In less than five months Edward had conquered a kingdom. On August 22 he was back at Berwick, whither he had summoned a parliament of the nobles and prelates of both kingdoms, in order that the work of organising the future government of Scotland might be completed. Meanwhile a crowd of Scots of every class flocked to the victor's court and took oaths of fealty to him. Their names, along with those of the persons who made similar recognitions of his sovereignly during his Scottish progress, were recorded with notarial precision in one of those formal documents with which Edward delighted to mark the stages in the accomplishment of his task. This record, popularly styled the Ragman Roll, containing the names of about two thousand freeholders and men of substance in Scotland, is of extreme value to the Scottish genealogist and antiquary.[1] The last entries are dated August 28, the day on which Edward met his parliament at Berwick. The administration of Scotland was provided for. John, Earl Warenne, became the king's lieutenant, Hugh Cressingham, treasurer, and William Ormesby, justiciar. When the land was subdued Edward showed a strong desire to treat the people well. The only precaution taken by him against the renewal of disturbances was an order that the former King of Scots, John Comyn of Buchan, John Comyn of Badenoch, and other magnates of the patriotic party were to dwell in England, south of the Trent, until the conclusion of the war with France. As soon as his business was accomplished at Berwick, Edward turned his steps southwards. At last he seemed free to lead a great army against Philip the Fair; and, in order to prepare for the French expedition, he summoned another parliament to meet at Bury St. Edmunds on the morrow of All Souls' day, November 3. At Bury the barons, knights, and burgesses made liberal offerings for the war. But a new difficulty arose in the absolute refusal of the clergy to vote any supplies. Once more the cup of hope was dashed from Edward's lips, and he found himself forced to enter into another weary conflict, this time with his English liegemen.
[1] It is printed by the Bannatyne Club, and summarised in Cal. Doc. Scot., ii., 193-214.
So long as Peckham had lived, there had always been a danger of a conflict between Church and State. Friar John had ended his restless career in 1292, and Edward showed natural anxiety to secure as his successor a prelate more amenable to the secular authority and more national in his sentiments. The papacy remained vacant after the death of Nicholas IV. in 1292, so that there was no danger of Rome taking the appointment into its own hands, and the happy accident, which had given the monks of Christchurch a statesmanlike prior in Henry of Eastry, minimised the chances of a futile conflict between the king and the canonical electors. Eastry took care that the archbishop-elect should be a person acceptable to the sovereign. Robert Winchelsea, the new primate, was an Englishman and a secular clerk, who had taught with distinction at Paris and Oxford, but had received no higher ecclesiastical promotion than the archdeaconry of Essex and a canonry of St. Paul's, and was mainly conspicuous for the sanctity of his life, his ability as a preacher, and his zeal for making the cathedral of London a centre of theological instruction. The vacancy in, the papacy forced upon the archbishop-elect a wearisome delay of eighteen months in Italy; but at last in September, 1294, he received consecration and the pallium from the newly elected hermit-pope, Celestine V. Winchelsea on his return strove to show that a secular archbishop could be as austere in life, and as zealous for the rights of Holy Church, as his mendicant predecessors. His desire to walk in the steps of Peckham soon brought him into conflict with the king, and in this conflict he showed an appreciation of the political situation, and a power of interpreting English opinion, which made him the most formidable of Edward's domestic opponents. He gained his first victory in the parliament of 1295 by preventing the clergy from making a larger grant than a tenth. But this triumph sank into insignificance as compared with the refusal of all aid by the parliament of Bury.
A change in the papacy immensely strengthened Winchelsea's position against Edward. In December, 1294, Celestine, overpowered with the burden of an office too heavy for his strength, made his great renunciation and sought to resume his hermit life. The Cardinal Benedict Gaetano was at once elected his successor and took the style of Boniface VIII. The son of a noble house of the neighbourhood of Anagni, a canonist, a politician, and a zealot, the new pope had made personal acquaintance with Edward and England from having attended Cardinal Ottobon on his English legation, and was eager to appease discord between Christian princes in order to forward the crusade. He hated war the more because it was largely waged with the money drawn from the clergy, and was indignant that the custom of taxing the Church, which was begun under the guise of crusading tenths, had become so frequent that both Philip and Edward applied it in order to raise revenue from ecclesiastics for frankly secular warfare. Within a few weeks of his accession he despatched two cardinals to mediate peace between the Kings of France and England, and was disgusted at the long delays with which both kings had sought to frustrate his intervention. On February 29, 1296, Boniface issued his famous bull Clericis laicos, in which he declared it unlawful for any lay authority to exact supplies from the clergy without the express authority of the apostolic see. Princes imposing, and clerics submitting to such exactions were declared ipso facto excommunicate.
Boniface's contention had been urged by his predecessors, and it is improbable that he sought to do more than assert the ancient law of the Church and save the clergy all over the Latin world from exactions which were fast becoming intolerable. His object was quite general, though a pointed reference to the extortions of Edward in 1294 showed that he had the case of England before his mind. He had no wish to throw down the gauntlet to the princes of Christendom, or to quarrel with Edward and Philip, between whom he was still conducting negotiations. It was his misfortune that he was constantly forced to face fresh conditions which rendered it almost possible to apply the ancient doctrines. Strong national kings, like Edward and Philip, had already shown impatience with such traditions of the Church as limited their temporal authority. The pope's untimely restatement of the theories of the twelfth century at once involved him in his first fierce difference with Philip the Fair, and put him into a position in which he could only win peace by explaining away the doctrine of Clericis laicos. While on the continent the conflict of Church and State took the form of a dispute between the French king and the papacy, in England it assumed the shape of a struggle between Edward and the Archbishop of Canterbury.
In November, 1296, at Bury, Winchelsea admitted the justice of the French war, but pleaded the pope's decretal as an absolute bar to any grant from the clerical estate. No decision was arrived at, and the problem was discussed again in the convocation of Canterbury in January, 1297. "We have two lords over us," declared the archbishop to his clergy, "the king and the pope; and, although we owe obedience to both of these, we owe greater obedience to our spiritual than to our temporal lord." All that they could do was to entreat the pope's permission to allow them to pay Cæsar that which Cæsar by himself had no right to demand. Edward burst into a fury on hearing of this new pretext for delay. He declared that the clergy must pay a fifth, under penalty of his withdrawing his protection from a body which strove to stand outside the commonwealth. The clergy remained firm, and separated without making any grant. Thereupon, on January 30, the chief justice, John of Metingham, sitting in Westminster Hall, pronounced the clergy to be outlays. "Henceforth," he declared, "there shall be no justice meted out to a clerk in the court of the lord king, however atrocious be the injury from which he may have suffered. But sentence against a clerk shall be given at the instance of all who have a complaint against him." Winchelsea retaliated by publishing the sentence of excommunication against violators of the papal bull. Two days later the king ordered the sheriffs to take possession of the lay fees held by clerks in the province of Canterbury. A few ecclesiastics, who privately made an offering of a fifth, were alone exempted from this command.
Edward's conflict with the Church was followed within a month by a dispute of almost equal gravity with a section of the barons. He summoned a baronial parliament to assemble on February 24 at Salisbury, and went down in person to explain his plan of campaign. One force was to help his new ally, Guy of Flanders, while another was to act in Gascony. Edward himself was to accompany the army to Flanders. He requested some of the earls, including Norfolk and Hereford, to fight for him in Gascony. The deaths of Edmund of Lancaster, Gilbert of Gloucester, and William of Pembroke had robbed the baronage of its natural leaders. Earl Warenne was fully engaged in the north, and Lincoln was devoted to the king's side. The removal of other possible spokesmen made Norfolk and Hereford the champions of the party of opposition. For years the friends of aristocratic authority had been smarting under the growing influence of the crown. The time was ripe for a revival of the baronial opposition which a generation earlier had won the Provisions of Oxford. Moreover both the earls had personal slights to avenge. Hereford bitterly resented the punishment meted out to him for waging private war against Earl Gilbert in the march. Norfolk was angry because, during the last Welsh campaign, Edward had suspended him from the exercise of the marshalship. The form of Edward's request at Salisbury gave them a technical advantage which they were not slow to seize. Ignoring the broader issues which lay between them and the king, they took their stand on their traditional rights as constable and marshal to attend the king in person. "Freely," declared the earl marshal, "will I go with thee, O king, and march before thee in the first line of thy army, as my hereditary duty requires." Edward answered: "Thou shalt go without me along with the rest to Gascony". The marshal replied: "I am not bound to go save with thee, nor will I go". Edward flew into a passion: "By God, sir earl, thou shalt either go or hang". Norfolk replied with equal spirit: "By that same oath, sir king, I will neither go nor hang". The parliament broke up in disorder. Before long a force of 1,500 men-at-arms gathered together under the leadership of the constable and marshal.
During these stormy times Edward had been straining every nerve to equip an adequate army for foreign service. Once more he laid violent hands upon the wool and hides of the merchants, while a huge male—tolt, varying from forty shillings a sack for raw wool to sixty-six shillings and eightpence a sack for carded wool, was exacted for such wool as the king's officers suffered to remain in the owner's possession. Moreover, vast stores of wheat, barley, and oats, salt pork and salt beef were requisitioned all over the land. Men said that the king's tyranny could no longer be borne, and that the rights decreed to all Englishmen by the Great Charter were in imminent danger. The movement, which had begun as a defence of feudal right, became a popular revolt in favour of national liberty. The commons joined the barons and clergy in the general opposition to the headstrong king.
Edward saw that he must divide his enemies if he wished to effect his purpose. The clergy were the easiest to deal with. Boniface VIII. was already yielding in his struggle against Philip the Fair. In the bull, Romana mater of February 2, 1297, he had authorised voluntary contributions of the French clergy in the case of pressing necessity, without previous recourse to the permission of the apostolic see. The same attitude had already been taken up by the royalist clergy in England, who redeemed their outlawry by offering to the king the fifth of their revenues. In March Edward made things easier for the recalcitrants by suspending the edict confiscating the lay fees of the Church. Even Winchelsea saw the wisdom of abandoning his too heroic attitude. In a convocation, held on March 24, he practically applied the doctrine of Romana mater to the English situation. "Let each man," he declared, "save his own soul and follow his own conscience. But my conscience does not allow me to offer money for the king's protection or on any other pretext." In the event nearly all the clergy bought off the king's wrath by the voluntary payment of a fifth. Winchelsea was obdurate. His estates remained for five months in the king's hands, and he was forced, like another St. Francis, to depend on the charity of the faithful. But even Winchelsea did not hold out indefinitely. On July 14 he was publicly reconciled with the king outside Westminster Hall, and a few days later his goods were restored. On July 31 Boniface entirely receded from the doctrine of Cleritis laicos in the bull Etsi de statu. Before this could be known in England, Winchelsea told his clergy that the king had agreed to confirm the Great Charter, if they would but make a grant to carry on the French war. A little later Edward of his own authority exacted a third from all clerical revenues. This persistence in his highhanded policy made any real reconciliation between Edward and Winchelsea impossible. The king never forgave the archbishop, whose action demonstrated to all England the divided allegiance of his clergy between their two masters. Winchelsea still retained his profound distrust of the king, who had set at naught the liberties of Church and realm.
The baronial opposition was broken up by devices not dissimilar to those which neutralised the antagonism of the clergy. By strenuous efforts Edward obtained a fair sum of money for his expenses. He let it be understood that, if he took his subjects' wool, the talleys given in exchange would be redeemed when better times had arrived, and he scrupulously paid for the corn and meat that his officers had requisitioned. Meanwhile he summoned all possible fighting men from England, Wales, and Ireland to meet at London on July 7. The prospect of subjects of the crown being forced, whatsoever their feudal obligations might be, to wage war beyond sea, threatened to provoke a fresh crisis. But after many long altercations, Edward announced that neither the feudal tenants nor the twenty-pound freeholders had any legal obligation to go with him to Flanders, and offered pay to all who were willing to hearken to his "affectionate request" for their services. Under these conditions a considerable force of stipendiaries was levied without much difficulty.