The History of England - Vols. 1 to 6 (109 page)

The spirits of the clergy were at last broken by this harsh treatment. Besides that the whole province of York, which lay nearest the danger that still hung over them from the Scots, voluntarily, from the first, voted a fifth of their moveables; the bishops of Salisbury, Ely, and some others, made a composition for the secular clergy within their dioceses; and they agreed, not to pay the fifth, which would have been an act of disobedience to Boniface’s bull, but to deposit a sum equivalent to some church appointed them; whence it was taken by the king’s officers.
u
Many particular convents and clergymen made payment of a like sum, and received the king’s

protection.w
Those who had not ready money, entered into recognizances for the payment. And there was scarcely found one ecclesiastic in the kingdom, who seemed willing to suffer, for the sake of religious privileges, this new species of martyrdom, the most tedious and languishing of any, the most mortifying to spiritual pride, and not rewarded by that crown of glory, which the church holds up, with such ostentation, to her devoted adherents.

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But as the money, granted by parliament, though considerable, Arbitrary measures.

was not sufficient to supply the king’s necessities, and that levied by compositions with the clergy came in slowly, Edward was obliged, for the obtaining of farther supply, to exert his arbitrary power, and to lay an oppressive hand on all orders of men in the kingdom. He limited the merchants in the quantity of wool allowed to be exported; and at the same time forced them to pay him a duty of forty shillings a sack, which was computed to be above the third of the value.
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He seized all the rest of the wool, as well as all the leather of the kingdom, into his hands, and

disposed of these commodities for his own benefit:y
He required the sheriffs of each county to supply him with 2000 quarters of wheat, and as many of oats, which he permitted them to seize wherever they could find them. The cattle and other commodities, necessary for supplying his army, were laid hold of without the consent of the owners:
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And though he promised to pay afterwards the equivalent of all these goods, men saw but little probability that a prince, who submitted so little to the limitations of law, could ever, amidst his multiplied necessities, be reduced to a strict observance of his engagements. He showed at the same time an equal disregard to the principles of the feudal law, by which all the lands of his kingdom were held: In order to encrease his army, and enable him to support that great effort, which he intended to make against France, he required the attendance of every proprietor of land, possessed of twenty pounds a year, even though he held not of the crown, and was not obliged by his tenure to perform any such service.
a

These acts of violence and of arbitrary power, notwithstanding the great personal regard generally borne to the king, bred murmurs in every order of men; and it was not long, ere some of the great nobility, jealous of their own privileges, as well as of national liberty, gave countenance and authority to these complaints. Edward assembled on the sea-coast an army, which he purposed to send over to Gascony, while he himself should in person make an impression on the side of Flanders; and he intended to put these forces under the command of Humphrey Bohun, earl of Hereford, the constable, and Roger Bigod, earl of Norfolk, the Mareschal of England.

But these two powerful earls refused to execute his commands, and affirmed, that they were only obliged by their office to attend his person in the wars. A violent altercation ensued; and the king, in the height of his passion, addressing himself to the constable, exclaimed,
Sir earl, by God, you shall either go or hang. By God, Sir King,
replied Hereford,
Iwill neither go nor hang.
b
And he immediately departed, with the mareschal, and above thirty other considerable barons.

Upon this opposition, the king laid aside the project of an expedition against Guienne; and assembled the forces, which he himself purposed to transport into Flanders. But the two earls, irritated in the contest and elated by impunity, pretending that none of their ancestors had ever served in that country, refused to perform the duty of their

office in mustering the army.c
The king, now finding it adviseable to proceed with moderation, instead of attainting the earls, who possessed their dignities by hereditary right, appointed Thomas de Berkeley, and Geoffrey de Geyne[chville, to act in that emergence, as constable and mareschal.
d
He endeavoured to reconcile himself with

the church; took the primate again into favour;e
made him, in conjunction with Reginald de Grey, tutor to the prince, whom he intended to appoint guardian of the kingdom during his absence; and he even assembled a great number of the nobility in PLL v6.0 (generated September, 2011)

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Westminster-hall, to whom he deigned to make an apology for his past conduct. He pleaded the urgent necessities of the crown; his extreme want of money; his engagements from honour as well as interest to support his foreign allies: And he promised, if ever he returned in safety, to redress all their grievances, to restore the execution of the laws, and to make all his subjects compensation for the losses which they had sustained. Meanwhile, he begged them to suspend their animosities; to judge of him by his future conduct, of which, he hoped, he should be more master; to remain faithful to his government, or if he perished in the present war, to preserve

their allegiance to his son and successor.f

There were certainly, from the concurrence of discontents among the great, and grievances of the people, materials sufficient, in any other period, to have kindled a civil war in England: But the vigour and abilities of Edward kept every one in awe; and his dexterity, in stopping on the brink of danger, and retracting the measures, to which he had been pushed by his violent temper and arbitrary principles, saved the nation from so great a calamity. The two great earls dared not to break out into open violence: They proceeded no farther than framing a remonstrance, which was delivered to the king at Winchelsea, when he was ready to embark for Flanders. They there complained of the violations of the great charter and that of forests; the violent seizure of corn, leather, cattle, and above all, of wool, a commodity, which they affirmed to be equal in value to half the lands of the kingdom; the arbitrary imposition of forty shillings a sack on the small quantity of wool allowed to be exported by the merchants; and they claimed an immediate redress of all these grievances.
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The king told them, that the greater part of his council were now at a distance, and without their advice he could not deliberate on measures of so great importance.
h

But the constable and mareschal, with the barons of their party, Dissensions with the

resolved to take advantage of Edward’s absence, and to obtain an barons.

explicite assent to their demands. When summoned to attend the parliament at London, they came with a great body of cavalry and infantry; and before they would enter the city, required that the gates should be put into their custody.
i
The primate, who secretly favoured all their pretensions, advised the council to comply; and thus they became masters both of the young prince and of the resolutions of parliament. Their demands, however, were moderate; and such as sufficiently justify the purity of their intentions in all their past measures: They only required, that the two charters should receive a solemn confirmation; that a clause should be added to secure the nation for ever against all impositions and taxes without consent of parliament; and that they themselves and their adherents, who had refused to attend the king into Flanders, should be pardoned for the offence, and should be again

received into favour.k
The prince of Wales and his council assented to these terms; and the charters were sent over to the king in Flanders to be there confirmed by him.

Edward felt the utmost reluctance to this measure, which, he apprehended, would for the future impose fetters on his conduct, and set limits to his lawless authority. On various pretences, he delayed three days giving any answer to the deputies; and when the pernicious consequences of his refusal were represented to him, he was at last obliged, after many internal struggles, to affix his seal to the charters, as also to the clause that bereaved him of the power, which he had hitherto assumed, of imposing

arbitrary taxes upon the people.l

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That we may finish at once this interesting transaction concerning the settlement of the charters, we shall briefly mention the subsequent events which relate to it. The constable and mareschal, informed of the king’s compliance, were satisfied; and not only ceased from disturbing the government, but assisted the regency with their power against the Scots, who had risen in arms, and had thrown off the yoke of England.
m

But being sensible, that the smallest pretence would suffice to make Edward retract these detested laws, which, though they had often received the sanction both of king and parliament, and had been acknowledged during three reigns, were never yet deemed to have sufficient validity; they insisted, that he should again confirm them on his return to England, and should thereby renounce all plea which he might derive from his residing in a foreign country, when he formerly affixed his seal to them.
n
It appeared, that they judged aright of Edward’s character and intentions: He delayed this confirmation as long as possible; and when the fear of worse consequences obliged him again to comply, he expressly added a salvo for his royal dignity or prerogative, which in effect enervated the whole force of the charters.
o
The two earls and their adherents left the parliament in disgust; and the king was constrained, on a future occasion, to grant to the people, without any subterfuge, a pure and absolute confirmation of those laws,
p
which were so much the object of their passionate affection. Even farther securities were then provided for the establishment of national privileges. Three knights were appointed to be chosen in each county, and were invested with the power of punishing, by fine and imprisonment, every transgression or violation of the charters:
q
A precaution, which, though it was soon disused, as encroaching too much on royal prerogative, proves the attachment, which the English in that age bore to liberty, and their well-grounded jealousy of the arbitrary disposition of Edward.

The work, however, was not yet entirely finished and complete. In order to execute the lesser charter, it was requisite, by new perambulations, to set bounds to the royal forests, and to disafforest all land which former encroachments had comprehended within their limits. Edward discovered the same reluctance to comply with this equitable demand; and it was not till after many delays on his part, and many solicitations and requests, and even menaces of war and violence,
r
on the part of the barons, that the perambulations were made, and exact boundaries fixed, by a jury in

each county, to the extent of his forests.s
Had not his ambitious and active temper raised him so many foreign enemies, and obliged him to have recourse so often to the assistance of his subjects, it is not likely that those concessions could ever have been extorted from him.

But while the people, after so many successful struggles, deemed themselves happy in the secure possession of their privileges; they were surprized in 1305 to find, that Edward had secretly applied to Rome, and had procured, from that mercenary court, an absolution from all the oaths and engagements, which he had so often reiterated, to observe both the charters. There are some historians
t
so credulous as to imagine, that this perilous step was taken by him for no other purpose than to acquire the merit of granting a new confirmation of the charters, as he did soon after; and a confirmation so much the more unquestionable, as it could never after be invalidated by his successors, on pretence of any force or violence which had been imposed upon him.

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applied for any such absolution, the whole tenor of his conduct proves him to be little susceptible of such refinements in patriotism; and this very deed itself, in which he anew confirmed the charters, carries on the face of it a very opposite presumption.

Though he ratified the charters in general, he still took advantage of the papal bull so far as to invalidate the late perambulations of the forests, which had been made with such care and attention, and to reserve to himself the power, in case of favourable incidents, to extend as much as formerly those arbitrary jurisdictions. If the power was not in fact made use of, we can only conclude, that the favourable incidents did not offer.

Thus, after the contests of near a whole century, and these ever accompanied with violent jealousies, often with public convulsions, the Great Charter was finally established; and the English nation have the honour of extorting, by their perseverance, this concession from the ablest, the most warlike, and the most

ambitious of all their princes.u
It is computed, that above thirty confirmations of the charter were at different times required of several kings, and granted by them, in full parliament; a precaution, which, while it discovers some ignorance of the true nature of law and government, proves a laudable jealousy of national privileges in the people, and an extreme anxiety, lest contrary precedents should ever be pleaded as an authority for infringing them. Accordingly we find, that, though arbitrary practices often prevailed, and were even able to establish themselves into settled customs, the validity of the Great Charter was never afterwards formally disputed; and that grant was still regarded as the basis of English government, and the sure rule by which the authority of every custom was to be tried and canvassed. The jurisdiction of the Star-chamber, martial law, imprisonment by warrants from the privy-council, and other practices of a like nature, though established for several centuries, were scarcely ever allowed by the English to be parts of their constitution: The affection of the nation for liberty still prevailed over all precedent, and even all political reasoning: The exercise of these powers, after being long the source of secret murmurs among the people, was, in fulness of time, solemnly abolished, as illegal, at least as oppressive, by the whole legislative authority.