time brought under the notice of the king and his parliament. Dr. Henry says, “The Jews seem to have taken occasion, from the king’s absence and the venality of the judges, to push their exactions to a greater length than ever; and the cry against them was now become so vehement and universal, that the parliament which assembled at Westminster on the 12th of January, 1290, came to a resolution to banish the whole race out of the kingdom.”
Rapin adds, “The king was unable any longer to protect them without disobliging the parliament. They had enjoyed various privileges, such as synagogues in London, a sort of high priest, and judges of their own nation to decide on their own differences. These advantages they lost by not being able to curb their insatiable greediness of enriching themselves by unlawful means, such as usury, adulteration of the coin, and the like.” Another writer cites a complaint of their exactions, which shows that they were in the habit of requiring from forty to sixty‐five per cent. for the use of money; a system which would naturally and very quickly be felt to be intolerable.
Hence their entire expulsion was resolved upon, and ordered. It was not an act of “religious intolerance,” but a result of popular indignation. In effecting this, the impatient exultation of the people led them in some cases to actual ill treatment of the Jews. The sailors of a ship in which some of them had embarked placed them upon a sandbank at low water, and left them to be drowned. The king ordered the perpetrators of this crime to be brought to trial, and on their conviction capital punishment followed.
In a parliament held on the 8th of July, 1290, “several important statutes were made;” and gradually, but constantly, the idea of legislation by a parliament took root, grew, and became fixed in the English mind. The writs for this parliament command the sheriffs to send from their respective counties two or three knights, with full powers, “ad consulendum et consentiendum his quæ comites, barones et proceres, tum duxerint concordanda.”[28] When assembled, it placed upon the statute‐book the statutes “de Consultatione,” “de Quo Warranto,” “Quia Emptores,” and those of “Westminster III.”
In the spring and summer of this year, 1290, queen Eleanor had the satisfaction of witnessing the marriage of two of her daughters. The princess Joanna, born at Acre, and now in her eighteenth year, was united on the last day of April, in the monastery of St. John, Clerkenwell, to Gilbert de Clare, earl of Gloucester, the most powerful peer in England; and on the 9th of July, in Westminster Abbey, Margaret, the queen’s third daughter, was married to John, duke of Brabant. One of the young princesses, Mary, had in the preceding year followed the example of her grandmother, Eleanor of Provence, and had taken the veil in the convent of Ambresbury, where the old queen had long resided.
Of the frank and cordial manners of the court, and of the harmony subsisting between the king and his consort, we catch a few indications from the remaining records. Thus we find that on Easter Monday, 1290, seven of the queen’s ladies of honour invaded the king’s private chamber to perform the feat customary on that holiday,[29] of “heaving” or lifting the monarch in his chair; and from their hands he was only released on paying a fine of forty shillings to each, to be set at liberty. On another occasion, while the king and his attendants were saddling and mounting for the chase at Fingringhoe in Essex, the king espies Matilda of Waltham, his laundress, among the lookers‐on in the court‐yard. He merrily proposes a wager of a fleet horse, probably with the queen, that Matilda cannot ride with them, and be in at the death of the stag. The wager is accepted; Matilda starts and wins, and Edward has to ransom his horse for forty shillings.
On the marriage of the king’s daughter, Margaret, to the duke of Brabant, as many as four hundred and twenty‐six minstrels were present, and the bridegroom distributed among them an hundred pounds. Some entries about this period shows the king’s quick irascibility. On one occasion we note an expense incurred in repairing a crown or coronet which he had thrown behind the fire. And on the princess’s wedding‐day, an esquire, or gentleman of the court, had irritated the king by some supposed neglect or misbehaviour, and received from him a stroke on the head with a wand. But the offender was able to show the king that he had been hasty and, perhaps, unjust. Most princes would probably have been content with an expression of regret; but Edward was warm and hearty, alike in reproof or in retractation. Finding that he had done his attendant a wrong, he at once fined himself twenty marks, equal to about two hundred pounds of our present money, which sum was duly paid to the aggrieved party, and charged in the king’s wardrobe account. Gifts of various kinds were constantly issuing from Edward’s hands. In one year, 1286, the new year’s gift to queen Eleanor was a cup of gold, worth £23 6s. 8d.; and in another, a pitcher of gold, enamelled and set with precious stones.
But all this mutual and well‐placed affection was now to find the common termination of all earthly enjoyments. That happy and entire union which had subsisted for nearly five‐and‐thirty years was drawing to a close. The king and queen, after taking leave of their daughter Margaret, now duchess of Brabant, left their palace in Westminster for the midland counties. Edward had given directions for a parliament to be summoned to meet at Clipston, a royal palace in Sherwood Forest; and in the interim, he hoped to enjoy his favourite recreation of the chase. He also began to receive, about this time, frequent applications from Scotland, and he probably meant to go northward on that business. The queen, as usual, was with him, or near him; but while he was moving about during September, she seems to have remained at Hardby, near Lincoln. We find by mention of her physicians, and of medicine purchased for her at Lincoln, that she had an illness of some duration. It is described as a lingering disease, or slow fever. Hardby was a manor belonging to a family of the name of Weston, and we observe a sir John Weston in the queen’s service. The house was probably placed by the family at the queen’s disposal, as a quieter place for a sick person than the palace of Clipston, where the parliament was about to assemble.