In and Berwick, on the Scottish border, by a board of 104, of which each rival chose forty and Edward twenty-four members. After full hearing, the kingdom was adjudged to Balliol at Berwick, November 30, 1292, who did homage for it at once to the English king. So far all had gone well, but trouble was ahead. By the Treaty of Amiens in 1279 Edward had given up all claims to Normandy, and got quiet possession of Aquitaine and Ponthieu from Philip III. ~He had done homage to Philip IV., and had acted as umpire between the French princes and the King of Aragon in the quarrel over the crown of Sicily; but in spite of his good offices he found that the French king, who had beguiled him into giving up Gascony for a while, was eagerly seeking some means by which to overreach and despoil him. 1293 a quarrel broke out at S. Mahé in Brittany between the mariners of the Cinque Ports and the Norman shipmen, who took some English sailors and, by the order of Charles, brother of the French king, hanged them to their yard-arms with dogs tied to their bodies. The result was a sea-fight in which English, Gascons, and Irish fought against the Normans, French, Flemings, and Germans, and after great slaughter took most of their ships. Next year the English merchant fleet took sixty French ships laden with wine and threw their crews overboard. Edward was summoned to Paris to answer for his subjects' behaviour in Philip's Court of Peers. In vain he offered to submit the whole matter to umpires. Philip refused all terms, and after a brief delay declared his fiefs forfeited. Edward allied himself with the Emperor Adolphus, the King of Aragon, the Earls of Flanders and Holland, called out the English knights and yeomen, and named three Admirals, one for Yarmouth and the east coast, one for Portsmouth and the south coast, one for Bristol and the Irish coast. An army was sent to defend Gascony. The French fleet began the war by burning Dover, while the English laid waste Cherbourg. 1296. 7. But it was his enemies in Britain that gave Edward the greatest trouble. Morgan's rising was encour- Scotland given aged by the French king, and now Philip had up to Edward, managed to win over the Scottish nobles to appoint a standing Council of Twelve to advise and control their king, and force him into a treaty with France. John, angered at being obliged to answer the appeals of his subjects against him in Edward's court, gave way to their wishes, and a match was secretly made up between his son Edward and Philip's daughter Joan, upon John's promise to attack the English king. Always willing to seek help and advice from his subjects in his difficulties, Edward had called the Great Parliament of 1295, which was afterwards acknowledged as the model for such gatherings, as the three Estates were all present regularly summoned according to what henceforth was held to be the lawful and necessary form. In his summons to the archbishop, Robert of Winchelsea (John of Peckham was dead), he writes: Inasmuch as a most righteous law, established by the prudent foresight of the emperors, approves and ordains that what toucheth all should be looked to and agreed upon by all, so also it is very clear that common dangers should be met by proper measures agreed upon in common. Thou knowest well, and it hath now gone forth, as we believe, through every region of the world, how the King of France hath deceitfully and by trick cheated me out of my land of Gascony, wickedly withholding it from me. But now, not satisfied with this deceit and wickedness, having gathered together to beset our realm a very great fleet and a mighty multitude of soldiers, with whom also he hath already attacked our realm and the inhabitants thereof, he proposeth, if his power equal this abominable and unrighteous design by him imagined (which thing God forbid), to altogether wipe out the English tongue from the face of the earth. Ere this Parliament met, Balliol's treason became known to Edward, who thereupon sent his brother in his stead to Gascony, and resolved to set out early next spring to Scotland. The Scottish earls began the war with a cruel raid into Cumberland, but Edward went up the east coast, crossed the Tweed, and attacked Berwick. The townsfolk, who had slain some English merchants in cold blood, were desperate, and mocked the king's offers. But the castle surrendered, and though thirty brave Flemings held out in the Red Hall till it was burned over their heads, the English burst in, March 30, 1296. The rich trading town was sacked, and the hapless burgesses massacred, so that "the blood ran down the streets like a mill-stream." The Scottish king now sent formally to withdraw his homage, refusing to appear at Edward's court. "Silly thief!" said the English prince. "We will go to him if he will not come to us!" April 27, the Earls of Surrey and Warwick defeated the Scottish earls with great slaughter at Dunbar; and Edward having taken Roxburgh, Edinburgh, and Stirling, and sent home his English foot-soldiers, for the light-armed Welsh and Irish infantry had now joined him, passed on north to see the hills of Scotland." And John, seeing that he had no power to resist, begged peace of him, and being kindly received, gave back to Edward the kingdom of Scotland, owning that he had forfeited it, July 10, at Brechin. Edward, seeing that all was now quiet, turned back from Elgin, and passing by Scone, took away the holy stone upon which the Scottish kings were wont to be crowned, the cross of S. Margaret, and all the royal ornaments of Scotland, and sent them to Westminster, where the stone was set into a chair for the mass-priest at the high altar, and the crown, sceptre, and cross laid at the shrine of Edward the Confessor. In twenty-one weeks he had won a new kingdom. Clericis Laicos, 1296; 8. Edward now turned his whole mind to the recovery of Gascony from Philip, but was hampered by unlooked-for hindrances. The clergy under Robert of Winchelsea refused to vote him any money at the Parliament of Bury, 1296, because of Pope's Boniface VIII.'s Bull Clericis Laicos, which forbade Churchmen to pay or princes to levy taxes on Church pro- and Statute of perty. But Edward met this as John and Carlisle, 1307. Richard had done, by outlawing those who would not pay until they did so. Confirmatio At a Parliament at Salisbury, 1297, the king spoke : "I am the keep of the land, and you the towers and outworks of it. My heritage, Gascony, I have lost by treachery, and I have vowed to get it back. It is your duty to help me in this. Let no man excuse himself." But the Marshal and Constable, the Earls of Norfolk and Hereford, refused to serve abroad unless the king himself went with them. "You shall go whether I go or no," said the king. "I am not bound to, nor will I," answered the Marshal. Then the king grew angry, "By God, sir earl, you shall go or hang!" "By the same oath," replied Norfolk, "I will neither go nor hang!" He and his friends then left the court and gathered their party to them, 1500 knights, forbidding_the king's officers to levy any taxes on their land. For Edward seeing the time slipping by, and determined to go to Flanders, where the towns had promised to help him against Philip, now seized all the wool at the seaports, forcing the merchants to pay a new and heavier duty, which they called male-tote, "ill-toll," before he would let it pass. He also sent for grain and meat from the sheriffs of the English counties, and all this without right, for he had not got the leave of Parliament. Before he sailed, however, he spoke to the people from a stage put up outside Westminster Hall, his son and Archbishop Robert standing by his side. With tears in his eyes he begged them to forgive him for having ruled them less well than he ought, but assured them that what he had taken from them he had taken in order that he might defend them with it against those who were thirsting for their blood. "And now I am going to put myself in jeopardy for you, and I pray you, if I come back, to receive me well, and I will give you back all I have taken from you; but if I do not come back, then crown this my son as your king." And the people wept, and held up their right hands, and swore to obey him. But the earls sent him a list of grievances, and when he sailed they summoned their friends in arms to a Parliament at London, where by the good offices of Robert of Winchelsea it was agreed that the king should confirm the Charters, levy no new kind of tax, or duty, or tallage save by consent of Parliament, and give up the male-tote of wools. This agreement, called the Confirmatio Cartarum or Articuli de Tallagio non concedendo, was sent over to Ghent, where the king set his seal to it, November 5, 1297, to the joy of all. For the times were hard, and the people suffering a good deal, as the song of the time shows :— "O Lord God of majesty, ob Personas Trinas Our good king and company, ne perire sinas! They have caused him pain and woe gravesque ruinas, A king should never to a war extra regnum ire, Non eat ex regno rex sine consilio. In England now it is the way de anno in annum The fifteenth penny you must pay, ad commune damnum! The poor man has to sell his all, vaccas rus et pannum ! Non placet ad summum quindecim sic dare nummum. Past all bearing is one thing, unde gens gravatur Nam quæ taxantur regi non omnia dantur." It does not hurt the lords to grant regi sic tributum That they who grant should never pay est male constitutum ! A tax like those that they've laid on diu nequit durare; By this Act the king was bound not to levy indirect taxes without consent of Parliament, but he might still lay tallages on the towns and the Crown estates. In the Parliament of London, 1300, it was supplemented by the Articuli super Cartas [fresh clauses to the Charters], which stopped the wrongdoing of the royal officers, settled the choice and duties of the sheriff, and ordered a survey of the forests. In 1301, at the Parliament of Lincoln, where the report of the survey was made, the barons begged the king to discharge his treasurer, Walter of Langton, Bishop of Lichfield, and deinanded a final confirmation of the Charter, the carrying out of the forest reforms, the abolition of purveyance [forced purchase of goods for the king's use], the exact settlement of the judges' duties, and declared that these requests must be granted before they voted any money. Edward imprisoned the knight who brought up the bill, refused to change his treasurer, saying he had a right to order his household as he would, but gave way on the other points and confirmed the Charters again. However, in 1305 he got Clement V. to free him from all the oaths he had lately taken as against the royal rights, though in spite of this he did not break his word. The same year he ordered the sheriffs to take up all the gangs of Clubmen who were black-mailing and robbing in the country, and he further sent judges under Commission of Trail-baston [club-bearing] to try these evil-doers. The outlaws did not relish these stern laws, and one of them is made to say in a French poem of the day :— : 'If I wish to beat my groom because he disobeys, And give him a good stroke or two to make him mend his ways, Before I can get out again I have to spend my gold. Forty shillings I must pay before I can get free, Yea, and twenty shillings more for the sheriff's fee, That he may not put me down in the deepest cell. Now, my lords! consider, pray! does this law work well? Judge Martin and Judge Knolles are men that mercy show, They plead the poor man's cause and pray that he may be let go; If I could catch them in my beat they should not go scot-free! All you that are indicted, I'd have you come to me, In the merry woods of Fairview where there's nor judge nor plea, |