The history of England, from the accession of Henry III. to the death of Edward III. (1216-1377)

by T. F. Tout

[1] The Siege of Carlaverock, ed. Nicolas (1828).

A full parliament assembled on January 20, 1301, at Lincoln. The special business was to receive the report of the forest perambulation; and the first anticipation of the later custom of continuing the same parliament from one session to another can be discerned in the direction to the sheriffs that they should return the same representatives of the shires and boroughs as had attended the Lenten parliament of 1300, and only hold fresh elections in the case of such members as had died or become incapacitated. During the ten days that the commons were in session stormy scenes occurred. Edward would only promise to agree to the disafforestments recommended by the perambulators, if the estates would assure him that he could do so, without violating his coronation oath or disinheriting his crown. The estates refused to undertake this grave responsibility, and a long catalogue of their grievances was presented to Edward by Henry of Keighley, knight of the shire for Lancashire, and one of the first members of the third estate of whose individual action history has preserved any trace. The commons demanded a fresh confirmation of the charters; the punishment of the royal ministers who had infringed them, or the Articuli super cartas of the previous session, and the completion of the proposed disafforestments. In addition, the prelates declared that they could not assent to any tax being imposed upon the clergy contrary to the papal prohibition. Among the ministers specially signalled out for attack was the treasurer, Bishop Walter Langton, and in this Edward discerned the influence of Winchelsea, for he was Langton's personal enemy. The king's disgust at the primate's action was the more complete since Bishop Bek now arrayed himself on the side of the opposition. Edward showed his ill-will by consigning Henry of Keighley to prison. But the coalition was too formidable to be withstood. The king agreed to all the secular demands of the estates, accepted the hated disafforestments and directed the re-issue of a further confirmation of the charters, but refused his assent to the demand of the prelates. A grant of a fifteenth was then made, and Edward dismissed the popular representatives on January 30, retaining the prelates and nobles for further business. On February 14, the last confirmation of the charters concluded the long chapter of history, which had begun at Runnymede.

Edward strove to separate his baronial and his clerical enemies, and found an opportunity, which he was not slow to use, in the uncompromising papalism of Winchelsea. Boniface VIII. had no sooner settled the relations of England and France than he threw himself with ardour into an attempt to establish peace between England and Scotland. Scottish emissaries, including perhaps Wallace himself, gave Boniface their version of the ancient relations of the two crowns. On June 27, 1299, the pope issued the letter Scimus, fili, in which he claimed that Scotland specially belonged to the apostolic see, on the ground that it was converted through the relics of St. Andrew. He denied all feudal dependence of Scotland on Edward, and explained away the submissions of 1291 as arising from such momentary fear as might fall upon the most steadfast. If Edward persisted in his claims, he was to submit them to the judgment of the Roman curia within the next six months. In 1300 Winchelsea, who fully accepted the new papal doctrine, sought out Edward in the midst of the Carlaverock campaign and presented him with Boniface's letter. Edward's hot temper fired up at the archbishop's ill-timed intervention, and subsequent military failures had not smoothed over the situation. His wrath reached its climax when Winchelsea once more stirred up opposition in the Lincoln parliament, and his refusal of a demand, which the primate had astutely added to the commons' requests, showed that he was prepared for war to the knife. Edward laid the papal letter before the earls and barons that still tarried with him at Lincoln. His appeal to their patriotism was not unsuccessful. A letter was drawn up, which was sealed, then and subsequently, by more than a hundred secular magnates, in which Boniface was roundly told that the King of England was in no wise bound to answer in the pope's court as to his rights over the realm of Scotland or as to any other temporal matter, and that the papal claim was unprecedented, and prejudicial to Edward's sovereignly. A longer historical statement was composed by the king's order in answer to Boniface. It is not certain that the two documents ever reached the pope, but they had great effect in influencing English opinion and in breaking down the alliance between the baronage and the ecclesiastical party.[1] Winchelsea's influence was fatally weakened, and the period of his overthrow was at hand.

[1] See, on the barons' letter, the Ancestor, for July and October, 1903, and Jan., 1904.

The triumph over Winchelsea made Edward's position stronger than it had been during the first days of the Lincoln parliament. That assembly ended amidst the festivities which attended the creation of Edward of Carnarvon as Prince of Wales, Earl of Chester, and Count of Ponthieu. The new prince, already seventeen years of age, had made his first campaign in the previous year. But all the pains that Edward took in training his son in warfare and in politics bore little fruit, and Edward of Carnarvon's introduction to active life was only to add another trouble to the many that beset the king.

When the truce with Scotland expired, in the summer of 1301, Edward again led an army over the border, in which the Prince of Wales appeared, at the head of a large Welsh contingent. Little of military importance happened. Edward remained in Scotland over the cold season, and kept his Christmas court at Linlithgow. Men and horses perished amidst the rigours of the northern winter, and, before the end of January, 1302, the king was glad to accept a truce, suggested by Philip of France, to last until the end of November. Immediately afterwards he was called to the south by the negotiations for a permanent peace with France, which still hung fire despite his marriage to the French king's sister. The earlier stages of the negotiation were transacted at Rome, but it was soon clear to Edward that no good would come to him from the intervention of the curia. The fundamental difficulty still lay in the refusal of Philip to relax his grasp on Gascony. Not even the exaltation, consequent on the success of the famous jubilee of 1300, blinded Boniface to the patent fact that he dared not order the restitution of Gascony. "We cannot give you an award," declared the pope to the English envoys in 1300. "If we pronounced in your favour, the French would not abide by it, and could not be compelled, for they would make light of any penalty." "What the French once lay hold of," he said again, "they never let go, and to have to do with the French is to have to do with the devil."[1] A year later Boniface could do no more than appeal to the crusading zeal of Edward not to allow his claim on a patch of French soil to stand between him and his vow. With such commonplaces the papal mediation died away.

[1] See the remarkable report of the Bishop of Winchester to Edward printed in Engl. Hist. Review, xvii. (1902), pp. 518-27.

Two events in 1302 indirectly contributed towards the establishment of a permanent peace. These were the successful revolt of Flanders from French domination, and the renewed quarrel between Philip and Boniface. On May 18, the Flemings, in the "matins of Bruges," cruelly avenged themselves for the oppressions which they had endured from Philip's officials, and on July 11 the revolted townsfolk won the battle of Courtrai, in which their heavy armed infantry defeated the feudal cavalry of France, a victory of the same kind as that Wallace had vainly hoped to gain at Falkirk. Even before the Flemish rising, the reassertion of high sacerdotal doctrine in the bull Ausculta, fili had renewed the strife between Boniface and the French king. A few months later the bull Unam sanctam laid down with emphasis the doctrine that those who denied that the temporal sword belongs to St. Peter were heretics, unmindful of the teachings of Christ. Thus began the famous difference that went on with ever-increasing fury until the outrage at Anagni, on September 7, 1303, brought about the fall of Boniface and the overthrow of the Hildebrandine papacy. Meanwhile Philip was devoting his best energies to constant, and not altogether vain, attempts to avenge the defeat of Courtrai, and re-establish his hold on Flanders. With these two affairs on his hands, it was useless for him to persevere in his attempt to hold Gascony.

In the earlier stages of his quarrel with Philip, Boniface built great hopes on Edward's support, and strongly urged him to fight for holy Church against the impious French king. But Edward had suffered too much from Boniface to fall into so obvious a trap. His hold over his own clergy was so firm that Winchelsea himself had no chance of taking up the papal call to battle. Thus it was that Unam sanctam produced no such clerical revolt in England as Clericis laicos had done. It was Edward's policy to make use of Philip's necessities to win back Gascony, and cut off all hope of French support from the Scottish patriots. Philip himself was the more disposed to agree with his brother-in-law's wishes, because about Christmas, 1302, Bordeaux threw off the French yoke and called in the English. The best way to save French dignity was by timely concession. Accordingly, on May 20, 1303, the definitive treaty of Paris was sealed, by which the two kings were pledged to "perpetual peace and friendship". Gascony was restored, and Edward agreed that he, or his son, should perform liege homage for it. With the discharge of this duty by the younger Edward at Amiens, in 1304, the last stage of the pacification was accomplished. For the rest of the reign, England and France remained on cordial terms. Neither Edward nor Philip had resources adequate to the accomplishment of great schemes of foreign conquest. Though Edward got back Gascony, he owed it, not to his own power, but to the embarrassment of his rival.

While completing his pacification with Philip the Fair, Edward was busily engaged in establishing his power at home, at the expense of the clerical and baronial opposition, which had stood for so many years in the way of the conquest of Scotland. Since the parliament of Lincoln, Winchelsea was no longer dangerous. He failed even to get Boniface on his side in a scandalous attack which he instigated on Bishop Langton. His constant efforts to enlarge his jurisdiction raised up enemies all over his diocese and province, and the mob of his cathedral city broke open his palace, while he was in residence there. His inability to introduce into England even a pale reflection of the struggle of Philip and the pope showed how clearly he had lost influence since the days of ,Clericis laicos. A more recent convert to higher clerical pretensions also failed. Bishop Bek of Durham lost all his power, and was deprived of his temporalities by the king in 1302. Two years later the insignificant Archbishop of York also incurred the royal displeasure, and was punished in the same fashion. With Durham, Norhamshire, and Hexhamshire all in the royal hands, the road into Scotland was completely open.