Edward’s last years were years of financial difficulty. In 1302 at the Parliament held on the 1st July, at London, he received from the lay estates and the clergy a fifteenth of temporal goods.[190] The same year saw him turn back to the aid pur fille marier Edward’s financial expedients which the barons had granted twelve years previously in June, 1290; and in 1303 he attempted to obtain the consent of the merchants to an increase in the custom on wine, wool, and merchandise. He called a meeting at York, quite irregular in its constitutional aspect, and presented the matter for its consideration. The merchants would not listen to the plea and the matter, as far as denizens were concerned, was dropped.[191] Five months previously, on the 1st February, Edward had had better fortune in a similar effort with the foreign merchants. On the principle that the crown had the right to close the ports to merchant strangers, Edward entered into negotiation with the leading men amongst them, and in return for a grant of all the privileges and liberties essential to them, they agreed to a fifty per cent. increase over the rates paid upon wools and leather by English-born merchants. Beside these were new duties Tunnage and poundage and other customs upon other commodities, whether they be exported or imported: wine, 2s. on the tun, a custom which was to achieve notoriety under the name of tunnage; cloth, from 1s. to 2s. on the piece depending upon the dye; general merchandise, 3d. in the pound of 20s., subsequently called poundage; and wax, 1s. per quintal.[192] This agreement between king and merchants, known by the title “Carta Mercatoria,” was not technically in contravention of Confirmatio Cartarum, notwithstanding the provisions of the latter against the levying without national consent of any but the “ancient prises” and the custom on wool previously granted. Confirmatio Cartarum was a grant to Englishmen and to Edward’s sharply legal mind, its liberties did not extend to foreigners, however closely knit their relations might be with the king’s own people.

In 1304 Edward took from the demesne cities and boroughs and the royal demesne a sixth of movables.[193] The records of the Parliament of 1305,Tallage, 1304 far from noting any complaint against the king’s tallage, contain this memorandum: “To the petition of archbishops, bishops, prelates, earls, barons, and other good men of the land, praying that the king wills to grant them the power to tallage their ancient demesne ... even as the king has tallaged his demesne, it was answered, ‘Let it be as petitioned.’”[194] This is all but final evidence against the validity of De tallagio non concedendo.[195]

The great Edward died at Burgh-upon-Sands on Friday, the 7th July, 1307, and the sceptre fell into the nerveless hand of Edward II. Edward II, 1307-1327 The new king did not inherit his father’s great attributes nor his good fortune; he was improvident and unperceptive, the faithful dupe of advantage-seeking associates, the lavish spender of money he did not have, the chief enemy of himself. At last, when he had reigned some twenty years, he was put down and his son succeeded in his stead. Edward II’s accession was undisputed; at Carlisle, on the 20th July, he received the homage and fealty of the English baronage, and six months later on the 25th February, 1308, he was crowned. The coronation oath he was obliged to take in French, not being familiar with the Latin tongue. The oath was more than usually stringent; the last of the four promises required of the king was this: “Sire, do you grant to hold and to keep the laws and righteous customs which the community of your realm shall have chosen, and will you defend and strengthen them to the honor of God, to the utmost of your power?” Edward answered, “I grant and promise.”[196]

Edward did not call a Parliament between October 1307, and April 1309.[197] He was in fear, apparently, of an attack upon his foreign favorite, Piers Gaveston, and was desirous of shielding him, as Charles I attempted to shield Buckingham three centuries later, by doing without a Parliament. The only merit of the favorite seems to have been the deep, and in its consequences the pathetic love with which he inspired the young monarch. He was self-seeking, avaricious, willful, and capable of exercising a domination over the king as complete as it was profitable to himself. At last, however, the loans, which his Italian bankers, the Friscobaldi had supplied Edward, withered away and he was obliged to issue a summons to a Parliament.

Parliament met on the 27th April, 1309, with a full attendance of clergy, lords, knights and burgesses. In response to Edward’s urgent request for funds, the lords, burgesses and knights granted him a meagre twenty-fifth, but only on condition of a redress of grievances, these being detailed in a schedule of eleven articles.[198] Two of the eleven have to do with taxation; the first was directed at the abuses of purveyance; the second hit more nearly, having to do with the New Customs which Edward I had provided for in the Carta Mercatoria of 1303.[199] “And as to the customs which the king taketh by his officers—,” so goes the memorandum in the Rolls,Tentative abolition of the New Customs “that is to say, of every tun of wine, two shillings; of every cloth which alien merchants bring into his land, two shillings; and of every pound value of avoir de pois, three pence—the king willeth at the request of the said good people that the said customs of wines, clothes, and avoir de pois, do cease at his will, in order to know and be advised what profit and advantage will accrue to him and his people by ceasing the taking of those customs; and the king will have counsel according to the advantage which he shall see therein: saving always to the king the ancient prises and customs anciently due and approved.” The king gave orders that the conditional grant of the twenty-fifth be collected.

The trouble over Gaveston, however, was not settled, and he became increasingly worrisome to the barons. Furthermore the customs were collected not by Englishmen but by Edward’s Italian bankers. The Lords Ordainers, 1309-1311 In March 1310, meeting in council, the barons drew up a petition praying against the impoverishment of the exchequer despite grants of money; the king, so they said, was still exacting prises and living by purveyance contrary to the engagement of 1309. Edward, still hoping to shield Gaveston, assented to the election of a commission of twenty-one, known as the Lords Ordainers, who exercised his authority for the space of a year and a half.

The Lords Ordainers, recalling in their composition and purposes those who put forward the scheme of reform in the Provisions of Oxford of 1255, proceeded to promulgate ordinances for the correction of abuses. On the 2d August, 1310, six ordinances were made public and received the confirmation of the king.[200] By the fourth, it was ordained “that the customs of the realm be kept and received by people of the realm, and not by aliens; and that the issues and profits of the same customs, together with all other issues and profits of the realm arising from any matters whatsoever, shall come entirely to the King’s exchequer, ... to maintain the household of the king, and otherwise to his profit, so that the king may live of his own, without taking prises other than those anciently due and accustomed; and all others shall cease.”[201] Despite the apparent inclusion of the “New Customs” within the meaning of this ordinance, their resumption was ordered the same day, on the ground that during the period of their prohibition, prices had not been reduced.[202]

Parliament met on the 8th August, 1311, to receive the final report of the Ordainers, and sat for two months. Thirty-five additional articles were drawn up in Parliament.[203] New Customs abolished By the tenth article new prises are to be abolished, and by the eleventh the New Customs are done away with in their entirety. “New customs have been levied,” says the ordinance, “and the old enhanced, as upon wools, cloths, wines, avoir de pois, and other things, whereby the merchants come more seldom, and bring fewer good into the land, and the foreign merchants abide longer than they were wont to do, by which abiding things become more dear than they were wont to be, to the damage of the king and his people; we do ordain that all manner of customs and imposts levied since the coronation of King Edward, son of King Henry, be entirely put out, and altogether extinguished for ever, notwithstanding the charter which the said King Edward made to the merchant aliens, because the same was made contrary to the Great Charter ..., saving nevertheless to the king the customs of wools, woolfells, and leather; that is to say, for each sack of wool, half a mark, and for three hundred woolfells, half a mark, and for a last of leather, one mark ..., and henceforth merchant strangers shall come, abide, and go according to the ancient customs....”[204] On the 9th October, the day upon which Parliament rose, the order went out which made the ordinance effective.[205]

Banishment of Gaveston

Gaveston, the hated favorite, whose corruption and acts of oppression had furnished the immediate cause for the reform movement, was amply provided for. He was put under sentence of perpetual banishment and in order to safeguard themselves against the return to power of him and his kind, the barons reiterated the demand made in 1244, that the appointment of ministers be subject in the future to their council and consent.[206] The king gave his assent to the ordinances on the 30th September and two weeks later they went out to the sheriffs for publication.