8/14/2019 Edward OK

1/14

Edward I

EDWARDS LAST YEARS

Edwards last years were ones of strain and conflict. He felt that he had been betrayed by theScots and defrauded by the French. As his mood hardened into a grim determination tomaintain his rights as he understood them, he became grasping and extortionate. The resultwas trouble in Parliament and suspicion on the part of the barons. Between 1294 and 1297every effort was made to raise money: the New Custom on wool; the high taxes obtainedfrom Parliament in 1294, 1295, and 1296; the heavy contributions required of the church. Acrisis arose when even more money was demanded in 1297. Robert Winchelsea, thearchbishop of Canterbury, was determined to protect the interests of the church. When PopeBoniface VIII issued the bull Clericis Laicos in 1296, which stated firmly that no rulershould tax the clergy without papal consent, Winchelsea led the clergy in refusing furtherpayments. It was only when Boniface modified the bull to say that churchmen could grantmoney to the King in emergencies and could judge for themselves when emergencies existedthat Winchelsea withdrew his opposition to a clerical grant in 1297.

There was also trouble with the barons, who were irritated by the constant demands formoney, by an attempt of Edward to enforce knighthood upon all landowners whose estateswere worth 20 a year, and by a command that some of them should fight in Gascony whilethe King was in Flanders. The barons prevented the collection of a tax Edward had obtainedfrom a small assembly of accommodating nobles. Edward was driven to summon a fullassembly of barons and knights, to annul the grant already made, and to obtain a new one bymaking a solemn confirmation of Magna Carta and the Charter of the Forest. An importantclause was added to the effect that no tax should be levied in the future without the consentof the whole community of the realm and for the common benefit of the kingdom.The controversy between King and barons continued after 1297. Magna Carta and theCharter of the Forest were again confirmed in 1299; twenty new articles were added in the

Parliament of 1300. These articles declared that the Kings rights in the forests should beinvestigated, that purveyance should be restricted, and that legal actions should be begun bywrits under the Great Seal and not under the privy seal (3). Again in 1301 the charters wereconfirmed. The barons made an unsuccessful attempt to force the resignation of theTreasurer, Walter Langton, bishop of Lichfield. Thus Edwards reign, which began with anincrease in royal power and prerogative, ended with their curtailment.

(3) Purveyance was the right of the King to live off the country as he traveled about. For adiscussion of the privy seal, see page 134.PARLIAMENT

The origin of Parliament is to be found in the Great Council, the feudal court of the King,which was attended by his tenants in chief-archbishops, bishops, abbots, priors, earls, andgreater barons. Attendance was part of their feudal duty: the King could summon themwhenever he pleased. The Great Council was not a large body of all the tenants in chief greatand small; it was a small select assembly of wealthy and powerful persons, great magnates,lay and ecclesiastical. In theory the obligation of attendance fell equally upon all tenants inchief, but in practice the lesser tenants of the King did not come to the meetings of his courtand were not expected to do so. They did not receive individual summons, as did the great

8/14/2019 Edward OK

2/14

barons, but were summoned in general terms through the sheriff. This they regarded aspermission to stay away. By the thirteenth century they had become small landowners-knights or gentry- interested in the management of their estates and in local affairs. Theyhad dropped out of the baronial class. The greater barons, however, had not yet hardenedinto a fixed caste. Among them were men whose status was not yet established. Sometimesthey were summoned to the Great Council and sometimes not, and the Kings choice ofmembers could be capricious.About the middle of the thirteenth century the meetings of the Great Council began to becalled parliaments. The word parliament at this time meant merely a parley, a talkingtogether, a meeting at which there was conference or debate. It was an occasion, not aninstitution, and there were other meetings of entirely different kinds which also were referredto as parliaments. Meetings of the Great Council, of a parliament, were occasions when theKing met with the great men of the kingdom to talk about matters of high importance and totransact various kinds of business. These meetings were encouraged by the thirteenth-century concept of the community of the realm. A good King, it was held, should seek thecooperation of his magnates; and the noblest type of government was to be found in aharmony of King and barons ruling together. The barons who attended these meetings

thought of themselves as representing the nation as a whole, as speaking for the communityof the realm, and they sometimes referred to themselves as though they were thatcommunity. Their decisions were binding upon the community as a whole.The heart and center of medieval parliaments were the King and his small council of judgesand administrators. Parliament, which, as the Great Council, had always been a court, wasthus well equipped for judicial work. It was the high court of Parliament, the supreme courtof the kingdom, where cases of great importance or cases which touched the public interestwere brought for trial. Grievances were aired and wrongs righted in Parliament. Greatnumbers of petitions from persons high and low begging for legal action were submitted toParliament; as early as 1278 a procedure arose by which these petitions were sorted andcases of small importance assigned to the ordinary courts.

Parliament had many other uses. Edward I promulgated his statutes there. Although thesestatutes were drawn by the Kings officials, they often were inspired by complaints made inParliament or they sought to rectify defects in the law that had become apparent as a resultof Parliaments deliberations. Parliament discussed political problems, gave approval to royalpolicy, and supplied information upon which better government could be based. It consentedto taxation. The King, it was held, could not alter the law or levy extraordinary taxeswithout the consent of the magnates.During the course of the thirteenth century the King began to summon representatives fromthe middle classes to meet with him and with the barons in Parliament. The growth of thispractice was slow and intermittent; one must not think that it happened quickly or that theKing was doing more than acting for his own convenience. The middle classes in thecounties were the knights and country gentlemen whose ancestors had obtained their landsas small tenants in chief or as vassals of the greater barons. By the thirteenth century theseknights and gentry had become less warlike and more interested in the management of theirproperty. They were substantial people who were constantly used by the Crown in the workof local government, as sheriffs and coroners, as men who supplied information to royalagents sent out to make inquiries, and in these capacities they frequently represented thelocal community. The idea of representation was far older than Parliament. The middle classalso included the wealthier burgesses in the towns, men who controlled the guilds, whogoverned the boroughs as mayors and aldermen, and who in the thirteenth century were

8/14/2019 Edward OK

3/14

acquiring moderate riches. They often represented their towns in negotiations with royalofficials and in many other ways. The middle classes thus were experienced in governmentand were familiar with the idea of representation.When the King wished to investigate local conditions, he normally sent out his itinerantjustices to travel from place to place and to make inquiries. But he sometimes found it moreconvenient to summon representatives of various localities to meet with his officials at somecentral place. One of the first examples of a meeting of this kind occurred in 1204 whenKing John ordered that twelve men from each of the Cinque Ports assemble at a centralpoint to discuss matters of commerce with royal officials. Again in 1213 John summoned thereeve and four men from each of certain villages to meet at St. Albans in order to report thedamage done to local churches during the Kings quarrel with the papacy. These meetings inessence were concentrations of juries. The King, however, might find it more convenient tosummon representatives from localities to assemble before him and before his officials ormagnates and to give the information there. In 1213 John instructed the sheriffs to causefour knights from each shire to come before the King and the Great Council at Oxford (4).Again in 1227 the sheriffs were directed to obtain the election of four knights in everycounty court to meet with the King and the Great Council. These knights were to report

complaints against the sheriffs. Two knights were elected in each county in 1254 to meetwith the Great Council at Westminster and to determine upon an aid to be sent to the Kingin Gascony. In both 1264 and 1265, as we have seen, Simon de Montfort summoned knightsfrom the shires to meet with the barons in Parliament, and to the second of these assemblieshe also summoned burgesses from certain towns. His Parliaments, it is true, wererevolutionary assemblies, for the King was under restraint and Simon was trying to rallysupport for his dubious government.During the next thirty years there were concentrations of many kinds. Most of them weremeetings of the magnates alone. One, at least, contained representatives of the lower clergybut neither knights nor burgesses. On another occasion some knights and burgesses wereinstructed to meet at York while others met at Northampton. In 1283 a Parliament at

Shrewsbury did certain business and then divided -the barons remained where they were topass judgment upon Prince David of Wales, while the burgesses went to Acton Burnell todiscuss matters of trade. It is obvious that Edward occasionally summoned knights andburgesses merely because their presence helped him to get things done. In 1295, however,under pressing need for money, he summoned a Parliament which contained many elements-bishops, abbots, heads of religious orders, knights, burgesses, and representatives of thelower clergy. This was the largest of medieval Parliaments (5).

(4) It is doubtful whether these two assemblies summoned by King John in 1213 ever met.

(5) It is often called the Model Parliament, though there was nothing model about it exceptthat it contained all the classes found in later medieval Parliaments.In these early assemblies, in which the role of the representative element was very slight,knights and burgesses were not an essential part. They stood deferentially at the rear of thechamber, sometimes as mere observers. They might be asked to grant taxes but were thendismissed, while the barons remained in session to transact other business. In 1297,however, in the Confirmation of the Charters, an additional clause laid down the principlethat taxes should be granted by the whole community of the realm and not merely by theclass to be taxed. Thus representative elements were emerging as normal members ofParliament, though they had not been so regarded through the thirteenth century.

8/14/2019 Edward OK

4/14

EDWARD II, 1307-1327

The reign of Edward II was an unhappy interlude of strife, bitter personal hatreds, andoccasional civil wars, with constant quarrels between King and magnates. We may pityEdward II for the almost insoluble problems left to him by his father and for his tragic andhumiliating fate. But he was altogether lacking in the dignity and high dedication required ofa King. Weak and unambitious, he was ignorant of the business of government and incapableas a leader in war. He liked unkingly amusements, such as amateur theatricals, rowing,driving, digging, and thatching houses. He fell easily under the influence of young men. Thisfondness for favorites was an ill omen, for it meant that he turned to evil counselorsinstead of working with the barons who in their own estimation were the natural andlegitimate advisers of the Crown.(6) There was deep suspicion between him and themagnates from the very beginning of the reign. This suspicion has been explained as abaronial reaction against the strong rule of Edward I, but it was certainly increased by thenew Kings character. The magnates probably knew enough about him as Prince of Wales tosuspect his inadequacy and constantly sought to check his power as King. They introduced

an unusual clause into his coronation oath by which he pledged himself to observe such lawsas should be determined by the communality of the realm. Edward quickly justified theseapprehensions. He recalled to England a young Gascon knight, Peter de Gaveston, who hadbeen exiled earlier because of his questionable influence over Edward as Prince of Wales.Gaveston was an able man, but tactless and insolent toward the barons, who disliked himcordially. The leader of the opposition was the Kings cousin Thomas, Earl of Lancaster, theholder of five earldoms, a magnate of enormous wealth and influence, with a vast retinuethat could be swelled into an army at a moments notice. As early as 1310 Lancaster andother magnates forced the King to appoint a committee of twenty-one barons to prepare aseries of ordinances for the better government of the realm. These ordinances of 1311 werereminiscent of the Provisions of Oxford of 1258. They stipulated that Gaveston and an

unpopular Italian banker be banished, that the chief officials of the royal Household beappointed only with the consent of the magnates in Parliament, that the King not go to warwithout baronial approval, that heavy duties laid by Edward I upon exported wool beabolished, and that money not be brought to the wardrobe withoutpassing through the Exchequer. But though these ordinances were a vigorous statement ofbaronial grievances, there was no provision for their enforcement, and they remained anexpression of opinion rather than a frame of government. Gaveston went into exile butreturned before the end of the year. In 1312 the barons were in open revolt. Gaveston wasseized by one of his many enemies and beheaded. A war was avoided only when Edwardsubmitted to further restrictions. For some years Lancaster shared royal power with him, butnever won the Kings friendship or his confidence and was lacking in energy andconstructive talent. In 1318 a middle party arose at court. Its aim was to protect the Kingfrom dependence on favorites as well as to protect him from an overpowerful subject suchas Lancaster, whose influence began to diminish.

(6) Evil counselors was a conventional term used by antiroyalist magnates whenever theydisapproved of the men close to the King.

It was not long before one of the middle party, Hugh Despenser, began to dominate the Kingas Gaveston had done and to build a personal ascendancy at court. Even more objectionable,

8/14/2019 Edward OK

5/14

he soon had many enemies among the marcher lords of Wales, where he was increasing hispossessions, and among the northern lords who followed Thomas of Lancaster. In 1322 theKing displayed unusual energy, collected an army, and defeated Lancaster at the Battle ofBoroughbridge in Yorkshire. Lancaster was executed, and the ordinances of 1311 wereformally revoked in Parliament. For some years Edward and Despenser controlled thegovernment. The favorite established a number of reforms in the royal Household, but morearrogant and grasping than before, he aroused a host of enemies, two of whom were verydangerous. One was Roger Mortimer of Wigmore, a marcherjord, who was imprisoned butescaped and fled to France. The other was Edwards Queen, Isabella, a sister of the FrenchKing, Charles IV. In 1325 Isabella was sent to France to negotiate with her brotherconcerning the affairs of Gascony. She did not return, but joined forces with RogerMortimer in Paris and became his mistress. She persuaded her husband to send their son, theyoung Prince Edward, a boy of twelve, to France to do homage to Charles IV for Gascony.With the prince in her hands, she and Mortimer arranged a marriage for him with Philippa, adaughter of the Count of Hainault. Using the dowry to buy arms, they invaded England in1326. Edward, defeated, was forced to abdicate in 1327 and was murdered shortlythereafter. So ended his tragic career.

Parliament in the Reign of Edward II

Although limitations upon Edwards power were imposed in meetings of Parliament, it isclear that the magnates formed the driving force and that the role of the knights andburgesses was largely passive. When the barons in 1311 asked for frequent Parliaments, theywere thinking of aristocratic assemblies of their own class. Yet knights and burgesses werepresent in Parliament in almost every year of Edwards reign; they were present inParliament at moments of crisis in 1311, 1322, and 1327. When Edwards deposition wasdetermined upon, a deputation representing various elements in Parliament waited upon himat Kenilworth and extorted some kind of abdication. Moreover, knights and burgesses

consented to every tax that was levied during the reign; and a statement made by Edward in1322 declared that matters of importance should be treated in Parliament with the assent notonly of the magnates but also of the community of the realm. Knights and burgesses werenow recognized as normal members of Parliament.

8/14/2019 Edward OK

6/14

Chapter 8: Edward III and Richard III

The fourteenth century had characteristics of its own which differentiated it from earlier andlater periods. It was, in the first place, a very warlike century. Although feudalism hadsubsided, the upper classes still were organized for war, in which they eagerly engaged,seeking financial profit as well as honor and renown. They gladly followed Edward III in agreat war with France, the first part of the Hundred Years War. A modern spirit ofnationalism arose and England found unity and strength in the brutal game of plundering theFrench, but later in the century military success was followed by military failure. Richard II,an. unwarlike King, was faced by the opposition of powerful and discontented barons,critical Parliaments, and a disillusioned people.The fourteenth century was profoundly influenced by the plague. This dread disease, whichgreatly reduced the population, created an atmosphere of alarm and a sense of crisis. Socialand economic conflict arose as a reduced labor force demanded better wages and freedomfrom the bonds of serfdom. cornmerce and industry appeared to suffer less than agriculture,for it was during this period that England ceased to be merely a producer of raw wool andbecame a manufacturer of woolen cloth. Some merchants prospered greatly. There was a

gradual rise in the standard of living. And thus, although the nobles were still very grand andpowerful, and some attained great wealth, the gulf between them and the middle classes wasless than it had been in earlier centuries. For many reasons the influence of the clergydeclined in the fourteenth century, and a strong anticlerical sentiment arose. Finally, it was inthis period that English emerged as a literary language, although the nobility continued tospeak and write in French, and Latin remained the language of the church.

EDWARD III, 1327-1377

The Minority

The deposition and murder of Edward II in 1327 was followed by a few years in which hiswidow, Queen Isabella, the she-wolf of France, and her paramour, Roger Mortimer,dominated the government. They were an avaricious and disreputable pair; Mortimer, whowas made the Earl of March, increased his estates until he became a great landed magnate;the court was torn by quarrels and hatreds as in the days before Edwards deposition. InOctober 1330, the young King, Edward III, who was just under eighteen years of age,carried through a palace revolution in which Mortimer was seized and later condemned inParliament. The Queen was placed in honorable confinement. Assuming control of thegovernment, Edward ruled for almost half a century.

Edwards Character

The chroniclers of Edwards reign lavished praise on him, but modern historians, until veryrecently, have tended to judge him rather harshly. A soldier, his life work was the war inFrance. To promote the war, he allowed the magnates unprecedented influence in thegovernment, he made concessions to Parliament, and he sacrificed the interests of thechurch, of sound administration, and of the trading classes. He squandered the resources ofthe Crown, leaving an empty exchequer and many problems to his successor. Historians haveaccused him of sacrificing the future for the present, of waging an aggressive war which was

8/14/2019 Edward OK

7/14

doomed to ultimate failure, and of neglecting the problems arising from social and economicchange.A recent writer, however, has drawn a more favorable picture of Edward (1). According tothis author, he was keenly aware that his fathers reign had ended in tragedy because ofquarrels with the barons. Determined to avoid that error, he cultivated the good will of themagnates and sought to remove old feuds and hostilities. The earldom of March wasrestored to the grandson of Roger Mortimer, the definition of treason was modified, theKing was generous with titles, honors, and gifts of land. By waging a successful foreign warhe kept the magnates occupied abroad and offered them the opportunity to gain renown andriches. These policies succeeded admirably. Edward surrounded himself with a group ofyoung and warlike barons who sympathized with him, admired him, and remained loyal tohim even in his declining years. The same may be said of his five sons. Edwards relationswith his nobles were closer and happier than were those of any other medieval King inEngland. He may not have been a man of intellectual power, but he fitted perfectly into thetemper of the times. He won the loyalty of his people and the affection of his magnates, heraised his dynasty from the degradation of Edward IIs reign, and he ruled in a moderate andconciliatory way, carefully avoiding clashes with the church, Parliament, or the nobility.

(1) May McKisack, Edward in and the Historians,History, XLV (1960), 1-15.

CHIVALRY AND WAR

Edward was a majestic figure as he sat in state surrounded by his noble Queen and his fivetall sons. An extravagant and cheerful man, he loved the pomp and pageantry of war andchivalry. He delighted in palaces, costly feasts, and elaborate tournaments, which were nowjousts or encounters between two knights, fought according to rules, still very dangerous,though not as deadly as the old tournaments of Norman times. They were held in an openfield called the lists, not unlike a modern football field, surrounded by galleries for

spectators. The ladies of the court, who attended the tournaments, added a note of romanceand helped to civilize jousting by turning it into a means of winning honor for ones lady.Chivalry -a social and moral code of knightly behavior- laid stress on disinterested bravery;on honor, virtue, and courtesy; and on devotion to the service of a lady as her attendant andchampion. It was set forth in romances about King Arthur and his Round Table or in talestaken from the classics and given a medieval setting. These stories often related theadventures of a lonely knight who wandered about seeking to do noble deeds that mightbring honor to his lady.Edward added to the cult of chivalry and used it to his own advantage by creating thefamous Order of the Garter about 1348. Inspired by the ideals of King Arthur and his RoundTable, the order was an exclusive society of twentysix knights, including the sovereign. Itsmembers were bound to fidelity and friendship toward each other in a lasting brotherhood ofhonor. The order had its chapel, herald, feasts, and tournaments; membership in it was amark of high distinction.As a matter of fact, however, this code of chivalry had little relation to daily life, for theposition of women was low and they often were beaten and maltreated. The marriage of anheiress was a matter of business and diplomacy. A great noble regarded his sisters anddaughters as so many pawns in the game of marriage alliances with other noble houses; eventhe King sought marriages for his sons with the great heiresses of the kingdom. This had theunfortunate result in later years that almost any revolt against the Crown could find leaders

8/14/2019 Edward OK

8/14

who were related to the royal family, but in Edwards reign there was no such danger;concentration of wealth in the hands of the Kings sons supported their dignity and addedstrength to their fathers regime. Heiresses often were married as children. We hear of a littlegirl who had three husbands before she reached eleven, and although the church frownedupon child marriages, it took no effective steps to prevent them. Courtly love, moreover,with its devotion to the service of a lady, often meant that a knight fought for the honor ofone lady but happened to be married to another. Hence courtly love could easily lead toimmorality.Careful marriages, the generosity of the King, and the profits of the wars in Francesometimes combined to bring enormous estates into the hands of a few magnates. As in thethirteenth century, these men lived in great ostentation, maintaining sumptuous households,dispensing a lavish hospitality, and adding to their dignity and power by an ever-increasingnumber of dependents and retainers. And yet, as we shall see, the income from agriculturewas declining. Hence the magnates were greatly interested in the profits that could bederived from war. Not only was a successful commander rewarded by the King; he alsomight obtain rich plunder during a campaign in France. The capture of Calais in 1347 yieldedtremendous spoils, so that, as a contemporary wrote, a new sun seemed to have arisen in

England and almost every woman in the land appeared to be dressed in gowns, furs, andornaments brought from France. But the most lucrative form of plunder was the ransomdemanded by the English from prisoners of war, for every captured Frenchman had his priceand noble captives yielded enormous sums. Holding both the King of France and the King ofScotland as prisoners, Edward obtained a ransom of half a million pounds from the first anda hundred thousand marks from the second. It is small wonder that the war was popular. Thecommon soldier drew excellent wages, and commanders might make a fortune.The English armies that fought in France were raised in various ways. We have seen that theold feudal host was falling into decay, and it was fully understood in Edwards time that theonly way to build an efficient and disciplined army was to pay for it. Even the greatestcommanders -the Black Prince, for example- drew wages at a daily rate. The King made

contracts or indentures with nobles or with celebrated captains to supply him with fixednumbers of fighting men. Indentures were of various kinds. Those made with lessercornmanders were fairly simple. Edward Montagu, for instance, agreed to serve in Brittanyin 1341 for forty days and to supply six knights, twenty men-at-arms (who may have beenlight horsemen), twelve armed men, and twelve archers.But agreements with great nobles were much more elaborate, covering such details as thecost of transportation, wages, length of service, compensation for lost horses, and thedivision of ransom money. A noble might make up his quota of soldiers from his ownhousehold, from his retainers, or from subcontracts. Edward I, as we have seen, hadorganized a system of commissioners of array in order to obtain soldiers from the militia.The commissioners were local gentry who surveyed the men available for duty and selectedthe best to serve for wages with the King. There was no need to exert pressure: a peasantcould obtain better wages as a soldier than as an agricultural laborer. More volunteers cameforward than could be used.The commanders were drawn from the aristocracy and from the class of nonnoble knights.Great nobles sat in council with the King to determine general strategy. A select rank ofknights, known as bannerets, who were skillful captains and men of some wealth,commanded troops, garrisoned castles, and conducted other operations in the field. Belowthem were the knights bachelors, less wealthy than bannerets but men of standing andexperience. Knights wore costly and elaborate armor made of plate, now so heavy that

8/14/2019 Edward OK

9/14

shields disappeared. They were armed with sword, lance, and dagger. Each knight wassupplied with three or four warhorses, for although the knight fought on foot, horses wereessential in the raids in France and were used to pursue the enemy.Below the knights were various kinds of men-at-arms: lightly armored horsemen whocarried the same weapons as the knights, foot soldiers and foot archers armed with shortswords, knives, and bows and arrows. The foot archer soon was replaced by the mountedarcher, who combined mobility with great firepower. He used a six-foot bow, a Welshweapon developed in England, where archery had become the great national sport. Drawnwith the whole strength of the archers body, it could send an arrow through chain mail; agood bowman could shoot ten or twelve arrows a minute. The longbow was a magnificentdefensive weapon against the charge of French feudal knights, for it sent a deadly shower ofarrows among them and maddened the horses. The archer fought on foot. Normally, theEnglish formed a line, with groups of various types of soldiers interspersed with each other,to resist advancing cavalry, and so long as the French were foolish enough to charge in theold disorderly fashion, as they did at Crcy, Poitiers, and much later at Agincourt, they wentdown to defeat before the English defense.One other part of the English army should be mentioned. Among the foot soldiers were

many Welshmen, armed only with long knives and daggers. When the French knights werethrown from their horses, these Welsh troopers darted forward to slit the throats of the fallenFrenchmen, for a knife could be thrust between the plates of armor. This was not fightingaccording to the rules of chivalry: it was the deadly business of slaughtering the foe (2).

(2) May McKisack, The Fourteenth Century 1307-1399 (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1959),Chap. IX.

Edwards First Campaigns

Edwards first campaigns were fought against the Scots. But although he defeated them at

the Battle of Halidon Hill near Berwick in 1333 and led expeditions into Scotland in 1335and 1336, he soon discovered that campaigning in Scotland offered hard blows with littlehope of plunder; his mind turned to the more profitable field of fighting in France. In 1337excuses for fighting France were not hard to find: the French had been assisting the Scots;the English were intriguing with the cloth-manufacturing towns of Flanders against theFrench; the French King, Philip VI, announced the annexation of Gascony; Edward laidclaim to the French crown through his mother, Isabella, a daughter of King Philip IV. Thesecauses of conflict might well have led to hostilities. But one suspects that Edward and hismagnates, inspired by high spirits and material greed, were ready to employ any excuse thatserved their turn.Edwards first campaigns against France were planned upon a magnificent scale. Allianceswere concluded with various rulers in the Low Countries and along the Rhine, including theGerman Emperor, Lewis IV; the wool trade was manipulated to increase royal revenue andto force the Count of Flanders to turn against the French; plans were made to invade Francethrough the Netherlands. Edward crossed to Flanders in 1338 but found that his allies werefar from eager for war; meanwhile he was spending great sums of money. Throughout theyears 1339 and 1340 he was able to do no more than conduct two small campaigns whichended tamely in a truce. His principal success was a naval victory over a French fleet atSluys. In 1340 he returned to England, angry and disillusioned. His strategy had failed

8/14/2019 Edward OK

10/14

because it was conceived on too grandiose and lavish a scale. His money was gone before heand his expensive allies had struck a serious blow at the enemy.

The Hundred Years War, 1337-1361

Thenceforth Edward turned to a new pattern of warfare which proved to be highlysuccessful: to cross directly to France and to make raids into the interior. These inexpensiveraids did not need costly allies and the mobile English armies could live on the country andplunder as they moved about. The raids began in 1341 in the duchy of Brittany, where adisputed succession enabled the English to support one candidate while the Frenchsupported another. In 1342 Edward overran much of Brittany, which became an importantbase for English operations. In 1345 raids were made into France from Brittany andGascony.The next few years brought brilliant victories. In 1346 Edward crossed to Normandy with.anarmy of some 10,000 men, of whom 7000 were archers. Sacking the city of Caen, he movednorthward to the area of Ponthieu and the river Somme. On August 26, at the village ofCrecy, he was met by a large French army. The French knights charged the English line,

riding over their own crossbowmen in their eagerness, but fell in bloody defeat under a hailof English arrows. Crecy pointed to the passing of the feudal knight, who could thus beconquered by the fire of plebeian archers and the knives of Welsh peasants. Other victoriesfollowed. In the same year, 1346, the Scots were defeated at the Battle of Nevilles Crossnear Durham, and the Scottish King, David II, was taken prisoner. In 1347 the Englishdefeated the French in Brittany and after a long siege captured the city of Calais whichremained an English outpost in France for more than two centuries. A long pause in theHundred Years War was due to the Black Death, which devastated both England andFrance, disrupting trade and the collection of taxes.War began once more in 1355, when two large English expeditions crossed to the Continent.One of them, commanded by the King, operated from Calais but accomplished nothing of

moment. The other, led by the Black Prince, (3) penetrated from Bordeaux into Gasconyand Toulouse. In 1356, as the Black Prince was marching toward the city of Tours, he wasmet at Poitiers by a huge French army commanded by John, the chivalrous but inept King ofFrance. Again the French knights charged the English line and again they were completelydefeated. Large numbers of the French nobility, including the French King, were takenprisoners and were brought to England to be held for ransom.But Edwards resources were exhausted and he was ready to make peace. Conditions inFrance were miserable. The Black Death raged without mercy, the government wasdisrupted by the absence of the King, great stretches of the countryside lay waste, thewretched peasants rose in revolt, free companies of English soldiers roamed about thecountry plundering as they went. In 1359 the Black Prince led an army in a great circlearound Paris. Negotiations for peace, opened in 1360, led to the Treaty of Bretigny in thefollowing year. Gascony and large adjacent areas including Poitou and, in the north,Ponthieu and Calais passed to Edward in full sovereignty. King Johns ransom was fixed at500,000. In return Edward renounced his claim to the French throne and restored certainlands and fortresses outside the area covered by the treaty. In 1362, however, the treaty wasmodified at Calais. Edwards renunciation was to become effective only under certainconditions which were not likely to be fulfilled, and the way was left open for future claimsby English sovereigns. The French honored the terms of the treaty, making English influencein France greater than it had been since the days of Henry II.

8/14/2019 Edward OK

11/14

The magnates might like war with France, but the knights and burgesses assembled inParliament often did not, for their part was the unromantic one of paying the bill. Yet theKings constant need for money gave Parliament, and especially the Commons, anopportunity to develop rapidly. It was in this reign that Parliament assumed its historicstructure of Lords and Commons and began, though in a tentative way, to acquire some ofits basic powers.

(3) Edward, the Black Prince, was the eldest son of Edward in. Duke of Cornwall andPrince of Wales, he developed into one of the finest soldiers of the age. He was never King,for he died a few months before his father.

Forty-eight Parliaments met during Edwards reign of fifty years, and to every one of themhe summoned the classes which had composed the Model Parliament of 1295: the upperclergy, the magnates and greater barons, proctors representing the lower clergy, knightsfrom the shires, and burgesses from the towns. He also summoned a few of his greatofficers, councilors, and judges; these men still formed the heart and core of Parliament,guiding its activities and guarding the interests of the Crown. Some Parliaments continued to

sit after the knights and burgesses had been dismissed, but none of them met without thepresence of the Commons, whose members were fully accepted as an essential part ofParliament.Parliament was composed of various classes. The upper clergy, or spiritual lords, consistedof twenty-one bishops and archbishops and a group of abbots and priors. The number ofabbots and priors differed from time to time. Edward I had summoned seventy in 1295, butthe number declined during the fourteenth century until it became established at twenty-seven in 1364. The magnates and greater barons, or temporal lords, consisted of dukes,marquises, earls, and barons.(4) In the thirteenth century the only duke had been the King(who was Duke of Aquitaine), but Edward in conferred dukedoms on four of his five sons;later in the century six other dukes were created. The title of marquis first was conferred in

1385 by Richard II. At the end of Edwards reign there were about fourteen carls. Thesenobles were summoned as a matter of course. The number of barons called to Parliament,however, varied greatlyfrom ninety in 1321 to thirty in 1346. Sometimes both a father andhis son were summoned together, sometimes a son in place of his father, sometimes a man inthe right of his wife. Occasionally a knight banneret was summoned. A clearly delimitednobility, with an exclusive right to be summoned to Parliament, did not exist in thefourteenth century. But the tendency was in this direction, for the lords now consideredthemselves a class apart and above all others. They were the peers of the realm, a unique andsuperior caste. After Richard II began to create peers by letters patent in 1387, the list ofnobles summoned to Parliament gradually hardened into a fixed class of peers. Only then canone speak of a House of Lords.

(4) The title of viscount, a rank between that of earl and baron, was not introduced until thefifteenth century.

All the persons mentioned above received individual summons to Parliament. But therepresentatives of the lower clergy were summoned indirectly through the bishops, and theknights and burgesses through the sheriffs. The lower clergy gradually ceased to attend.When a Parliament was called, the sheriff of each of thirty-seven counties (Chester andDurham were not represented) received a writ directing him to cause two knights to be

8/14/2019 Edward OK

12/14

elected in the shire court, two citizens in every city, and two burgesses in every borough.Some cities and boroughs, however, hoping to escape expense, managed to evade thecommand of the sheriff and did not return members.We do not know much about these elections, but we know that they were neither popularnor democratic. Often the sheriff or some local magnate, or the two working together,proposed names in the shire court; these names were accepted by acclamation, and theelection was over. Undoubtedly the sheriff exercised great influence, and a local lord with abody of retainers might easily sway the electors. The writ called for knights as members, butthe number of knights was insufficient (5), and members were of various kinds. They mightbe the sons of nobles, or knights or country gentlemen, or well-to-do farmers below the rankof gentry. They were often retainers of local magnates or men interested in trade. Very likelythey had served in some local office, and they combined wealth with experience ingovernment and knowledge of local conditions.

(5) A sheriff once reported that there was only one knight in his shire and that he waslanguidus et impotens ad laborandum. May McKisack, The Fourteenth Century 1307-1399, p. 188n.

The elections in the boroughs are even more difficult to describe, for practices differed fromtown to town. But the elections normally were controlled by the wealthy merchants andindustrialists who dominated the guilds and the town governments. Members from theboroughs were lawyers, capitalists, merchants, or smaller business men; but even in theMiddle Ages members of the gentry class were sometimes returned by neighboring towns.The number of towns that sent members varied somewhat, averaging between seventy andeighty-three in the reigns of Edward III and Richard II.The most important developments of the fourteenth century were the division of Parliamentinto two parts, the Lords and the Commons; and the union of the knights and burgesses toform the second of these divisions. The lords spiritual and temporal naturally acted together

as an aristocracy, receiving individual summons and holding land directly from the King; thelower clergy dropped out; and the vital question remained whether the knights would joinwith the lords or whether they would unite with the burgesses. In some early Parliaments theknights met with the lords to decide upon taxation, but as the aristocracy hardened into thepeerage the knights found themselves excluded. Knights and burgesses bore the heaviestburden of taxation and had a common interest in resisting demands for money. They alsodiscovered that the grievances and abuses they wished redressed were of the same generalnature. By 1339 knights and burgesses were acting together, and henceforth they formed asingle body. This union was of the utmest importance. Without it the burgesses would haveremained in a position of permanent subordination, but knight and burgess acting togetherhad some hope of defending their interests against King and aristocracy.Sessions of Parliament were short, lasting normally only two or three weeks. Lords andCommons met together in the Parliament chamber at the opening of a Parliament, as they dotoday, and heard an oration from one of the councilors explaining the reasons for themeeting. Petitions, addressed to the King and his Council, not to Parliament, were thenpresented. The Parliament divided for deliberation, the Lords remaining in the Parliamentchamber while the cornmons met elsewhere, normally in the chapter house or the refectoryof Westminster Abbey.The work of Parliament may be divided into deliberation, action on taxation, judicial work,and legislation. Edward in used Parliament as a clearinghouse for discussion, laying

8/14/2019 Edward OK

13/14

important questions before the Lords and the Commons. The Lords gave advice, whichmight or might not be followed. The Commons, however, were hesitant in offering opinions.Apparently they feared that advice might commit them to paying the cost of royal policy.Hence unless their interests were directly affected, they were rather noncommittal. Theirgreat victory was in the field of taxation. By 1340 the principle was established that taxescould be levied only with the consent of Lords and Commons; by the end of the century itwas recognized that proposals for grants of money must originate in the Commons. Controlof taxation gave the Commons power to bargain with the King for the redress of grievances,which normally preceded the voting of supply.Judicial work was largely the function of the Lords, who continued, as in the thirteenthcentury, to form the high court of Parliament, the highest court in the land. But the judicialwork of the Lords was declining. Many cases could be settled in the three central law courts,and in the fourteenth century a new court, the court of chancery, arose which based itsdecisions upon equity rather than upon the strict letter of the law. The court of chancerycould handle many of the unusual cases formerly brought to the Lords. Moreover, the legalwork in the Lords was done largely by the judges who were summoned to Parliament, but asthe Lords made the peerage more rigid and exclusive, they resented the presence of these

judges, who were normally not peers. This attitude naturally tended to discourage the legalwork of the judges in Parliament. In one aspect of judicial work the Commons played animportant part. In 1376 we find the first case of impeachment. In this procedure theCommons, acting as a body, placed accusations against corrupt officials before the Lords.The Lords then acted as a court to try the ministers in question. Impeachment gave theCommons power, not to control the selection of ministers, but to attack those who broke thelaw.The Commons also gained some share in legislation, though their achievements were limited.As soon as Parliament met, as we have seen, it received petitions of various kinds; thesewere addressed to the King and his Council with a request for action or redress. Suchpetitions might be sponsored by individual members, but it shortly occurred to the Commons

that there would be advantage in pooling their petitions and their pressures upon the Crown.Thus arose the common petition backed by the whole body of the Commons. If the Lordsassented and if the King accepted the petition, it could be thrown into the form of a statuteand become the law of the land. The common petition is thus the root of the house ofcommons as a separate legislative assembly. (6) The King, however, possessed variousmethods of rendering these petitions ineffective, even though he had accepted them. Thewording of the statute might be quite different from the wording of the petition, with vitalmatters altered or omitted. The statute might remain a dead letter for lack of provision forits enforcement or because the King blocked its execution. He might issue a decree orordinance which invalidated the force of a statute. In 1341 Edward attempted to annul astatute as contrary to his prerogative. But the next Parliament formally repealed the statutein question, and there was no other attempt to void a statute by royal pronouncement. In thefourteenth century the Commons never wholly succeeded in preventing evasions andomissions in the form of statutes.

(6) A. F. Pollard, The Evolution of Parliament(New York: McKay, 1926), p. 120.

It is obvious, nonetheless, that the Commons made great gains in the fourteenth century:they debated matters laid before them by the Crown, they gained the great victory of controlof taxation, they devised the procedure of impeachment, and they obtained some share in

8/14/2019 Edward OK

14/14

legislation. A Speaker of the Commons appears in 1376. It is true that the early Speakerswere the agents of the King and of the magnates rather than of the Commons, and that theCommons often opposed the Crown only because they were assured of the backing of someof the magnates. The influence of the Commons must not be exaggerated, but their progressin the fourteenth century was impressive.