A Great and Terrible King: Edward I and the Forging of Britain (69 page)

In June 1305, as the king was making his way to Chichester in Sussex, a row erupted between his son and his chief minister, Walter Langton. It arose, said one annalist, because the prince had earlier been trespassing in the minister’s woods. The rights and wrongs of their argument, however, were irrelevant; what caused uproar, according to an official record, was young Edward’s use of ‘certain gross and harsh words’ to Langton’s face. This was more than his father was willing to stand – to insult his chief servant was to disrespect the peace of his court – and he reacted by banishing the prince from his presence. During the month that followed he continued to tour the cathedrals and castles of south-eastern England, while Edward of Caernarfon followed at a distance, trying to effect a reconciliation. Eventually the king, still greatly annoyed, commanded his son to wait at Windsor until the start of the next parliament.
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That parliament, when it assembled in September, saw reconciliation on several fronts. Most importantly, the business of providing a government for Scotland was finally resolved. Despite the execution of William Wallace the previous month, the reception afforded the Scottish delegates in London was welcoming, and after a spate of tournaments they sat down with the English council to devise a settlement. Unsurprisingly, there was no talk this time round of reviving Scotland’s kingship. As the records of the meeting make clear, Scotland was no longer regarded as a kingdom (
regnum
), but had been demoted to the status of a land (
terra
). As such, it was to be governed in future by the king of England’s lieutenant, and that role was set to be filled by Edward’s nephew, John of Brittany. Beyond this, however, the scheme of government agreed that September testified to the ongoing desire in England to appease Scottish feelings. Of the nineteen sheriffs appointed in Scotland, for example, only two were English, while the rest were natives. Similarly, the council nominated to advise the new lieutenant was almost entirely Scottish in its composition, and the four Englishmen chosen to act as judges in Scotland were each paired with a Caledonian counterpart. All of this stood in marked contrast to the overwhelmingly English, ‘colonial’ administration that Edward had attempted to impose on Scotland nine years earlier.
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This willingness to draw a line under the past was equally apparent at the start of October, when the committee visited the king at Sheen in Surrey to present him with their conclusions. Once Edward had approved the new governmental scheme and the Scots, touching holy relics, had sworn to uphold it, more concessions were forthcoming. The conflict between English and Scottish claims to land was resolved by means of a process akin to that used to end the civil war in England almost four decades earlier. The Scots, it was allowed, could redeem their estates in return for cash, and the English would in turn be compensated for their losses. As these measures were announced, many of the sentences of exile imposed on the Scots the previous year were also declared lifted. The king, said one chronicler, rejoiced at the hope of firm and lasting peace in Scotland, and the Scots themselves were said to have returned home happy. The spirit of reconciliation, moreover, was also manifest on the domestic front. Edward subsequently moved from Sheen to Westminster and made peace with his eldest son. On 13 October – the feast of the Confessor – the prince of Wales celebrated his restoration to favour by holding a feast in his father’s palace.
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Edward I was coming close to achieving the peaceful disposition of his empire that he craved. Only one crucial matter arising from the struggle of recent years remained to rectified, and that was the damage that had been done to the rights of the Crown. At his coronation the king had sworn to preserve these rights unimpaired, yet in 1301 he had been forced to compromise on the issue of the Royal Forest, which had been reduced in size as a result. These injuries, therefore, would have to be mended. And, at the same time, the men who had inflicted them must be called to account.

One might imagine – as some contemporaries certainly did – that Roger Bigod, earl of Norfolk and long-time leader of the lay opposition, would be first in line for an interview. Bigod, however, had seen this day coming and had already taken steps to avoid it. More than three years earlier, in the spring of 1302, he had cut a face-saving deal, and – in return for a generous annuity – nominated Edward as his heir. From the earl’s point of view this had solved several pressing problems, not only restoring him to the king’s good graces but also plugging the gaping hole that a private army of followers had created in his finances. At the same time, it had cost him very little in personal terms, for he had no children to disinherit. By the same token, the deal had also been an excellent one as far as Edward was concerned, for it promised eventually to bring a vast amount of land to the Crown for a comparatively modest outlay, and such land would soon be needed. Unlike Bigod, the king had many children to provide for, not least the two new sons from his second marriage. Thus, by dint of a mutually beneficial agreement, the relationship between the two men had been repaired. In 1305 Edward had further eased the earl’s financial worries by cancelling his debts to the Crown – a gesture, as the king explained in his letters, inspired by the ‘great affection’ he now felt towards his former critic.
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This was not a phrase that he would readily have used about Bigod’s erstwhile ally, Robert Winchelsea. While the earl had quickly made his peace with Edward, the archbishop had continued to act as the king’s principal antagonist, and not just in parliament. In addition – and far more provocatively – Winchelsea had been backing the cause of a young man called John de Ferrers. Readers with very retentive memories may recall how, at the end of his struggle with Simon de Montfort, Edward and his friends had compelled Robert de Ferrers, earl of Derby, to surrender his estates to Edmund of Lancaster. John de Ferrers, as the son of the dispossessed and long-deceased victim, had lately begun a campaign to recover his lost inheritance, and Winchelsea had decided to act as his champion. In 1301, having secured permission from the pope, the archbishop had actually begun to judge the case in his own court, and had summoned the new earl of Lancaster to answer Ferrers’ accusation of unlawful disseisin. Needless to say, the king, already deeply embittered, must have been enraged by Winchelsea’s efforts to revisit this discreditable episode from his distant past. The archbishop had soon found himself being countersued in the king’s courts, charged with trying to disinherit the Crown and subvert the realm.
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In 1305 the gloves really came off. During the spring, as Bigod was being pardoned his debts, Winchelsea was hit with a demand for £4,000 of unpaid taxes. Then, in the summer, a new pope was elected and the archbishop’s fate was sealed. Boniface VIII, who would have defended Winchelsea, had died in 1303, shamefully hounded to death by the king of France’s thugs. Clement V, a Gascon by birth and a former archbishop of Bordeaux, was more inclined to oblige the English king. In October, apparently after a stormy interview with Winchelsea himself, Edward dispatched a high-ranking embassy to the Curia, charged with a two-fold task: to undo the concessions that had diminished his Crown, and to secure the archbishop of Canterbury’s deposition.
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Having spent a quiet Christmas in the West Country, Edward received his answer early in the New Year. On 11 February 1306, while he was hunting in Dorset, a papal bull arrived, reciting the royalist version of events since 1297, and absolving the king from his oath to all the concessions that his opponents had compelled him to grant. The following day – though Edward would not learn of it for several weeks – the pope suspended Winchelsea from office.
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With the arrival of this letter of absolution, the king’s work was effectively complete. His many territories were at peace, his authority was supreme and uncontested, and the rights of his Crown had been restored. Moreover, though Edward himself may not have known it, he had also smashed another record. By February 1306 he was sixty-six years and eight months old, which meant that he had lived longer than any previous king of England (his great-great-great-grandfather, Henry I, had lived to a similar age, but was no more than sixty-six years and seven months at his death). And yet, in spite of his advanced years, Edward remained fit and healthy. The conquest of Scotland, it is true, had left him feeling drained and in need of a lengthy convalescence, but since that time he had rallied and recovered his strength. The past twelve months had seen him hunting and going on pilgrimages, travelling at the same rate as of old. During the summer of 1305, perhaps during a stay at Leeds Castle in July, he had clearly been feeling particularly energetic. In February 1306 Queen Margaret was once again heavily pregnant.
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Was there a reason, beyond luck and the law of averages, for this extraordinary longevity and potency? Could it be that Edward had been spared to serve some higher purpose? With conflict at home now finally concluded, it was possible to consider again the idea of renewing the fight overseas. Almost two years earlier, in a letter to the Master of the Knights Templar, the king had noted that he had ‘long been hindered by diverse wars … from going to Jerusalem as he had vowed’. But, he had added hopefully, he still intended to go there ‘at all speed’ once those wars were over. ‘Upon this journey,’ he said, ‘we have fixed our whole heart.’ The recent embassy to the pope had raised the prospect of a new crusade in earnest, and Edward had been granted a crusading tax in return. Perhaps, at last, it was time for the king’s long-delayed vow to be fulfilled.
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But then, just a week or so after receiving the pope’s letter, other news arrived. Apparently, there had been a murder.

By any standards, the crime was appalling. It had been committed on 10 February, in the town of Dumfries, within the hallowed walls of the Franciscan church, right in front of the altar. Two men had come there in order to talk, but their conversation had quickly become a quarrel, and the quarrel had ended in bloodshed, with one man drawing his dagger and stabbing the other. It was, it seems, an impulsive, unpremeditated act, yet there was little room for mitigation. As the injured man had lain stricken on the altar steps, the friends of his assailant had weighed in and finished him off with their swords. What made this case especially appalling, however, were the identities of the two individuals involved. The victim was John Comyn, lord of Badenoch and erstwhile Guardian of Scotland. The killer was his long-time rival, Robert Bruce.

Precisely what passed between the two men that day in Dumfries must forever remain a mystery. It certainly mystified Edward I, who heard of the killing within a week or so and dispatched agents to investigate. Yet with hindsight there can be no doubt about the motive for the meeting, and ultimately for Comyn’s murder, for the seeds had been sown almost two years earlier. In the summer of 1304, while the king of England had been laying siege to Stirling Castle, Bruce had met with the bishop of St Andrews and entered into a secret alliance. Here too the details are vague, and deliberately so, for the purpose of the pact was clearly treasonable. A few months before it was sealed, Bruce’s father, the nondescript collaborator of the 1290s, had died, and his claim to the Scottish throne, dormant for over a decade, had passed to his son. Bruce was evidently preparing to reactivate it, and the bishop, although a long-time backer of Balliol, was evidently ready to assist him. What had happened in Dumfries, it seems certain, is that Comyn had been invited to join the conspiracy but had refused. Bruce had reacted angrily, but also decisively, knowing that if his rival opposed him, his bid for the throne must fail.
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With the plot now public, Bruce was forced to move fast. He and his supporters rapidly secured control of the castles of south-west Scotland, then rode to Glasgow, where they met with the city’s bishop, Robert Wishart. The stalwart upholder of the patriotic cause absolved the earl of his crime and urged him on, producing from his cathedral treasury certain regalia he had long ago secreted: a banner bearing the Scottish royal arms, and vestments suitable for the making of a king. As an anonymous letter from Berwick reveals, the English in Scotland were aware of the direction in which Bruce was moving, but his swiftness took them by surprise. By the last week of March the earl had arrived at Scone Abbey, where a sizeable number of other Scottish nobles and churchmen had also assembled to witness and approve a revolution. It was 25 March, the feast of the Annunciation. Precisely one year earlier Bruce had been in Westminster, watching Edward I celebrate his final victory over the Scots before the shrine of the Confessor. Now, one year on, the earl was crowned as King Robert I. Scotland, recently relegated to the status of a land, was defiantly declared to be a kingdom once more.
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‘And when bold Edward was told how Bruce, who was so bold, had finished off the Comyn, and then made himself king, he went nearly out of his mind.’ Although written some seven decades later, these lines by the Scottish poet John Barbour may come very close to the truth. Edward’s wrath when he finally understood what was happening in Scotland was truly terrible, and probably contributed to a sharp and sudden decline in his health. In January and February 1306, as we have seen, the king was itinerating at much the same rate as usual. But by early March he was confined to Winchester, from where he did not stir for the next two months. When, at length, he left the city in the middle of May, he was being carried in a litter.
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