The Life and Reign of Edward I.

by Robert Benton Seeley

Of the church’s wealth, however, the court of Rome took care to demand and to obtain a large proportion. Sometimes the pope required a tenth, sometimes a fifth, and once as much as one half of all ecclesiastical incomes. In a few years, in the transactions connected with the crown of Sicily, the pope was computed to have drawn from England no less than nine hundred and fifty thousand marks, equal, according to the values of the time, to above nine millions of our present money! In a subsequent reign, in 1376, the commons represented to the king, “that the taxes paid to the pope yearly, amounted to five times as much as the taxes paid to the crown.” Rome then, depending so largely on the supplies received from England, would naturally look with jealousy on the increasing demands of the crown, which must inevitably come into competition with those which she herself was accustomed to make.

Winchelsey, as we have said, was a man of great ability; and Boniface was distinguished among the popes. It may be difficult at this distance of time, to determine with which of these two the idea originated, but the fact is certain, that just at this moment, when Edward needed and expected a large supply from the church, the primate produced a bull, or mandate from the pope, “forbidding the clergy to grant to laymen any part of the revenues of their benefices, without the permission of the Holy See.”

This was a sudden and a startling blow. By a few words the king saw the whole treasures of the church—his main reliance—shut up and sealed from his touch. He had asked of the clergy a supply of “a fifth.” His commissioners appeared in the convocation for a reply. The archbishop rose and said, “You know, sirs, that under Almighty God we have two lords—the one spiritual, the other temporal. Obedience is due to both, but most to the spiritual. We are willing to do everything in our power, and will send deputies at our own expense to consult the pontiff. We entreat you to carry this reply to the king; for we dare not speak to him ourselves.”

It was clear, that to submit to this novel claim to exemption would be to prostrate the royal authority at the feet of the papal. Already had the pope claimed and exercised a co‐ordinate power with the crown, in taxing ecclesiastical possessions, now rapidly becoming a large proportion of all the property of the realm; but he here asserted his sole and supreme power over the whole. In future the king was to receive aid from the clerical body, only when, and so far as, the pope should grant his permission.

With either of the two preceding sovereigns such churchmen as Boniface and Winchelsey might have prevailed, and thus a foreign sovereignty of the most disastrous kind might have been established in the realm. But, happily, England had, at this crisis, a ruler equal to the emergency—a sovereign whom even those historians who are prejudiced against him,[76] admit to have been a “great statesman,” “the model of a politic and warlike king.” He saw at a glance, the serious peril which threatened the realm, and he at once nerved himself to grapple with it. Yet he never, for an instant, showed the passion or the violence of a Rufus or a John. Not for a moment was he ever betrayed into any unworthy measures. “Himself the founder of a stately Cistercian abbey, and a man whose oblations and alms were a large sum in his yearly expenses, he displays even as a legislator a genuine anxiety for the real interests of the Church.”[77] But to yield to this new pretension would have been to surrender the unquestionable rights of the crown, and such a surrender as that could never be dreamed of by a king like Edward. With his usual firmness and sagacity, he took without delay the most effectual and straightforward course to suppress this new kind of mutiny. Comprehending at a glance the mutuality of the obligations of the ruler and the subject, he at once decided that those who refused to bear their share of the public burdens could have no right to appeal to the protection of the guardians of the public peace. A deputation of the prelates waited on him at Castle Acre in Norfolk, to acquaint him with their determination, and to explain the reasons for it; to whom he at once declared, that “since the clergy had broken their allegiance to him, by denying him that assistance which by the tenure of their estates they were bound to pay, he would no longer feel any obligation to protect them, or to execute in their favour laws to which they refused to submit.” At once, therefore, “he consulted the lay peers, and issued a proclamation of outlawry against the clergy, both regular and secular”—escheating their lay fees, goods, and chattels to the use of the crown. And, as Edward was always frank and outspoken, his chief justice, Sir John Metingham, publicly announced from the bench in Westminster Hall—“You that appear for the archbishops, bishops, or clergy, take notice, that in future no justice is to be done them in the king’s court, in any matter of which they may complain; but, nevertheless, justice shall still be done to all manner of persons who have any complaint against them.” “So bold a step,” says Rapin, “astonished the clergy, who, since the beginning of the monarchy, had never experienced the like resolution in any king of England.”

We are now at the opening of the year 1297. The strong measures of the king quickly carried confusion into the ranks of the ecclesiastical confederacy. The archbishop of York, with all his diocese, and the bishops of Durham and Carlisle, soon made their peace with Edward, and paid their “fifth.” It was not long before the bishops of Norwich, Ely, Lincoln, and Worcester, followed their example. Winchelsey vainly thundered his sentence of excommunication against all who should disobey the mandate of the pope. The sentence of outlawry proved to have the greater force. Tenants refused to pay rent; horses were seized on the highway; and the law, meanwhile, repudiated all claims of the ecclesiastical mutineers to avail themselves of its protection. The inevitable result of such a state of things soon showed itself. The clergy, and especially the wealthier of them, rapidly fell off from the archbishop, and sought and obtained the king’s pardon and protection.

But this ecclesiastical rebellion had been only the beginning of troubles. Suppressed though it was, it led to fresh difficulties of another kind. The large and greatly‐needed supply upon which the king had reckoned was withheld, and it now came in only slowly and in fragments. The “aid” granted by parliament required the customary time for its collection. Meanwhile, Edward had pledged himself both to pay large subsidies to his allies in Flanders, and also to bring over a considerable body of troops. These promises he was now endeavouring, as was his wont, strictly to perform.

But now appears in England, for the first time, a parliamentary opposition. Hume and Hallam award great praise to the earls of Hereford and Norfolk for their “firmness and patriotism” in daring to withstand the king; but they forget to give any credit to Edward for having introduced that parliamentary system into England which made such an opposition possible.

It is abundantly clear that the earl of Norfolk disliked the French war in 1297, just as the duke of Norfolk of the last century disliked the French war in 1797, and probably each could have assigned very plausible reasons for his dislike. The important fact, however, is, that alike in 1297 and in 1797, both of these noblemen were left at liberty to oppose the war, and both of them did oppose and obstruct it—the one in the thirteenth and the other in the eighteenth century—without incurring any loss of life or of property for so withstanding the king’s views.

There is no reason to doubt that the king had the popular feeling with him. Even in the present day, when peace is so greatly valued, and when considerations of utility govern so many, the news that Spain had surprised and taken Gibraltar, or that France had suddenly seized upon the Channel Islands, would light up a flame of indignation, and raise a cry of war throughout the realm. How was it to be expected, then, that in the days of chivalry, the gentry and burgesses of England could hear of the fraudulent seizure of such a province as Gascony, without generally sympathizing with their sovereign’s indignation?