Edward himself, who took for his motto the words “Pactum serva,” which may be seen upon his tomb, not unnaturally regarded the demands which were made for the re-issue of the Great Charter as a slur upon his good faith. Only once during the first half of his reign, did he undertake to re-confirm it; and when the Archbishop of Canterbury in 1279, obtained the enactment of a canon by which copies of the charter were to be affixed to the doors of the churches, the king interfered to forbid it. It is not too much, perhaps, to say that it was the legal rather than the constitutional articles of the Great Charter that he took the most pains to develop. The influence of the great lords is conspicuous in some of the provisions of his statutes, which tend to restrict the liberty of alienating lands. Jealousy of ecclesiastical aggrandizement appears in others, which forbid the acquisition of new estates by the clergy. It cannot be supposed likely that a king like Edward, would miss his opportunity of strengthening the hold which he had on both barons and prelates. The idea of constitutional liberty had now grown so powerful that he knew that he could no longer make laws, or raise taxes, or even go to war without their consent. In those respects he could not coerce them. But the legal rights which the crown had over its own vassals were a different matter. It was quite practicable for him to exact the full payment of feudal services, to prevent the impoverishment of the crown, by the transference of estates which paid a large revenue to the king on the occasion of successions or marriages of wardships, into the hands of religious corporations which neither died nor married, nor required tutelage. It was equally practicable to prevent the owners of great estates from cutting up their property, by what was called subinfeudation, into smaller holdings, which would not, any more than the church lands, render to the king the feudal services that he required. Two of Edward’s most famous statutes—the statute “De Religiosis,” in 1279, and the statute “Quia Emptores,” in 1290, were intended to secure these two points.
Powers of
the feudal
lords.
Courts of Exchequer,
King’s Bench,
and Common
Pleas.
Again, all measures for the due interpretation and execution of the law protected the people at large against the usurpations of their strong neighbors. It is not to be forgotten that although in England the feudal landlords had, more than a century before, been deprived of their power to usurp jurisdiction over their vassals, and obliged to admit the king’s judges, still a great part of Europe was governed under the old plan. We have seen how, during the barons’ war, the party opposed to the king was divided between those who really desired the freedom of the people, and those who wished to restrict the king’s power in order to increase their own. In some important matters of judicial proceeding the interests of the crown and of the people at large were still united in opposition to the claims of the great land-owners. Hence the importance of regulating and improving the courts of provincial judicature, the limitation of the functions of the sheriffs, which fell constantly into the hands of local magnates; the organization of the sessions of the king’s judges, and the opening of ways by which suits, which could not be fairly or justly settled in the country, might be heard in the king’s courts at Westminster. It is to the early years of Edward I., that we owe the final division of the three great royal tribunals; the Court of Exchequer, in which were heard all causes that touched the revenue; that of King’s Bench, which determined suits in which the king was concerned, criminal questions on the matters, which under the name of “pleas of the crown” were reserved for his particular treatment; and that of Common Pleas, which heard suits between private individuals. Now these matters were apportioned to three distinct staffs of judges, instead of being heard indiscriminately by the whole or part of the judicial body. The circuits of judges of assize were defined during the same period of the reign. Many other measures for the protection of life and property helped to increase the feeling of security in the body of the people, to further the growth of loyalty, and at the same time to increase the royal income.
Statute of
Winchester.
A third principle of Edward’s legislation may be discovered in the careful reform and expansion of some of the most ancient institutions, which he knew had in former reigns assisted greatly in the defence of the crown and in the maintenance of peace and order. In the Statute of Winchester, in 1285, he placed the ancient militia system, which Henry II., had remodeled by the Assize of Arms, upon a better footing, and re-organized the “watch and ward,” by which the particular districts and communities were trained to keep order and to search for and arrest criminals. Similar methods were followed in the preparations for national defence in 1294, and both by sea and land the old duty of guarding the country, was based upon the same primitive system. In all these particular points we may trace a purpose of developing the policy by which Henry II., had tried to overthrow the influence of feudalism, and to strengthen his administration by alliance with the great body of the free people; by placing arms in their hands, providing them with just and accessible tribunals, and by diminishing, as far as could be done, the means which the landlord had of oppressing those who held their land under him. We shall see by and by how the same principles affected his plans, or the plans which circumstances forced upon him, for the development of the Parliament and constitution. But before doing this we must look at the question of finance, which, with those of war and legislation, gave him, from the very beginning of the reign, a great deal of hard work. This has been already sketched in connection with the work of Henry II. It must now be viewed in fuller detail.
Sources of
the royal
revenue.
The sources of royal revenue were various rather than abundant. There were, first of all, the estates of the crown, crown lands strictly so called, which the king as king possessed and managed like any other landlord, out of which he provided for his family and friends, and which, in spite of the national jealousy of favorites, were always more liable to be diminished than to be increased. Of the same class, though with some important differences, were the estates which fell into the hands of the sovereign on the extinction of great families or the forfeiture of their owners; so the earldom of Chester had come into the hands of Henry III. on the death of the last earl, and the estates of the Montforts after the battle of Evesham. These estates—escheats, as they were called—seldom remained long in the king’s hands; the magnates did not like to see the inheritances of their fellows one by one absorbed in the royal domain, and it was necessary from time to time to provide for new rising men and for younger sons of the king. The possession of crown estates is, of course, common to all ages and forms of royalty. But a somewhat intricate system pervades the English finance of the middle ages, and grows out of the growing history of the nation itself. Under the Anglo-Saxon kings there had been little call for taxation. The king had a revenue from the public lands of the nation, which furnished him with provisions and money, enough to supply all needs that were not satisfied from his royal estates. It was a part of the sheriff’s duty to collect these contributions, and they were later on fixed at a regular sum to be paid by the sheriff, and exacted by him from the county he ruled. All local administration was maintained by popular action, the land-owners being liable for the three great task’s called “trinoda necessitas,” the building of bridges and fortresses, and the service in arms for national defence; and thus the king had little expense if he had little revenue. In the great emergencies, however, of the Danish wars, a tax of two shillings on the hide of land, the famous Danegeld, was established and became perpetual.
The Exchequer.
These three, the royal lands, the contributions of the shires, and the Danegeld, were the sources of revenue which William the Conqueror found when he had secured his hold on England. Under him, or under the ministers of William Rufus, were introduced a number of new expedients for raising money, expedients which were made easy by the new doctrine of land tenure that had been brought in at the Conquest. The Norman kings did not commute the old for the new methods, but simply added the feudal burdens to the ancient national taxes. The Exchequer under Henry I., audited the national, or rather the royal, accounts; twice a year the sheriffs paid the “ferm”—that is, the composition or rent for the ancient dues of their counties—the Danegeld, and the fines arising from the local courts of law; but at the same times were paid the feudal incidents, the reliefs, the sums which the son paid to secure the inheritance of his father, the profits of marriages, of wardships, and the aids which the king as feudal lord of the whole land claimed as a right from his vassals. Henry I. had, in the beginning of his reign, promised to make these demands definite and reasonable, and he had done so; but they were heavy notwithstanding. Still nothing beyond these could, even on the feudal theory, be taken from the subject without the consent of the national council. When the king’s necessities were too great to be met by the ordinary means, the barons and bishops in council were asked for a grant; and the inferior classes received in the county courts an intimation of what they were expected to contribute. It is true that there was little liberty of refusing or chance of evading payment, but a certain form of consent on the part of the tax-payer was thus maintained.