The man known to history as King Edward I was born at some stage on the night of the 17th
of June 1239 or the early hours of the 18th at the Palace of Westminster which was then lying
on the western outskirts of the city of London. His father was King Henry III of England, a
monarch who had ruled the country from childhood, but was only just beginning to exercise some
actual authority himself in his early thirties as Edward was born. Henry was an extremely
pious, religious man who was devoted to the cult of Saint Edward the Confessor and
he named his eldest son after the saint. His mother was Eleanor of Provence, a
French noblewoman whom his father had married three years before Edward was born.
Henry and Eleanor’s marriage was a happy one in a time when royal weddings were
often arranged for political purposes. In the years following Edward’s birth she
and Henry would have four further children, a boy Edmund, and three girls, Margaret,
Beatrice and Katherine. Three of Edward’s siblings would survive into their adult years,
but Katherine died before her fourth birthday. Young Edward was born at a time when England was
in the midst of considerable political turmoil. His grandfather, King John, who had ruled England
from 1199 to 1216, had been a controversial and in many ways a weak ruler. In the early 1200s he
had engaged in a series of disastrous conflicts in France which resulted in the loss of much of
England’s extensive territories in the north of the country to King Philip II of France, notably
the Duchy of Normandy which had formed the core of the English presence on the other side of
the English Channel. Then in the mid-1210s John had faced a revolt by his own English
lords known as the First Barons’ War. John initiated some political reforms before
his death in 1216 in order to quell the unrest, including the Magna Carta or ‘Great Charter’ of
1215, but the succession of Edward’s father when he was just nine years old ensured that there
would be no quick end to England’s domestic turmoil. Henry III was a pious and in many ways an
honourable ruler, but he was ineffective in some other ways and easily dominated by court factions
for much of his long reign. Consequently, Edward’s younger years were dominated by unstable politics
throughout England, further civil strife, an extensive revolt in Wales and on the international
stage a failure to recover any of England’s former territories in France. Eventually, Edward would
be sucked into the civil strife of his father’s reign and he would often find himself in
opposition to the king’s own government. As was typical for royal children at the time
Edward was raised largely away from his parents in his own royal household. Letters from his
father demonstrate a fatherly concern for the young prince, though perhaps not of the kind
which would be typical today. In 1242, when he was around three years old Henry expressed a concern
that Edward didn’t have good wine to drink. In his youth Edward’s care was handed over to Hugh
Giffard and then in 1246 to Bartholomew Pecche, a close friend of the king’s. Serious concerns
arose concerning Edward’s health around this time and these issues did not fully abate until the
early 1250s. The details of how he was educated are unfortunately quite scant, but this was
a time when there was a greater emphasis on pursuing martial abilities and other pursuits such
as hunting and jousting than there was on academic accomplishment for a future king. As a result,
Edward would be no scholar king. In the mid-1250s Edward, who became known as the Lord Edward from
a young age, was granted considerable authority over the crown’s possessions outside England,
specifically Ireland, Gascony and Wales, each of which afforded him a large income and gave him
a certain degree of independence from his father. From 1256 Edward’s official seal was being used
in Ireland to indicate his senior position there. In 1154, though he was just fourteen years of
age, Edward was married to Eleanor of Castile, who herself was a year and a bit younger
than Edward. The marriage of the pair, who were barely entering their teenage years, was
a political act designed to shore up English power in its remaining French territory of Gascony,
which lay just to the north of the Kingdom of Castile in Spain. Despite the arranged
nature of the marriage it was a very happy one. Eleanor and Edward were devoted to
each other and she accompanied him everywhere, even years later heading on Crusade with him
to the Holy Land. A long marriage which lasted over 35 years resulted in many children.
It is believed there were fourteen in all, though the exact number is not entirely clear
at a time when infant mortality and stillbirths were common. These generally arrived in a
twenty year period between 1264 and 1284, though only one son, the future King Edward II,
survived into adulthood, as did five daughters, Eleanor, Joan, Margaret, Mary and Elizabeth,
although Eleanor would die as well before she reached her thirtieth year. Thus, at least eight
of their children died in infancy or childhood, a rate which even by the standards of the time
was unusually cruel on Edward and Eleanor. By the late 1250s Edward was being pulled into the
political strife of his father’s reign. Numerous issues, including the perception of the king’s
fiscal recklessness and his excessive support for the French relatives of the queen at
court, combined to force many of the English lords and some of the powerful French faction
led by an influential political figure called Simon de Montfort to push Henry into make
concessions at a parliament held at Oxford in 1258. The so-called Provisions of Oxford saw
many of Henry’s French councillors expelled from positions of influence and the government of
England was all but handed over to a group of 15 councillors who were selected from amongst
the leading magnates and nobles of the realm. Edward’s position in all of this was ambiguous
and he did not overly support his father. Indeed when an even more radical series of
measures, known as the Provisions of Westminster, were forced on the king in 1259 the
rebellious lords who implemented these had the support of Edward himself. All of this
effectively resulted in a drastic reduction in the king’s power, while Edward, who had felt
stifled by his father in recent years attained a greater position of authority within this
form of conciliar government of the late 1250s. Though often viewed as a weak king, Henry was not
willing to acquiesce with this curtailment of his power. He now moved to acquire the aid of the
French king, Louis IX, against his own nobles by formally relinquishing English claims to the
Duchy of Normandy and other French territories which had effectively been lost to the French over
half a century earlier. In return Louis provided Henry with financial and military support
with which he returned to England in 1260 and began re-establishing his royal authority. By
late 1261 de Montfort had been exiled to France and Edward had reconciled with his father after
much jostling. He was briefly sent to Gascony in France where he stabilised the region, but as the
disturbances in England continued he was recalled. Then, when de Montfort crossed back from France
to England in the spring of 1263, a new opposition movement began to emerge at Oxford. By the autumn
armed clashes between the king and his opponents were occurring and by the winter of 1263
de Montfort’s alliance of fractious lords were able to seize control of London. This time
it was decided to put matters to King Louis IX to act as an arbitrator in the dispute. But Louis
sided with Henry and proposed the annulment of the earlier provisions that had been agreed at Oxford
and Westminster in 1258 and 1259. Given this de Montfort and his allies chose renewed war and
what is known as the Second Barons’ War commenced. Unlike in the late 1250s, when the civil
war commenced in 1264 Edward was steadfastly loyal to his father. In April he played a
leading role in the capture of Northampton where one of Simon de Montfort’s son was gathering
a large baronial army. But the war would be won or lost in the south and early that summer it
started to go very badly. At the Battle of Lewes in Sussex in the south-east of England on
the 14th of May 1264 the royalist forces engaged de Montfort’s army. Edward led the cavalry on the
right wing of his father’s army to good effect, but the battle was lost overall as de Montfort’s
forces occupied a strategic position on the high ground of Offham Hill. In its aftermath Edward was
taken as a hostage and placed under confinement, while Henry was forced to make
massive concessions to de Montfort. For all of a year de Montfort was virtually an
uncrowned King of England, but when Edward escaped and began building up a royalist force again
in the Welsh marches the tables turned. He was now effectively the head of the royalist cause as
his father remained a prisoner of de Montfort’s. Concerted campaigns throughout the summer of 1165
brought much of the north and western England back under crown control and de Montfort was forced
to engage Edward in the field at Evesham on the 4th of August 1265. Here Edward
outmanoeuvred de Montfort before the battle, who was placed on the defensive from the
offset. The result was a crushing victory for Edward in the course of which de Montfort
was killed and the king was finally released. Victory at Evesham did not bring the war to an
end. Campaigning continued through late 1265 and into 1266 before the last major stronghold,
Kenilworth, was placed under siege. Edward briefly joined this action in the summer of 1266.
The dictum of Kenilworth was issued in October, which laid out terms whereby those who had
been in rebellion would be able to repurchase their lands from the crown. It was hoped
by this that the garrison would surrender, but they refused and held out until December.
By then Edward had gone north to deal with further operations to mop up rebels there.
A final push was made by the lords on London early in 1267. It was led by the Earl of
Gloucester and posed a serious threat that the tide of the war could yet again turn, but Edward
entered into negotiations with Gloucester who was effectively bought off. With this matters began
to wind down. A more conciliatory line was taken towards those who were still in arms, which led
to the laying down of weapons in many locations. Edward campaigned to the Isle of Ely in the early
summer, which was seized with little difficulty, while a final push into the Fens in early July
saw the last of the rebels surrender. The Second Barons’ War was over and Edward had played a
key role in victory for his father’s cause. Plans were quickly initiated to reach a political
settlement in order to bring the tensions that had caused the Second Barons’ War to an end. The
result was the Statute of Marlborough which was issued in November 1267 whereby some of the legal
and fiscal reforms that had been desired in the late 1250s and which Edward had briefly supported,
were implemented, this time with royal consent. It is unclear what part Edward played in
the debates over these changes. Indeed it is difficult to determine what his exact role in
government was at all in the late 1260s. Disputes arose frequently involving him, one with the Earl
of Gloucester over their overlapping jurisdictions around the town of Bristol. There is some evidence
of Edward being involved in royal councils, but certainly not on the scale that one would have
assumed would be the case given his prominence in ending the war, though he did receive extensive
estates in the land confiscations that followed the conflict. Overall it had been a mixed
political apprenticeship for him. He had gained extensive experience as a military commander
and to a lesser extent as an administrator, but Edward had also gained a reputation,
one which is perhaps overstated at times, for being politically manipulative, someone
who had been willing to throw in his lot with his father’s enemies in the late 1250s, but
then changed sides quickly in the early 1260s. Despite his father’s increasing old age and
infirmity Edward became determined in the late 1260s to depart on a Crusade to the Holy Land.
The Crusades had been a central pillar of life in Europe during the High Middle Ages. Beginning
in the 1090s the Papacy had begun urging Christendom’s monarchs, lords and knights that
it was their solemn duty as the faithful of God to try to reclaim the Holy Land, and
the city of Jerusalem in particular, from the Muslim heathens there. A First Crusade in
the final years of the eleventh century had proved enormously successful, with Jerusalem and several
other cities such as Antioch and Acre captured and four Crusader states established. However, in the
course of the twelfth century these had declined and Jerusalem was eventually conquered by the
Muslim lord Saladin in 1187. Despite a concerted effort by Edward’s great-uncle, King Richard
the Lionheart, to reclaim it during the Third Crusade in the early 1190s, the city remained out
of Christian hands and the other Crusader states continued to decline into the thirteenth century,
despite numerous further Crusades. Edward’s father had long hoped to head on Crusade himself, but now
Edward took up the mantle for him. In the early 1170s Edward would head on what was to be the
Ninth Crusade, but which is typically referred to as Lord Edward’s Crusade, such was his centrality
to it. It was preached in response to the threat posed to the remaining Christian presence
in the Levant by the Mamluk sultan Baibars. When the crusade had been called by the Pope,
the French king and his sons had agreed to take the cross and travel to the Holy Land. As a
consequence Edward possibly felt duty bound to do so on behalf of the English royal
family, though there is little doubting that he was also an enthusiastic participant.
The expedition was funded in part by the crown, but Edward bore a considerable amount of the
expenses through his own household, a not inconsiderable burden. Approximately 225 knights
agreed to travel with the prince and these were complemented by several hundred further troops
and auxiliaries. Most of these were royalists who had fought on the crown’s side in the civil
conflicts in England of the 1250s and 1260s, and there was a reluctance by many of those lords
who had only recently reconciled with the crown to engage in the royal expedition. As a result of
all this the crusade which set off from England in the summer of 1270 was a decidedly small
one by comparison with some of its forbears. Recruitment had been difficult and even the
financing precarious and based to a considerable extent on a loan of £17,500 from King Louis
IX of France, the leader of the much larger French contingent, with plans for some taxes to be
raised in England to pay for it retrospectively. Edward’s army was travelling behind the much
larger French contingent and when he finally caught up with them in the late autumn of 1270 at
Tunis in North Africa he learned that King Louis IX had died of dysentery some weeks earlier. There
the new leader of the French contingent, Charles of Anjou, entered into a negotiation with the emir
of Tunis whereby the expedition would be diverted to Sicily in order to see to matters in Italy,
where the French had become involved in the south of the country some years earlier. Edward was
indignant with this diversion and instead elected to continue with his small contingent along the
original route and headed eastwards as planned, landing at the crusader stronghold of Acre
in the Holy Land in mid-May 1271. The Lord Edward’s Crusade possibly scored an immediate
victory upon his arrival. The Christian port was threatened by the Mamluk leader, Baibars, at the
time and some of the contemporary sources suggest that Edward’s arrival prevented an onslaught on
the town, however, the Arab sources are altogether less congratulatory of the English lord on this
count. In any event when Baibars did appear outside the walls of Acre early that summer,
with far superior forces than Edward possessed, he could have almost certainly taken the
town had he decided to besiege it.
Edward’s admittedly meagre forces spent over six
weeks ensconced at Acre before finally making a foray to St George-de-Lebeyne about 25 kilometres
from the town. The piercing summer heat and some food poisoning stalled any efforts to proceed
further. A campaign against Qaqun about 65 kilometres from Acre in the early winter was more
successful and resulted in the defeat of a Muslim force outside the town, but the main citadel
could not be taken and the crusader’s eventually retreated to Acre once again. Ultimately the issue
was that little could be achieved with the very limited resources in men and money available to
Edward following the French abandonment of the Crusade a year earlier. Accordingly, it was not
surprising when Hugues III, the King of Cyprus and titular King of Jerusalem, concluded a truce
with Baibars to last ten years in the early summer of 1272. Edward was angry at the decision, but the
Cypriot king was anxious to take advantage of the willingness of the Mamluk leader to agree such
terms, which had become necessary after a large foray by the Mongols into the Levant late in
1271 that temporarily threatened the Mamluk rear, had quickly dissipated. Edward remained in the
Holy Land until September 1272, during which time he held hopes of perhaps changing Hugues’s
mind, but the Crusade was effectively over. Probably the most notable incident
during Edward’s time in the middle east occurred one night in his bed chamber when he
was attacked and almost killed by an assassin. It is unclear who ordered his death as some
accounts state it was Baibars, whereas others say it was ordered by a mysterious “Old man of
the Mountains” who was a leader of a fanatical Islamic sect. During this attempt on his life,
Edward was able to fend off and kill his assailant but was stabbed with a poisoned knife during the
struggle. His wife Eleanor, according to accounts, then sucked the poison from the wound, possibly
saving her husband’s life in the process and the two then left the Holy land in September of 1272
as it was evident that their lives were in danger and also that little more could be
done to further the Christian cause. Edward set off on the return journey
to England in September. He left behind a crusader presence which was living on
borrowed time. In the years that followed, pressure on Acre from the Mamluke
and others continued and Edward, like his contemporary monarchs across Europe,
would receive repeated calls for further aid to be sent throughout the 1270s and 1280s. These
were not heeded in any substantive way and finally in 1291 the Crusader presence in the Holy Land was
brought to an end nearly 200 years after it began, when Acre fell to the Mamluks. Back in the autumn
of 1272 Edward headed home via southern Italy. He was there by early 1273 where he learned the
news that his father had died the previous November and that he was now King of England.
However, despite receiving this information, he did not head hastily for England. Rather
he engaged in a slow journey through Italy and southern France before heading to Paris to pay
homage to the new French king, Philip III, who was theoretically Edward’s liege lord over his lands
in France. Edward then visited those few meagre remaining possessions which England held on the
continent in Gascony, before finally returning to England in August 1274, by which time the country
had been without a king for nearly two years. Plans for Edward’s coronation had been underway
well before his eventual landing in England on the 2nd of August 1274. Consequently it was possible
for the ceremony to be held just over two weeks later on the 19th of August. Disputes invariably
arose concerning precedence, with Edward’s brother Edmund pushing for him to be given a greater role
as he had acted as steward of the realm during Edward’s absence, while a perennial argument at
medieval royal coronations over the seniority of the archbishops of Canterbury and York saw the
latter excluded altogether from the ceremony. Otherwise things went smoothly and the celebration
took place on a grand scale. An enormous banquet involving thousands of cows, oxen, pigs and
chickens was to be held, while other staple fare of the medieval and early modern periods such as
swan, cranes and goats were prepared. Westminster Abbey was redecorated at considerable expense.
When the coronation finally came it was the first to involve the coronation of both a King and
Queen of England since the Norman Conquest over 200 years earlier. The Archbishop of Canterbury,
Robert Kilwardby, placed the crown on Edward’s head, which he duly removed, affirming that he
would not wear it again until the lands England had lost under his father were reclaimed. Thus did
he affirm that it was the beginning of a new age. The man who had just become king is often
represented as a dour Machiavellian, but this is not precisely accurate. Standing at six foot,
two inches Edward acquired the name Longshanks on account of his unusual height at a time when few
men reached six foot. By the time he was crowned the blonde hair of his youth was beginning to
darken and it would turn grey in his middle years. He spoke with a very slight lisp, but with
purpose and persuasively. In religious terms he was orthodox and made the conventional donations
to churches and monasteries, while hardly being possessed of anywhere near the religious devotion
of his father. He was probably not well read, but expressed his cultural proclivities through
his patronage of architecture and painting, notably supporting Walter of Durham who did much
to decorate the interiors of Westminster Abbey. By disposition he could be good natured and
amiable, but also prone to violent outbursts. He enjoyed hunting and was a keen supporter
of the tying of the Arthurian legend to the English monarchy. Ultimately, though
his administrative abilities were limited in many ways, with very little understanding
of the nuances of finance and logistics, but what he lacked in this regard he more
than made up for with his sense of purpose and forcefulness, traits which had
been lacking in an English monarch since the days of his great-uncle, Richard
the Lionheart, over seventy years earlier. One of the first issues that arose for Edward as
king back in England came from the west in Wales. The Normans had established a significant amount
of control over Wales following their conquest of England in the eleventh century and that had
been maintained and even strengthened for much of the twelfth century, but the weakened state of
the English crown during the reigns of Edward’s grandfather and father had seen a succession
of rebellions there by the Welsh princes, notably Llywelyn ap Gruffudd, in an attempt to
re-establish Wales’s independence from England again. However, ap Gruffudd failed to realise
that the English crown’s position was stronger by the 1270s. Therefore Edward expected Llywelyn
to pay homage to him, as his ancestors had done as a matter of course. His grandfather, Llywelyn the
Great, for instance, had paid homage to both King John and Henry III in the 1200s and 1210s. Thus,
when Llywelyn invaded English territory in the march region Edward considered it the actions of
a rebellious subject and became determined to act against him. He was aided in this by the fact that
ap Gruffudd had alienated several of the other Welsh princes who had sought refuge at the English
court. Thus, in the summer of 1277 Edward at the head of a great royal army of 15,000 men advanced
into northern Wales with a fleet in support. No violence was needed. Llywelyn realised that this
overwhelming show of force was an indication that his ambitions needed to be tempered and he came to
terms with Edward through the Treaty of Aberconwy whereby his authority was severely curtailed
in Wales and he agreed to pay a huge indemnity of £50,000 to the English crown. Consequently
the homage of the Welsh lords which had been paid to kings such as Henry II in the twelfth
century was quickly re-established under Edward. This certainly did not settle the matter. A new
war broke out five years later in 1282 and on this occasion Edward faced a combination of the Welsh
princes, many of whom had allied with him in 1277, but who were disillusioned at his failure
to sufficiently reward them for their aid in the aftermath of that invasion. Llywelyn’s
brother Dafydd initiated proceedings by attacking Hawarden Castle in April, which was followed by
further attacks on English castles in the region. Edward showed a similar resolve to that which
he had demonstrated five years earlier. As he perceived it Llywelyn and the other Welsh lords
were not independent princes of a foreign land, but rebels of a country long controlled by England
who were refusing to pay proper homage to him as their monarch. This was a mind-set which
Edward would employ later towards England’s northern neighbour as well. A large host was once
again assembled and sent into northern Wales to surround the ap Gruffudd stronghold in Snowdonia.
When Llywelyn subsequently attempted to break out of the encirclement into central Wales he was
killed in action at Irfon Bridge on the 11th of December 1282, while efforts to continue to war
by his brother Dafydd were ineffective. Thus, the last Welsh stronghold surrendered in April
1283, just one year after the war had commenced. Dafydd ap Gruffudd was handed over to Edward’s
government shortly thereafter and executed, thus breaking the resistance of the foremost
opponents of English intervention in Wales.
Victory in 1283 saw one of the most thorough
English reductions of Welsh independence ever seen. The Statute of Wales was passed in 1284 and
extended English systems of government into Wales. New English-style counties were created and
English local government introduced. Many Welsh nobles were disinherited and their
lands granted away to English followers of Edward. To cement this new imposition of
English rule a comprehensive programme of castle building was also undertaken at
sites like Conwy, Caernarfon and Harlech. New towns quickly emerged at these same sites and
others such as Flint, Aberystwyth and Rhuddlan, while efforts were made to Anglicize existing
Welsh towns. Yet there were limitations to all of this and it should not be assumed that Edward
I completed the English conquest of Wales. Rebellions broke out in 1287 and again in 1294,
the latter requiring a huge injection of English military power. Almost 30,000 men were involved
in one fashion or another before the revolt was finally suppressed in the spring of 1295. All in
all the endeavour distracted Edward from issues he was facing elsewhere by the 1290s and had cost
the crown an enormous sum of £55,000 to crush, highlighting how precarious control over
Wales would remain for many years to come. The issue of financing such armies as were
employed in Wales at various points between the mid-1270s and the mid-1290s was a major
concern for an administration that aimed to reassert English power in a substantial fashion
on several fronts. A major overhaul of the English finances and government was undertaken as a result
to increase the inflow to the exchequer. No sooner had Edward been crowned than he appointed a
close ally, Robert Burnell, as Chancellor of the Exchequer. Burnell immediately announced
a commission of inquiry into various aspects of the government finances and administration, the
primary purpose of which was to identify concealed lands which the crown had title to, but records
of which had been lost. Though the results were mixed, this inquiry did influence the formation
of the extensive Statutes of Westminster which were promulgated in the spring of 1275. This
was the first of several acts down to 1290 which sought to end abuses of land tenure and
the subinfeudation of land whereby the lords were robbed of their feudal dues. The rights of
tenants were also seen to, while the crown sought to restrict the church and others from granting
away lands without royal approval, the better for the crown to receive its own income from such
transactions. Overall this legislation constituted major changes to the crown finances, landholding
and issues of debt in medieval England. While the inquiry of 1274 and the resulting
Statutes of Westminster in 1275 began the process of reforming certain elements of landholding
and other issues pertaining to the crown, they did not solve the fiscal problem. Additional
financial measures were introduced as a result in 1275. A customs duty of six shillings and eight
pence was placed on sacks of wool being exported from England. The English cloth trade at the time
was very considerable and this modest customs duty yielded approximately £10,000 a year into Edward’s
exchequer, a sum equivalent to tens of millions of pounds today. Added to this was a one-off tax
of one-fifteenth of the value of moveable goods, a medieval wealth tax of sorts which yielded
upwards of £80,000. These measures were augmented by reforms to the running of the exchequer, while
the church also faced additional taxation from 1279 onwards. That same year a recoinage was
undertaken, a measure that was engaged in for the dual purposes of removing forged coins from
circulation and gaining the crown an additional financial windfall in its reissue of new coins.
Such measures had to be undertaken regularly in an age when coin value was still based largely on
the silver content of the coins in circulation. While these efforts at financial reform
were broadly successful they still did not prove sufficient for Edward’s government
to meet the cost of its wars over the years. For instance, when unrest arose in Wales again
in the early 1280s it took the crown by surprise and money had to be raised fast. Initially the
deficit was met by taking loans from the wealthy merchant communities of the towns totalling over
£16,000. When this proved insufficient to meet the military situation regional assemblies were
called for early in 1283 in the north of England and other districts. Italian merchant bankers
such as the Riccardi family, whose influence as bankers extended across much of Western and
Central Europe by the late thirteenth century, were also turned to. What all of this revealed
was that despite how effective the reforms of the 1270s had been England still could not finance
a major war effort for an extended period of time without resorting to extraordinary measures to
collect additional money. Consequently further reforms of the exchequer were undertaken in
the 1280s, notably the Statute of Rhuddlan which aimed to improve bookkeeping and
root out some of the corruption that was endemic in all pre-modern societies.
These measures ultimately saw increasing efficiencies in the administrative apparatus
of the English state during Edward’s reign. All of this legislation and fiscal
improvement of the 1270s and 1280s played out against a backdrop of parliamentary
reform. Today, the Magna Carta, which was passed in the dying months of King John’s reign, is
typically seen as the great constitutional event of the High Middle Ages in England, but this
is generally overstated. While it ensured some rights to the English nobility
in their relationship with the crown, the more significant developments in parliament,
the legislative assembly which would go on to become the mother parliament of modern democracy,
actually began to occur during Edward’s reign. For instance, it was Edward who oversaw the beginnings
of the system whereby parliamentary members were returned down to the modern era. This stipulated
that two knights were to be returned to parliament from every county and two burgesses from every
corporate town, a system which began to implement national representation for the first time. This
presaged the constituency system which most modern democracies elect their parliaments according
to today. In addition, Edward established a tradition in his first parliament of
1275 of asking parliament for permission for extraordinary taxation, a development that
was designed to avoid the constitutional conflicts that had dogged his father and grandfather’s
reigns. In the process Edward’s major contribution to parliamentary developments in England was to
establish a reciprocal relationship between crown and country. The crown and government could
request taxes and the country could ask for favours and reforms in return. This system would
operate effectively until the seventeenth century. There were administrative and financial successes
elsewhere. Though events in Ireland are generally little commented upon in studies of Edward’s
reign there were significant developments there during his forty plus years in power. Much of
the country had been first conquered by England in the late twelfth century, though some
parts of it remained outside of English rule. It was still expanding during Edward’s reign,
though based largely on the initiative of the English lords there. Two measures are notable
though. A Lay Subsidy Tax was initiated in 1292 and this was used in the years that followed to
fund the establishment of a new Irish parliament with elected representatives which met officially
for the first time in 1297. It would last for over 500 years until the Act of Union subsumed the
Irish parliament into the English parliament at Westminster. In addition to this Edward’s reign
saw a notable strengthening and expansion of the court system in Ireland, with centralised courts
in Dublin and regional courts in the provinces dispensing justice under the common law. As a
result of all this Ireland generated a healthy profit for the English exchequer by the end of
Edward’s reign and English political commentators on Ireland of the early modern period would
look back from a vantage point of over 250 years and view the early fourteenth century as
the heyday of English rule in Ireland. A further issue which impacted on the finances of
Edward’s kingdom was the position of the Jewish people. A sizeable Jewish population had emerged
in England during the late eleventh and twelfth centuries. As elsewhere in Europe many Jewish
people began working as money lenders, as this was a profitable endeavour and the Roman Catholic
Church forbade Christians to practice usury, the loaning out of money at extortionate
rates. Therefore by the early twelfth century, the Jewish community in England was playing a
role in the economic life of the country that was significant considering their actual numbers. This
coincided with a growing Anti-Semitism in England. Jews were perceived by medieval Christians as
being guilty of deicide, the murder of god, in having called for Jesus’s execution. This,
combined with the issue of Jewish moneylending and their growing role in the economy, had
led to increasing persecution of the country’s Jewish community during Edward’s father’s long
reign, notably in extorting heavy sums of money from the country’s Jews through extraordinary
taxation on them and the application of heavy pressure on the country’s Jewish
people to convert to Christianity. Edward increased these Anti-Semitic
policies as soon as he became king. In 1275 the Statute of Jewry was passed which
outlawed Jewish people from practicing usury, relieving many of those who owed money to Jewish
money-lenders of their debts, confining the Jewish people into ghettos in certain towns and
cities and forcing those over seven years of age to wear a yellow badge marking them as Jewish.
Taxes specific to all Jews over twelve years of age were also introduced. These extremely punitive
measures were only in effect for fifteen years, for in 1290 Edward, having determined that
many Jewish people continued to act as money lenders across the country, decided to
expel the Jewish population from England altogether. Edward had just returned from a
journey to his French possessions in Gascony in the late 1280s and needed to levy additional
taxes to pay for the campaign. To make this more acceptable to the nobility and gentry he included
a promise to expel the Jewish community from England, a measure which he duly followed through
on in 1290. This carried the additional benefit that Edward was able to confiscate Jewish lands
and properties into crown possession and sell them off at a financial windfall. The expulsion
was carried out relatively quickly with perhaps between 2,000 and 3,000 Jewish people exiled from
England in the early 1290s, often heading for Eastern Europe which was much more tolerant
of their presence. Some small few remained in England disguised as Italian bankers.
Like each of his predecessors Edward was concerned with France, though in a different manner to
previous kings of England. His father had reached agreements with the French in the 1250s which
effectively reconciled the English crown to the loss of the extensive territories in northern
France, above all the Duchy of Normandy which King John had lost in the 1200s. As such there was
not the same requirement of Edward to attempt to re-establish English control over Normandy and
other areas as had been the case in the early years of Henry’s reign. Nevertheless, the English
crown retained a considerable presence in France, controlling Gascony in the south-west of France
and this necessarily involved Edward in French affairs. He visited Gascony several times, often
in an effort to launch reform campaigns there and most notably in the late 1280s. This resulted
in a major series of reforms that were agreed in 1289 and which sought to regulate the conduct
of the senior English officials in Gascony, the seneschal of the region and the
constable of the town of Bordeaux. Yet what remained the major problem for Edward in
Gascony was that he held the region as a fief of the French monarch, rather than in his own right,
a situation which in the 1290s would lead to war. Edward had maintained good relations with
King Philip III of France who had succeeded his father following Louis IX’s death at
Tunis on his journey to the Holy Land back in 1270. Edward had paid homage to
Philip when passing through France on his return home from the Crusades in the
mid-1270s and he paid a visit to Paris again in 1279. Outstanding differences between the
two crowns had been resolved on this occasion, leaving Anglo-French relations in a good place.
Relations between Edward and the new monarch, Philip IV, who succeeded his father in 1285,
were also good, which makes the outbreak of war in the 1290s between England and France
something of an unusual development. The cause was a localised conflict between England and some
French merchant sailors operating in the English Channel. Edward felt his move against these
elements in his capacity as King of England was entirely justified, but Philip viewed it as an
act of rebellion by Edward as Duke of Aquitaine, the title he bore as lord of Gascony. Thus
the war which broke out in 1294 was a result of Edward’s overlapping jurisdictions as both an
equal of the King of France as King of England, while also being a subject of the
King of France as Duke of Aquitaine. After some military engagements in the English
Channel with the French merchant vessels there, Philip summoned Edward to Paris to account for his
actions. The English monarch was unwilling to show obeisance to a fellow monarch in this fashion
and so sent his brother Edmund on his behalf. A compromise was reached at this point
whereby Edward would hand over some minor fortresses as surety in Gascony, while
Edward would marry Philip’s sister, Margaret, a woman nearly forty years his junior.
Edward’s first wife, Eleanor, had died in 1290 after 36 years of marriage, meaning Edward
could marry the French king’s sister as a means of resolving the dispute which had
arisen in the English Channel. However, the entire arrangement turned out to be a ruse
on Philip’s part in order to have the parlement of Paris vote through the confiscation
of the Duchy of Aquitaine from Edward. With the outbreak of outright war Edward’s
plans also changed and he now began to develop ambitions to reacquire some of the territories
lost by his grandfather ninety years earlier. Edward’s strategy from early on in the war was
to develop a major alliance of continental powers against the French. In particular he sought
allies amongst the many principalities of the Low Countries and western Germany which in
the late medieval period were divided into dozens of small dukedoms, counties and city
states, and with the powerful Duke of Burgundy who controlled extensive territories in
eastern France. In this way Edward hoped to build up a power base in the Low Countries
around the Duchy of Brabant and the counties of Gueldres and Holland, whereby England would
strike into north-eastern France towards Paris, rather than operating out of Gascony as the French
would suspect. This action was delayed until 1297, by which time the English had encountered mixed
fortunes in their clashes with the French in Gascony. In any event the military campaign in the
Low Countries turned into a costly debacle from which Edward only managed to extricate himself in
the spring of 1298. Thus, this strategy proved a consummate failure in the final years of the
thirteenth century, but the idea of building an alliance of European allies and striking
against France from the Low Countries was one that would be employed effectively by Edward’s
grandson against the French many years later. The failure of Edward’s grand alliance ended the
most intense period of the war against France, but it took some considerable time for
the war to be brought to a conclusion, even following the negotiation of a truce late
in 1297. In 1299 a major step was taken when the previously negotiated marriage between Edward
and Philip’s sister Margaret finally took place. The couple, who had a 40 year age gap, were
married at Canterbury on the 10th of September 1299. Despite the difference in their ages
the marriage was a relatively satisfactory one for both parties with Margaret
bearing Edward two sons and a daughter, and she never remarried after Edward passed away
several years later. Meanwhile, final peace terms between England and France were finally ironed
out in 1303 with a virtual return to the status quo ante bellum. The war had been a costly
fiasco for both parties. Military operations in Gascony alone had cost Edward’s exchequer
approximately £350,000, while over £150,000 was paid in contributions by the English government
to the small states of the Low Countries and Germany to win over their aid in the 1290s to
almost zero benefit. Such was the massive cost of the war that a formal coronation as queen for
Margaret was never held to avoid the expense.
This expense in France and the Low Countries
was a particular annoyance for Edward as in the course of the war the primary goal of his foreign
policy had switched from France to Scotland. King Alexander III had died there in 1286 leaving his
three year old granddaughter, Margaret of Norway, as his heir. But Margaret died in 1290, bringing
to an end the direct line of King William the Lion which had ruled Scotland for over 120 years.
There were now over a dozen contenders for the Scottish crown, but the two foremost were Robert
Bruce, fifth Lord of Annandale, and John Balliol, Lord of Galloway. In order to prevent the country
sliding into civil war the Council of Guardians which had been appointed in Scotland to govern
during Margaret’s youth appealed to King Edward to act as an arbitrator. Edward now viewed this as
an opportunity to re-establish a greater degree of English influence over Scottish affairs. As with
Wales, Edward viewed Scotland as a subordinate part of the Kingdom of England, one which England
had exercised a significant amount of influence over since the late eleventh century when William
the Conqueror and his successor, William II, had established a degree of Norman control
over the northern kingdom. While this had lagged in the course of the century prior to
his accession Edward viewed the succession crisis as a good opportunity to re-assert
English royal power in Scotland. Accordingly, after he supported the candidacy of John Balliol
who became King John I in 1292 Edward made it clear that he now considered Balliol a vassal who
was expected to pay homage to him and Scotland as a quasi-subject kingdom. Balliol and the
Scots, however, were unwilling to countenance this and after war broke out between England and
France in 1294 Balliol not only refused to send Scottish troops to aid Edward, but entered into
negotiations with the French to form an alliance. This was largely the trigger for Edward’s
decision to invade and occupy Scotland in 1296. Edward ordered an army to prepare at Newcastle
upon Tyne in March 1296. At the same time he sent envoys north with demands of the Scots that
they hand over the border castles of Roxburgh, Jedburgh and Berwick as surety against any
potential alliance they might form with the French. The Scots not only refused this, but a
Scottish army led by John Comyn, Earl of Buchan, moved south into England against Carlisle Castle
on the 26th of March 1296. Here Edward had appointed Robert Bruce, sixth Lord of Annandale,
as governor of Carlisle Castle. It is indicative of how some Scottish lords at the time did indeed
view Edward as a sovereign with some considerable rights over Scotland that they were willing to
engage in service to the English monarchy even within England. Bruce’s son and namesake would
play a major role in the events which would follow over the next thirty years in Anglo-Scottish
relations. Comyn failed to seize Carlisle Castle, though his forces did set fire to the town,
while further border raids followed by the Scots throughout April. This, however, was as
good as military affairs would proceed for the Scottish in 1296. In late March Edward led his
forces across the River Tweed into Scotland. They seized Berwick, at that time the southern outpost
of Scotland, within days and Edward made his headquarters here for some time while he planned
his next move, as the Scots prepared their forces near Dunbar Castle a few miles up the coast of
Scotland from Berwick. It was here that the early stage of what would become a long thirty year war
between England and Scotland would be decided. The Battle of Dunbar was fought between
Edward’s forces led by John de Warenne, sixth earl of Surrey, and the Scots led by John
Comyn, earl of Buchan, on the 27th of April 1296. It appears from the surviving evidence that
this was largely a clash between two relatively small cavalry forces consisting of perhaps a few
hundred heavy cavalry on both sides. The Scots held a strong position on the high ground but
their lines broke up when they believed that the English were leaving the field. Consequently an
organised English cavalry charge routed the Scots and sent them fleeing. About 100 Scottish lords
and knights were taken prisoner and the following day when Edward appeared in person, Dunbar Castle
surrendered. In the aftermath of the battle several other major castles across Lowland
Scotland simply surrendered to Edward’s invading forces. Edinburgh Castle held out,
but also fell after a week long siege. Thus, a brief campaign had ended in total victory
for Edward. King John Balliol surrendered, hoping for mercy, but Edward had him stripped
of his crown and sent him south to captivity in England. Shortly afterwards Edward headed south
himself with the Stone of Scone, the traditional inauguration stone of Scottish kings, in his
train. The importance of this was clear. John was no longer King of Scotland and the country would
have no other king but Edward henceforth. Edward viewed this as the simple culmination of a process
that had begun over 200 years earlier when William the Conqueror and William II had begun asserting
a degree of English control over Scotland. In the aftermath of the campaign of 1296 the
government of Scotland was largely handed over to Englishmen, with English garrisons established
at key locations throughout the country. However, the victory had ultimately been far too easily
won and the back had never really been broken on Scottish resistance. Moreover, as Edward became
once again preoccupied with events in France the opportunity was quickly presented in
1297 for a revolt. This was led by three individuals. Robert Bruce, who would many
years later become a King of Scotland himself, was the grandson of Robert Bruce who
had been a contender to the throne back in the early 1290s before Balliol was made
king. A second rebel leader was Andrew de Moray, a prominent esquire from north-eastern Scotland.
The third, and certainly the most famous, was Sir William Wallace. Despite latter depictions
of him as a romantic rebel of the commons, Wallace was a member of the lesser nobility of Scotland.
Acting independently of each other to begin with the trio managed to incite popular revolts against
English rule across the country which culminated in a first major victory over English arms at
the Battle of Stirling Bridge in September 1297. Moray was fatally wounded at Stirling Bridge and
Wallace was consequently chosen in its aftermath as Guardian of Scotland, a regent of
sorts elected by the Scottish nobles in the absence of a Scottish monarch. For the
time being Edward was in no position to retaliate. In 1297 he was busy overseeing the long planned
co-ordinated action with his erstwhile allies in the Low Countries. Perhaps most significantly
he faced the most serious bout of domestic unrest of his reign within England itself
as the nobility and church leaders expressed several grievances over the cost of the wars
in France, Scotland and Wales and the lack of proper consultation with them by the monarch.
Edward, who was more than aware of the troubles fractious nobles had caused both his father and
grandfather, moved swiftly to justify his actions, issuing a long letter in which he
apologised for his recent overbearing rule, but arguing that this was needed to
bring the wars to a swift conclusion. This did not entirely placate the nobles, who
petitioned for an amendment to Magna Carta, the great charter which King John had agreed
with his nobles in 1215 to enshrine respect of their rights. While this was not granted,
there were promises made that the extraordinary requirements being made of the nobility would not
be asked of them again. Inadvertently the revolt in Scotland may have aided his cause as when
the Scots began raiding into northern England in the aftermath of the Battle of Stirling Bridge it
convinced many in England that Edward’s pleas for extraordinary taxation and other requests at this
time in light of the emergency were justified. Edward quickly responded to the incursion of the
Scots when he returned to England from Flanders in the spring of 1298. A large army of upwards
of 20,000 troops was quickly assembled and led north by Edward, many of them being Welsh
infantry which had been pressed into service to demonstrate their loyalty after the major
Welsh revolt of the mid-1290s. They assembled at Roxburgh in late June and it was from here
that Edward proceeded north towards Falkirk. Here he met Wallace’s army in the field on the
22nd of July 1298. Edward’s forces were far numerically superior to the Scots, but the large
Welsh contingent was fractious. The Scots numbered some 6,000 men, comprising approximately 4,000
long spearmen who formed into four schiltrons, hedgehog-like phalanxes used to break any charge,
including those by heavy cavalry. The gaps between these were then filled by approximately
500 cavalry and over 1,000 archers. These schiltrons had been used to devastating effect at
the Battle of Stirling Bridge the previous year, but here they did not prove as effective, because
Edward’s cavalry was used to circle the Scots, holding their spearmen in place while
thousands of Edward’s crossbowmen and archers rained down projectiles on them. By the end of
the day both sides had lost upwards of 2,000 men, but for Wallace, whose forces were much smaller
than Edward’s this was a devastating blow. Despite his triumph at Falkirk Edward was unable
to capitalise and re-secure control over all of Scotland in the months that followed, restricting
his hold to the castles of the border region and southern Scotland. Moreover,
developments in France and his marriage to Margaret ensured that Edward was yet
again distracted by events elsewhere in 1299, allowing the Scots the opportunity to retake
Stirling Castle following a lengthy siege. With the war in France all but over from late
1299 onwards Edward was able to focus more on Scotland from 1300, but despite annual campaigns
into the country his cause was hampered by Wallace and the other Scottish leaders being
unwilling to risk another major defeat, such as had occurred at Falkirk. As a result
Edward was fighting an enemy in the early 1300s that proved unwilling to meet him directly on
the field of battle. But victory could be won by duplicity and diplomacy too. Robert Bruce was won
over in 1302 to his cause by Edward, while peace in France the following year ended any hope of aid
to the Scottish from that theatre. A year later many of the Scottish lords came to terms with
Edward after the English retook Stirling Castle. The Scottish cause was dealt a further blow
in the autumn of 1305 when William Wallace was captured near Glasgow by John de Menteith,
a Scottish knight loyal to the English crown, and handed over to Edward’s government.
He was taken to London where he was hung, drawn and quartered at Smithfield on the 23rd of
August 1305. Meanwhile Edward moved to consolidate his hold over Scotland by appointing his nephew,
John of Brittany, son of Edward’s sister Beatrice, as royal lieutenant of Scotland, while English
officials were also installed as chancellor or chamberlain within the Scottish government.
This process continued down the ranks, with English constables appointed to oversee the border
towns and castles, and sheriffs established in the Lowland regions as well. The near total victory
which Edward had once again won was emphasised in the decision to appoint English judges to
some of the positions on the Scottish bench, while a review of the Scottish legal system
to streamline it with the English common law was initiated. As with the decision to remove
the royal inauguration stone from Scone in 1296, further symbolic gestures were made to emphasise
Scottish subjugation, notably the reference around this time in English correspondence to
Scotland as ‘land’ rather than as a ‘kingdom’. Edward’s victory in 1305 was to prove as
ephemeral as that which he achieved in 1296. At a meeting at Greyfriars Kirk in
Dumfries near the Anglo-Scottish border on the 10th of February 1306 between Robert Bruce
and Robert Comyn, the only two viable remaining candidates for the Scottish throne, Bruce killed
Comyn. The cause of the quarrel was that Comyn attempted to renege on an agreement whereby one
of them would relinquish their claim to the throne in return for a grant of lands that would make
him the primary magnate in all of Scotland, while the other would become king. When Comyn
reneged Bruce killed him and five weeks later he had himself proclaimed as King of Scotland,
ending a ten year hiatus during which Edward had effectively ruled the northern kingdom with no
monarch north of the border. The inauguration was symbolically performed at Scone, the traditional
site for the crowning of Scottish kings, despite Edward’s seizure of the inauguration stone
and bringing of it to England ten years earlier. Some royal robes were brought out
of hiding to solemnise the occasion. As he did so Robert launched a new
rebellion against English rule in Scotland. Bruce’s decision to revolt early in 1306 might
well have been a propitious move designed to exploit Edward’s increasingly poor health. By
now the king was nearing his seventieth year, a ripe old age by the standards of the
late middle ages. Despite his infirmity a substantial army was nevertheless readied
under the command of Aymer de Valence, Earl of Pembroke, and Henry Percy and sent north,
together with a further force under the command of the Prince of Wales, the future Edward II. In
the meantime Edward became incredibly vindictive following this latest setback in a war he
had been trying to win for ten years and was determined to demonstrate that he considered this
to be a treasonous rebellion by his own subjects, rather than actions occurring in an independent
kingdom. As a result, many prominent Scots residing in England were executed in the
course of the summer and autumn of 1306 for having tenuous links to Bruce, while others were
imprisoned in cages on public display at some of the border fortresses in southern Scotland,
a highly unusual punishment for the time. The initial campaign did not proceed well
for Bruce. Having advanced into Scotland de Valence parleyed with Bruce at Methven in
mid-June 1306 with their forces on the field. It being late in the day both sides agreed to wait
to do battle until the next day, but as Bruce’s forces bivouacked several miles away that evening
de Valence’s forces fell on the Scots in a highly dishonourable breach of the English commander’s
word. Heavy losses were sustained and Bruce only barely managed to fight his way out of the
slaughter. Then on the 13th of September the Prince of Wales captured Kildrummy Castle from the
Scots, taking Bruce’s brother, Nigel, captive and several other senior supporters of the Scottish
king. One of these, Sir Simon Fraser, was taken to London and executed, despite having been a former
courtier at the English court. This was in keeping with Edward’s policy of showing no mercy towards
any supporters of Bruce’s cause throughout 1306. The king himself remained in no fit
state health-wise to command on the field and despite Bruce’s campaign being at a low ebb
in the autumn and winter of 1306, matters began to turn early in 1307. Bruce spent the winter
either in the Hebrides of western Scotland or the Orkneys building up his support in the Gaeltacht
of Scotland, while possibly also visiting Ireland. Reinforced he returned to the Scottish mainland
early in the spring of 1307 and began a guerrilla war in south-western Scotland. Ominous signs that
Edward would not be able to reverse the situation again in Scotland were seen in April 1307 when
Bruce first won a small victory over de Valence’s men at the Battle of Glen Trool, and then a much
more decisive win at the Battle of Loudon Hill in Ayrshire. Here de Valence led as many as 3,000
men against a force of under a thousand Scots led by Bruce, but the Scots utilised the terrain
effectively to nullify de Valence’s numerical superiority. Spearmen were used to the same effect
as at Stirling Bridge years earlier to gain a major victory for Bruce over the English. Edward
was apparently furious with these new reversals which signified an end to the possibility of any
quick overcoming of the fresh unrest in Scotland. This was the context in which King Edward I’s
life came to an end. Several weeks after the loss at Loudon Hill he reviewed some of the English
troops amassed at Carlisle Castle near the border, before finally proceeding north towards
Scotland despite his poor health. His condition immediately deteriorated as
he contracted dysentery and while camped at Burgh by Sands just south of the Scottish
border on the morning of the 7th of July 1307 Edward Longshanks died. A tradition holds that
Edward’s deathbed wish was that his heart be carried to the Holy Land as part of a new crusade
which the king had always had ambitions to launch, but had never found the time propitious to do
so. He would have died that summer morning in his sixty-eigth year believing that much of his life’s
work was at least incomplete and perhaps heading towards failure as Scotland had recently acquired
its first king after a ten year hiatus and Bruce had won several victories on the field of
battle against Edward’s forces. Moreover, it must have been clear to him that no matter
how often he sent large armies into Scotland and established a seeming control over the country,
it always ended up in rebellion within months. He was succeeded by his son, Edward, Prince
of Wales, with whom ominous signs of his reign being dominated by powerful favourites
had already emerged. After a few further months of campaigning in Scotland Edward headed
south and was crowned king in February 1308.
Edward’s death ushered in a period of political,
social and economic crisis in England. His son’s twenty year reign was chaotic, with Edward
II favouring a range of political favourites who aroused the enmity of the wider political
community of England. This was compounded in the mid-1310s when a run of very poor weather
struck Europe. In 1314 this led to nearly 150 days of continuous rain followed by widespread
harvest failures which led to one of the most catastrophic famines in the continent’s history.
Simultaneously an outbreak of a very virulent form of cattle disease occurred which saw livestock
numbers plummet. Tens of thousands died across England as a result of these events. And while
Edward II’s successor in 1327, Edward III, proved a far more capable ruler, Europe was ravaged by
one of the most catastrophic plague epidemics in human history, the Black Death, in the 1340s and
1350s, killing upwards of half of the population. It is perhaps a measure of the strength of the
English state that had emerged by the end of Edward I’s reign that his grandson, Edward III,
was able to wage a sustained war against France to try to resurrect England’s territorial
empire on the continent in the face of such demographic and economic chaos as was wrought by
the famines and plagues of the fourteenth century. Ultimately, however, Edward’s efforts to bring
Scotland under English rule ended in failure following his own death. In the late 1300s
Robert Bruce became the undisputed leader of the Scottish independence movement. As his
forces grew he placed ever greater pressure on the English presence in Scotland, after victory at
the Battle at Loudon Hill in the closing weeks of Edward’s reign, another battle was won at the
Brander Pass in 1308 before expelling the English from Edinburgh. However, the ultimate conflict did
not occur until 1314 when the Scots won a striking victory over Edward II’s forces at the Battle
of Bannockburn. A year later Bruce’s brother, Edward, invaded the north of Ireland, beginning
a three year campaign designed to weaken England’s resolve to remain in Scotland by
opening a second front across the Irish Sea. Still the war waged on and in 1320 the Scottish
nobility issued the Declaration of Arbroath affirming their independence from England,
a position which was given Papal approval in 1324. Even so it was not until a further
major victory on the field of battle in 1327 at the Battle of Stanhope Park that the war which
Edward I had started over thirty years earlier was finally brought to an end with the Treaty
of Edinburgh-Northampton in 1328 whereby England finally acknowledged Scottish independence
and Robert Bruce as King of Scotland.
King Edward’s body was embalmed after his death
in Scotland and brought south. It lay in state at Waltham Abbey for some time before he was finally
buried in Westminster Abbey on the 27th of October 1308, nearly four months after his death. His
tomb was fashioned in a plain manner from Purbeck limestone, a stone mined from the island of
Purbeck in Dorset. This was not ornate and there was no royal effigy added to the tomb. Incredibly
this austerity may have been owing to a lack of funds for a more sumptuous burial. Despite all the
fiscal and administrative reforms of his reign, Edward’s wars had been so costly that he
had left England largely bankrupt. In 1774 the Royal Society of Antiquaries of London had the
tomb opened, discovering that Edward’s body was well-preserved over four and a half centuries
later. An inscription was found on the tomb, badly faded by then, which had been added by
the last abbot of Westminster, John Feckenham, in the mid-sixteenth century. Part of it read
Malleus Scotorum, which means ‘The Hammer of the Scots’. Edward has subsequently come to
be known by this title in recognition of the manner in which the war in Scotland came
to define his reign, for good or for bad, and despite the ultimate failure of the endeavour. Edward I was one of medieval England’s most
significant monarchs, of that there can be no doubt. First and foremost he reformed and
revitalised crown government after decades of unrest under his grandfather and father, during
which time there had been two civil wars, most of the French territories had been lost and the Welsh
princes had acquired de-facto independence across much of Wales. The 1270s and 1280s saw royal
government reconstructed in an impressive fashion, with reforms implemented to shore up English
control over Gascony and Wales reconquered with an extensive programme of Anglicisation undertaken
there. Edward did not complete the conquest of Wales, but he contributed more than any other
monarch to doing so. While many Welsh people would not view this as an achievement, if it is viewed
purely from the perspective of a centralising state of the High Middle Ages it constituted a
considerable accomplishment of Edward’s reign, one which forced the Welsh lords to once again pay
homage to the English crown and which furthered a process that had been initiated in Wales during
the Norman Conquest of the mid-eleventh century. At home, although he was not
really an administrator himself, Edward appointed a number of capable
individuals to senior ministerial positions and these oversaw a programme of reform which
reformed English land law, the collection of taxes and various other measures which strengthened
the English fiscal and administrative state and made it capable of waging the wars
of the second half of Edward’s reign. However, the problems of Edward’s reign began to
mount in the 1290s. From 1292, when he supported John Balliol’s claim to the Scottish throne as a
subject monarch, he was increasingly determined to bring Scotland under English rule. As with
Wales this must be viewed from the perspective of the late thirteenth century. Edward did not
overtly perceive of himself as conquering a foreign nation. Rather it was his view that he was
re-asserting a form of English rule in Scotland that had first been instituted under William
the Conqueror and William II. Although it had lapsed in the intervening period to a considerable
extent, he viewed the opportunity presented by the succession crisis there in 1290 as one through
which he could force the Scottish lords to once again pay homage to him as their liege lord.
However, matters became more complicated in 1294 when he became embroiled in a war with France
which presaged the Hundred Years War initiated under his grandson forty years later. Edward’s
fleeting efforts in this respect proved enormously costly and yielded zero benefits to either him
or the French. But it was in Scotland that things really turned sour. Edward must surely have felt
like he had achieved a tremendous success in 1296 when he defeated the Scots and effectively
subsumed Scotland into England, leaving the northern kingdom without its own king for the
next ten years, even one who had been selected by Edward to effectively act as a vassal like John
Balliol was in 1292. But success in the north was always ephemeral. In 1297 under figures like
Wallace and de Mornay the Scots rose successfully. Edward twice more seemed to have reduced them in
1298 and 1305, but on both occasions no sooner had he returned to England and the dust settled than
a fresh revolt arose. The final one, by Robert Bruce, in early 1306, who made himself King of
Scotland after a ten year interregnum, was never fully subdued and eventually resulted in Scottish
independence being reacquired many years later. What do you think of King Edward I? Was he
one of England’s most contradictory kings, one who created a powerful, centralised English
state, but one who also tarnished his legacy through his actions in Scotland and by his
expulsion of the country’s Jewish community? Please let us know in the comment section, and in
the meantime, thank you very much for watching.
