 Chapter 4 of England in the Middle Ages. This is a LibriVox recording. All LibriVox recordings are in the public domain. For more information or to volunteer, please visit LibriVox.org. England in the Middle Ages by Elizabeth O'Neill. The Beginnings of the Constitution. 1216-1309. The limitations to the effects of the Great Charter on its own age finds ample illustration in the history of the years which followed. The opposition to John had shown some faint beginnings of national rather than English feeling. The foreign character of the classes who made history is emphasized by the story of misrule in the long reign of John's son, Henry III, from 1216 to 1272. The opposition, however, which at length put an end to the king's misrule, had in it a very definite English element, and serves to show how through the progress of years that race was coming into some degree of political power. Henry III, though born and bred in England, was a foreigner in feeling, perhaps more so than his father. He was personally attractive, handsome and well-made like his father, gentle and suave almost to weakness, though occasionally in anger he showed himself the son of John. When he came to power he attempted to model his rule of England on the system of the French kings, controlling the government himself and working it through a class of clerks, able but undistinguished mere routine workers. This was not unlike the system of Henry II, but his grandson was cast in a different mold. Henry III had not the practical ability to carry out his ideal, and the result was a disorder which reproduced in effect, if not in spirit, the tyranny of a Rufus or a John. But all this was not yet. Henry was but nine years of age at his father's death. A reaction in favor of the national king was inevitable. The aged William Marshall Earl of Pembroke, one of the two earls who had clung to John, acted as ruler of the young king, and reissued the charter in his name. The nobles deserted Louis one by one, moved partly by national feeling and partly by jealousy of the favors he gave to his French followers. Henry had the weight of the church in Rome on his side, and the papal legate took a hand in the government. Louis, with his Frenchmen, were driven from the siege of Lincoln Castle within six months, and so great was the plunder that the battle was known as the Fair of Lincoln. This victory was followed up by a brilliant naval success, conducted by the justiciar Hubert de Berg. The story of the engagement, allowing for differences in equipment, reads like an anticipation of the armada fight. The English got the weather gauge in the fashion which becomes traditional in their naval warfare. They blinded their enemies with quick lime thrown in their faces down the wind. The victory put an end to Louis' hopes of invasion, and within a month he signed the Treaty of Lambeth, by which he agreed to forego his claims on England. William the Marshall issued the charter once again, with the forest charter which John had promised. For the future, finds or banishment were to replace death or mutilation as punishment for a breach of the forest laws, and thus the bitterest grievance which the Norman conquest had brought to Englishmen was ended. The Marshall now turned his energies to restore order in the land, which was threatened with a repetition of the conditions of Stephen's reign. Adultering castles had to be destroyed, and usurpations of royal justice rested from local magnates. William died in 1219, and the work was taken up by Hubert de Berg, with the loyal support of Pandolf, who had come a second time to England as papal legate. In those years no one attempted to deny the Souserainty which innocent had won. In England was frankly worked as a papal thief. It was one of the great faults in Henry's government when he came to a zone that he never had the stamina or the inclination to resist the demands of the Pope. Hubert continued the work of the Marshall. He had most trouble with the nobles of the loyalist party, who had hoped much from the rule of a minor. Often an army had to be led against a defiant baron. In 1224, Fox de Brute, one of John's mercenary leaders, who had done splendid service at Lincoln, held Bedford Castle obstinately against the whole shy or levy. The castle was surrendered after two months, and the fox fled overseas. It was a salutary example, and marks an end of disorder arising from this source. In 1223 the Pope had declared Henry of Age, but this was merely a move to make the king's friends disgorge the royal possessions they were holding during the minority. In 1227 he was actually declared of an age to govern, and he began with an act of evil augury, his angry dismissal of Hubert de Borg, through the influence of Peter de Sprosch, the point of an bishop of Winchester, in Henry's personal guardian, even in the Marshall's day. This act strikes the note of the misrule of the next quarter of a century. Henry had all the weak man's obstinacy in following his own inclinations. He liked French men and England in those years suffered what was practically an alien invasion. Peter de Sprosch was made justiciar and put to the events alone stood high in the king's favor. Peter induced Henry to give to his friend Peter of Revolte, nineteen out of the thirty-five English sherifftimes. In 1235 the new archbishop of Canterbury, Edmund Rich, a scholar and a saint, induced Henry by threats of excommunication to banish Peter and his friends. Henry did not appoint any more justiciars in the old sense, and gradually the office became merely that of chief justice. He occupied himself with vast schemes which never came to anything. Justice was delayed, and money frittered away with no result. Henry soon fell back again on foreign favorites and various hordes successively planted themselves on English soil. There were first the family and the innumerable relations of his mother, Isabella of Angolème, who married after John's death Hugh of Lusignan. In 1237 Henry married Eleanor of Provence, and a host of Provencelles and Savoyards followed her to England. Even the archbishop of Canterbury was prostituted at Edmund's death to one of these, Boniface of Savoy, an illiterate and quite worldly young man. Hardly distinguished at first from the throng of foreign favorites was Simon de Montfort, grandson of Amichia, Countess of Leichester. His father, the elder Simon, had supported Philippe Augustus against John and had forfeited the earldom of Leichester. He also distinguished himself in the campaign against heresy in the south of France. The younger Simon came to England in 1230, got back the earldom, and in 1238 married the king's sister, Eleanor. For four years from 1248 he performed the ungrateful task of governing Gascony. Henry had been defeated by the French king in portue in 1242 and was at his wits end to curb resistance in Gascony when Montfort took over its government and kept order with a strong hand. Henry carved at his rule in his distrustful way, and the earl having finished the task of imposing order gave up his governorship. He soon definitely put himself on the side of the opposition, which had been steadily growing and which came to a head about this time. The church, or its better members, was as opposed to Henry's system as was the baronage. The papacy had drained it all through the rain. Even Henry at one point protested at the scale on which money was rung from the church to support the papacy in its great duel against the Hohenstaufen emperors. But for the most part he acquiesced in the papal exactions. The papal countenance of the alien invasion of the English church by Henry's friends indeed made this necessary. Gross test, the famous Bishop of Lincoln and friend of Simon de Montfort had opposed the abuse for years, but his standard of loyalty to the pope and the standard which was commonly accepted by the 13th century church hampered his action. The foolish action of Henry and accepting for his second son Edmund the Crown of Sicily confiscated it from the Hohenstaufen, crystallized the opposition. The king was to pay immense subsidies to win the kingdom, which merely meant that the English were to continue to subsidize the papacy on a larger scale than before. The barons in 1258 had a meeting at Oxford which the king's partisans called the mad parliament, notified the king that they were about to take measures to reform his government. The committee of 24 was chosen to draft a plan of reform. Twelve of these were chosen by the king, and it is significant that he chose six churchmen, four aliens and two of his relatives. The opposition 12 contained but one churchman and one alien, Simon de Montfort. It was a curious chance that made a foreigner the heart and soul of the national opposition. And in spite of the arbitrariness and harshness which mingled with his better qualities in which the next few years were to emphasize, there can be no doubt that Simon's sympathies were really national and not merely baronial. It may be that he saw that the only firm foundation from which to check the royal tyranny was a lower stratum than had yet acceded to political power. There is of course still the question whether this realization did more credit to his head or his heart. The 24 drew up the provisions of Oxford transferring the government to a standing council of 15 with various other advisory committees. The conception of limited monarchy which had thus gained acceptance showed a great advance on the provisions of the great charter. The limited number of commissioners made for efficiency and a certain amount of reforming work was done, such as the removal of royal officers and the changing of the sheriffs. The foreigners, for the most part, fled. Soon, however, dissension broke out among the leaders of the opposition. It was rumored that Robert of Glauchester was jealous of Earl Simon. The young Prince of Wales, Edward, was in those days receiving splendid schooling and statesmanship. Either to a thoughtless boy, he seems to have been sobered and matured by the shock of the opposition. Already he was forming a policy, and during the absence of both Simon and his father in 1259 he pressed the oligarchy to proceed with their task. The result was the reforms described in the provisions of Westminster. In 1260 Simon and Edward made a kind of alliance against the party of Glauchester, who adopted an attitude of loyalty to the King. The situation was but momentary. Edward and his father were really firm friends and were easily reconciled by Richard of Cornwall, the King's brother, who had throughout the reign exerted a wise and sober influence over Henry. Henry was, however, encouraged to obtain papal absolution from his promises. It was but natural that when the struggle reopened, Edward should be found on his father's side. It was broken a moment by the agreement to submit the question as to whether the provisions were binding to the King of France. The great statesman, Crusader and aesthetic Saint Louis. In spite of his great qualities, Louis's view was bounded by the outlook of the autocratic monarchy which the French kings had built up. He found the provisions invalid and derogatory. Simon and his turn proved false to his pledges and refused to be bound by the means of Amiens. It weakened his party, but Richard of Glauchester was now dead, and Simon had the loyal support of his son, the young Earl Gilbert. Simon's own four sons were greedy and ambitious, fighting largely for their own hand. At first when the struggle reopened in 1264, the royalist party had the advantage, but there were no match for Simon in the open field. On 14th May he won the Great Battle of Luz, and both the king and prince were taken prisoner. Next day the king accepted the means of Luz, promising to uphold the provisions of Oxford. Simon repeated the tactics of 1258, but this time three electors, himself Gilbert of Glauchester and the Bishop of Chichester, nominated a governing council of nine, who were to be supervised for a time by their electors. It was not even baronial government, but government by a party, and it meant the dictatorship of Simon. The royalist regarded the settlement merely as a truce. Simon and 1265 called together his great parliament, in which for the first time, Burgesses from cities and towns were summoned, as well as knights of the Shire, to take part in the nation's councils. There were several precedents for the summoning of knights of the Shire. The thing was in the air, even John had called them once. But the extension of the popular element was a stroke of genius, even if it was but a bid for popularity. This parliament was, however, but an experiment, and contained the germ of the later House of Commons, but that is all. The measure gives us a glimpse into the mind of the man who was striving for a great cause against impossible odds. The great leader was in a false position, and Earl Gilbert was alienated by the attitude of Montfort's sons. Prince Edward escaped and formed a party, and the young Earl of Glauchester went over to him. They led an army against Simon's remnant at Evinsham, and with odds of seven to one the battle was but a massacre. Simon fell with his son Henry and many of his closest friends. The king, who had been led into the battle by his side, was wounded and nearly killed in the confusion. Earl Simon's body was buried at the Grey Fathers at Evinsham, but his head was sent to the wife of Roger Mortimer, the Marchus Lord, who had been his great enemy. It was made a punishable crime to proclaim him a holy man, for he had died under the ban of the church. But he received a popular, if not papal canonization. He was, after all, a great patriot, and it was a true instinct which led the people to honor his memory. His policy triumphed, for it was assimilated by the future king. Henry was old and broken, Edward full of a wisdom beyond his years, and after the Earl's death, though there was still some fighting and disinheritance held out for many months at Kenilworth, a settlement was achieved. The dictum of Kenilworth, at the end of 1266, left their estates to the rebels, but exacted heavy fines. A year later the statute of marble re-enacted the provisions of Westminster. The government was taken over into the hands of trod bureaucrats, and the king was content that it should be so. In 1270 Edward felt that he might safely join King Louis, who was going on to Crusade for the second time. Louis died on the way, but Edward pressed on to raise the siege of Acre. A lurid light is shed on the passions of the time and the murder of Henry of Germany, son of Richard of Cornwall. Attacked by Guy and Simon de Montfort while hearing mass at Utervo. Having turned back from the Crusade, they mangled his body in revenge for the mutilation their father had suffered after Evensham. Edward was summoned home from the Crusade, but too late to see his father before he died on 16th November 1272, after a reign of enormous length. During a time which had seen much distress and disorder in political life, but which had been after all a great period, for the policy of this king with the heart of wax could not stem the tide of a civilization swelling to the full. It is a relief to turn from the political story to consider other aspects of the time. Europe was in a state of intellectual and moral ferment, of which the crusading movement was but one manifestation. New figures and new institutions expressing new ideals, or the perfection of old ones, crowd the canvas of European history. Early in Henry's reign the grave friars, followers of Saint Francis, the poor man of Assisi's and black friars, disciples of the noble Spanish canon Dominic, landed in England to put their peculiar impress on her ecclesiastical and social life. The monks had done great social and economic service, but the time was right for a new manifestation. The face of England was still mainly agricultural, but the towns had been steadily growing, and with them there was contrast of wealth and poverty, which seemed the inevitable accompaniments of civic life. The processes of burrow development varied, but the commonest type was the towns which had grown up through the association of specialized artisans and traders to supply the more luxurious needs of a great lord or corporation, as the standard of living rose. At first their tenure was merely futile, but they gradually won for themselves the power of self-government. The crusades gave immense impetus to this movement when needy nobles bartered their futile power for gold. In some towns and more especially in London, which had won from Richard the right to choose its mayor, a considerable alien population engaged in trade gave color and variety. Most of the towns too had their jewelry, where behind their walls the Jews lived, a proscribed and peculiar people. They enjoyed royal protection such as it was. For an age which had not yet learnt to discount the church's condemnation of usury, the Jew was the only money lender. Ever in a non the suppressed hatred with which the Christian regarded the Jew broke control, and massacres and lootings of their quarters form a characteristic phase of medieval life in England. Generally a panic rumor was the cause when some lost child was supposed to have been kidnapped and crucified by the Jews at their obscene festivals. The Dominicans under Henry III strove to convert them, but it was a forlorn hope, and under Edward I, when their functions could be supplied by Italian bankers, they were driven from the realm to the number of over 16,000. No Jew had henceforth the right to set foot in England till Cromwell's day. The Jewries consisted often of substantial and well-built houses, but it was in the crowded suburbs outside the walls of the town, where narrow streets of rough cottages crowded upon one another, that the begging friars found their work. It was part of the Franciscan asceticism to tend the ill and leprous, but they and the black friars did their best work in preaching to the people and in racy idiomatic phrases which must have contrast vividly from the old stereotyped infrequent sermons of the parish priests. The friars seemed to introduce a lively element into English life which helps to break up the oriental passivity which had marked the lower classes of Englishmen, in strong contrast to the vivid adventure and change which had been longed a lot of their superiors. The friar sermons were probably responsible for the introduction of words of foreign origin into spoken English, and they accelerated the movement by which the English tongue had all through the Angevin period been becoming in a minor way, once more a literary language. It was an Oxford friar who voiced in English verse the gratitude of the people to Earl Simon. The friars too found favor among the great ones of the land. The cultivated Franciscan Atom Marsh was the friend and spiritual advisor of Earl Simon, but gravely held aloof from political strife. The scholarly Dominicans and the Franciscans too, in spite of their founders distrust of books, did much toward the development of those other most characteristic institutions of the 13th century, the universities. Already in the 12th century there had been a tendency to erect in European centers where masters taught and students thronged. Corporations of teachers with rigid rules and privileges. The Oxford schools had been active and distinguished since the days of Henry II. In 1214 the university came into being, formed on the model of Paris. For a 13th century ideals were cosmopolitan, they found their highest expression in France. Hitherto Paris had claimed those English youths who were most greedy for knowledge, now Oxford and in a minor way Cambridge held their own. Though the great battles of the scholasticism which the century made perfect were fought in Paris, and the Oxford scholars often proceeded later to the more distinguished university. The friars built large plain churches convenient for preaching, but the time saw an immense development in Gothic architecture which was perhaps now at its best, combining a new lightness with the early plainness. Henry himself was a great builder. He rebuilt the east end of Westminster Abbey around the new tomb of the Confessor, which he brought skilled workmen from Italy to make. The king in spite of his foreign leanings had a great devotion to the English saints, and he called his sons by English names. One of his great interests was the decoration of his houses and chapels, and many of his schemes remained to testify to his fine taste in color and design. The age was full of color. Dress especially now took on a greater richness in material and ornament, though the old flowing simple styles were not altered. It is in this and in the decorative arts which supplement architecture that the infallible judgment of the age in matters of artistic taste is best shown. It is curious to reflect that this passionate love of beautiful things was combined with the utmost squander in domestic arrangements. This is, however, but one of the violent contrasts of which the time is full and which make it fascinating. Edward I, who came to the English throne at the full tide of the medieval period, was a very typical medieval and perhaps the greatest of our early kings. In appearance he was an ideal king, handsome and well-made, towering above ordinary men by a head and shoulders. He had inherited the curious droop of one eyelid which had slightly marred his father's face. He spoke with a stammer but engaging thee. He was the first king since the conquest with an English name, and he was also the first who seceded it without any form of election. His reign was dated officially from the day after his father's death. Edward did not land in England until two years later, meanwhile making a stay in Gascony which as usual required to be put in order in Paris where he did homage to the French king for his duchy. Things were quiet in England but much work awaited Edward on his return. In the first part of his reign he issued a great series of laws which crystallized the reforming tendencies of the age. It learned much from Earl Simon on many subjects and he eventually brought into permanent existence a wider parliamentary representation recalling in his model parliament of 1295 the precedent of Simon's parliament 30 years earlier. Not too much credit must be given to Edward for this. He had a true love for his people but he was a man of his time who was no really democratic ideal in the Middle Ages. Edward loved power and clung to but he also loved efficiency. He needed much money for his enterprises and he realized that efficient taxation must be accompanied by adequate representation which he plausibly translated for the popular benefit into the maxim of Roman law that what touches all should be approved by all. Nevertheless his definition of the constitution of parliament is a great feature of the reign. Subsequent parliaments contain the Shire and Borough representatives and also representatives of the lower clergy. At first the estates voted separately. It was some 40 years before two houses were formed. The representatives of the lower clergy had soon fallen away preferring to make their money grants in convocation. The knights in Burgesses drew together to form the House of Commons acting separately from the upper house. It was a feature of English as distinguished from continental society that there was no rigid division between gentry and traders. The younger sons of gentlemen frequently drifted into the ranks of trade and eventually the reverse process became possible. The Burgesses who were now admitted to parliament were of course Englishmen and though they may not have appreciated their privileges as much as posterity is done for them the fact proves the growing importance of Englishmen in national life. The first 20 years of the reign saw a great series of statutes. The first parliament passed in 1275 the first statute of Westminster dealing especially with details which might ensure sound administration. It also provided a regular revenue for the king by granting him the custom on wool, wool fells, and leather no later as the great and ancient custom. The statute of Glauchester in 1278 instituted inquiries under the writ for warrento into the innumerable petty immunities and private jurisdictions which the Barons had won largely at the expense of the 100 courts mostly merely by the growth of custom. So bitter was the barony of feeling on this subject that Edward had to allow prescriptive rights to stand but he took care to have a written record made and no new immunities of the sort were possible. This was but one aspect of Edward's policy of eliminating feudalism from political life. In 1290 the statute Cue and Torres checked the process of sub-infudation and so acted in the same direction. For the future persons receiving a grant of land must hold it from the original Lord so that in time quite poor men became tenants in chief and one of the main ideas of feudalism was rendered an absurdity. On the other hand Edward instituted the system of entail which has preserved a feudal element in the tenure of land to our own day. Edward's attitude to the church was consistent with his general policy though a loyal son of the church he was anxious for national control. The Archbishop's of his time, the Franciscan Peckham and Wynchelsea were Englishmen but they and especially the former were full of the papalist ideas of Hildebrand and Innocent. Peckham indeed would sometimes have entrenched on royal authority but Edward was watchful and the Archbishop was no beckett. The Statute of Montmain checked the passing of land into the dead hand of the church for the continuity of corporations deprived the Lord of such feudal perquisites as board ships. Edward also defined strictly the jurisdiction of the church courts. Edward's national policy had one other notable aspect. He was bent on the conquest of Wales and Scotland anticipating a natural political union which was not to be achieved for another three centuries. Wales included the marches ruled by Norman lords and what later became the Principality in the North ruled by native princes. The Welsh Prince Llewellyn, Abruth, had supported Earl Simon and had won Cardigan and Carmarthen. His power was so great that in 1267 Henry had recognized him officially as Prince of Wales. Success seems to have distorted his political vision and he thought it possible to refuse homage to Edward who therefore in 1277 invaded Wales and locked up Llewellyn's army in Snowden. The Welsh Prince was defeated, his southern conquest forfeited and he himself reduced to a very close dependence on the English King who for five years strove to impose the English system of government on the Principality. The Celtic customs died hard and in 1282 a general rising stirred the land. David, Llewellyn's brother who had submitted to Edward and received lands in the marches took part in it. Llewellyn was killed at Orwyn Bridge in December 1282 and three months later David was hunted down in the fastnesses of Snowden and died the disgraceful death of a traitor. The English system was rigidly imposed and some forlorn revolts easily suppressed. In 1301 Edward's only surviving son and his namesake was invested with the Principality but the Welsh ever felt themselves erase apart as the rebellion under Owen Glendauer a century later showed. Edward's attempts to conquer Scotland fill the last years of his reign. He had a unique opportunity when in 1286 the maid of Norway died on her way to Scotland to be made Queen. The Scotch consented to leave the decision between the rights of the 13 claimants to Edward as Suzerain of Scotland. He decided in favour of John Balloy who was accordingly crowned King but he and the Scotch resented very soon the interpretation which Edward put on his Suzerain tea. The feudal bond to England which had from time to time with the Scotch by Scottish kings had been very loose in fact merely nominal. Edward by encouraging appeals from the Scotch courts to Westminster and by his general attitude threatened to make it a real subjection. Balloy in 1295 made a leave with the new King of France, Philip IV who unlike his predecessor was unfriendly to Edward and had the year before tricked him out of his duchy of Bien. With the grants made by the model Parliament Edward equipped himself for the invasion of Scotland. He carried all before him. The lords did him homage and he deposed Balloy. He left a lieutenant to administer Scotch law but on the startling news of the successful revolt of the Scotch under William Wallace a renfrew sheer knight. Edward invaded Scotland a second time and won the battle of Falkirk by the tactics dating from Hastings of combining a cavalry attack with showers of arrows. But Edward could not follow up his victory through distractions elsewhere. In 1299 his first wife Eleanor and mother of thirteen of his children having died nine years before he married for political convenience the French king's sister and so got Gaskany back again. The two kings joined in resistance to the abnormal claims of Pope Boniface VIII which Philippe was to follow up with violence removing the seat of the papacy to Avignon in 1305 thus beginning the Babylonian captivity of the popes. In 1303 Edward turned again to Scotland and in 1305 Wallace was captured and executed and Scotland seemed to be conquered once more but the next year her cause found its most heroic defender in Robert Bruce, grandson of the chief rival of John Beloy. Weary but indomitable at the age of 70 Edward was on the march once more to Scotland when he died at Burgon Sands 7th July 1307 Edward's eager prosecution of his schemes in France and Scotland had led him into conflicts with his subjects which give us the measure of his constitutionalism. Preparing for a great expedition to France in 1297 he levied a heavy customs duty on wool and even laid hands on wool ready for shipping. This maltolt was bitterly resented and when Edward and Flanders sent home for more money next year Parliament made a grant but coupled with it a petition that the king would confirm the charters and that henceforth no maltolts or taxes not legally granted should be raised. The king swore an oath to observe this and the incident marks in advance in the power of Parliament. The chief nobles had refused to follow the king overseas in their feudal capacity and Edward definitely waived his claim to demand such service. Much of the nobles went with him as stipendaries but the earls of Norfolk and Hereford refused even this and it was they joined with Archbishop Wynchelsie who led the movement against Edward's irregular taxation. Obviously there was a fractious element. Archbishop Wynchelsie was incensed against Edward for his outlawry of the clergy in 1296 when they in accordance with the famous Bolo Boniface Claricis Lecos refused to make the king any grant in his time of need. Edward was naturally incensed at the claim to exempt the ecclesiastical lands from taxation. Finally a compromise was made by which the clergy made a voluntary gift to the king and were inlawed. On Edward's return to England the opposition pressed for the formal confirmation of the charters. Edward evaded the question with great dexterity but consented in 1300 to certain articuli supercartas which formed in effect a confirmation. The spectacle of the founder of our modern parliament having these to us elementary principles of constitutional government thrust upon him is instructive. Edward resented it bitterly and as like many paragons of medieval chivalry he interpreted a promise by the letter rather than the spirit. In spite of his motto of truth he obtained papal absolution from his oaths but kept them. Our sympathies go out to him in his eager pursuit of his great aims and the virtue of his kingship is attested by the contrast of the years which follow. End of Chapter 4. Chapter 5 of England in the Middle Ages This is a LibriVox recording. LibriVox recordings are in the public domain. For more information or to volunteer please visit LibriVox.org. England in the Middle Ages by Elizabeth O'Neill A Century of Unrest 1307-1399 The story of the twenty years reign of Edward's son Edward of Carnarvon shows how great a part the personality of the king still played in the English system. It is a sordid yet with all tragic tale. The new king was almost as handsome and fine a man physically as his father but utterly unlike him in character. He had not even the frivolous seriousness of Henry III. He frankly disliked the duties of kingship and would refer matters of state to his good brother Piers. His favoritism to this Piers Gaviston, a Gascon, who had been practically his foster was bitterly resented. Edward sent his father's body to Westminster. In spite of his request that it should be carried with the army to victory over the Scots. There was no such victory. Robert Bruce carried all before him while Edward left the languid pursuit of a war to others. In 1314 public opinion forced him to march north to defend Stirling, the last great stronghold in English hands. The result was the great Scotch victory at Bannockburn which decided Scotland's independence throughout the Middle Ages. A fact which Edward had to recognize by a formal truce ten years later. Edward hated war and had no knowledge of tactics. His method was a blind onslaught with his men at arms, his archery being wasted. The loss of Scotland formed but one element in Edward's unpopularity which had grown steadily throughout his reign. The great nobles early formed an opposition in that it proved so long futile was due to the fact that it was a baronial rather than a national resistance. And the day of the great Baronich was really over in the political sense. The leader was Earl Thomas of Lancaster, a violent and passionate man relentless to resist but powerless to construct the English pearls. Gaviston who was not incompetent and was certainly brave in spite of his friviality had been banished by Edward I. Twice again he was sent out of England but always came back. In 1311 the old device of the reforming committee was revived. Twenty-one lords ordainers were appointed to reform the realm by their ordinances. The king was put in tutelage. The ordainers drew up a list of reforms but gave their attention chiefly to revenge. Gaviston was captured and withdrawn from the hands of justice by the Earl of Warwick whom he had nicknamed the Black Dog. He was summarily beheaded and Edward had to forgive the outrage and was then given once more some degree of power. The defeat at Ben Ockburn made Edward very unpopular and Lancaster practically seized royal power for four years but accomplishing nothing lost the support of the nobles. Edward had now another chance. He gave his favors to Hugh Dispenser a great baron and bitter enemy of Lancaster and to the younger Dispenser of the same name. With their help the baronial opposition was broken up and Lancaster taken in battle was beheaded who was the least worthy of the men who were reputed saints by popular acclamation. For he was no true patriot and had not even ability to justify his ambition. The Dispensers now ruled for Edward but were ever seeking their own hand. The time was ripe for a new opponent and such as one was found in the king's own household. He had wedded in 1308 Isabella, the twelve-year-old daughter of the Prince Edward. She was constantly neglected her, not the most amiable of wives. After a quarrel she was foolishly allowed to cross on an embassy to her brother Charles IV. She got possession of the person of the young Prince Edward. She was joined by Roger Mortimer, a friend of Earl Thomas and her secret paramour. With an army that never caught and executed Edward was forced to abdicate in favour of his son on the 20th of January, 1327. And some months later was foully done to death in his prison at Berkeley Castle. He was perhaps the most worthless of our kings, for if he had not the malice neither had he the ability of John. The tragedy of his fate is rendered more wretched by the sordid aims and unworthy gifts. For three years Mortimer and Isabella ruled England in their own interest when the young king seized power. Mortimer was executed at Tyburn for the murder of the king, and Isabella retired into profit life. The strength of character of the boy of 18 who affected this coup de main is obvious. Edward III, in his long reign of half a century, showed himself in many ways the worthy grandson of Edward I. He resembled his father and grandfather in physical type. Like Edward I, he was full of great projects, schemes, indeed impossible to carry out. Yet the aims of the first Edward were more feasible. His grandson took but little interest in Scotland and concentrated his efforts on an attempt to conquer France. He was a great soldier, but not a great general. The period saw brilliant victories but ill-conceived campaigns, and when all is said, the attempt bore little fruit in territorial gain. But it affected very considerable constitutional development in England. Edward was the very type of 14th century knighthood, which differed in a subtle way from that of the 13th century. There was more of show and less simplicity, less violence perhaps, but the new refinement covered a more essential coarseness. There was a new suavity in men's relations to each other, which partly arose from frivolity. Thus it is that while Edward III resembled his grandfather in many ways, his personality made a different impression of unreality and insincerity. Yet Edward was quite as much a constitutional king as Edward I. In fact, he yielded it more easily on many points, partly from indifference, his mind being set on other things. Yet Edward did not begin the Hundred Years War with France as a mere nightly experiment. The time was ripe for such a struggle. France was being at last welded into a nation, and the English possessions in the South were an anomaly. Force and Gaul had been repeatedly used to rest them from the English kings, and the Great War was really fought to decide the perennial dispute. There were minor causes of quarrel. The French king had helped the Scotch resistance to Edward Baloi, whom Edward had supported in the beginning of his reign, in his seizure of the Scotch crown during the minority of David Bruce. Balio's concessions to the English king lost in his popularity and his crown, and the reinstatement of David marked the beginning of the alliance between France and Scotland, which was to outlast him. Moreover, there were constant bickering on the narrow seas between English and French sailors. Philippe VI was supporting his vassal account of Flanders in his attack on the Great Clothing Towns, which were the chief market for English wool. Nevertheless, the spoken cause of the war was Edward's claim to the French throne, a claim which only the indeterminateness of medieval laws of secession made less ridiculous to that than it is to ours. It would be impossible here to describe the process of the war. It was declared in 1337, and Edward made expensive and fruitless raids in the north of France against an enemy which would not fight him in the open. In 1340 the English won a great naval battle that slews the French fleet which had been prepared to invade England being annihilated. The fight was one of the steps of England's great naval tradition, but the battle was fought as a land battle, the ships grappling and the men engaging in hand-to-hand fight. French opposition by sea was nullified for twenty years. A dispute over the Breton secession gave Edward another foothold in France, but it was not till 1346 when he abandoned Allied troops and led an English army into the very heart of France that marched on Paris. He was intercepted by the French king Ed Crachet and won a brilliant victory by the tactics which became traditional, the combination of men-at-arms on foot with longbow archers. It was a democratic formation and it became traditionally successful against the heavy and immobile aristocratic cavalry of France. It was symbolical of the national development which England had in contrast for the feudalism which still dominated society in France. Calais was captured before the end of the campaign and the next few years were marked by a series of truces. In 1355 Edward's eldest son, the black prince who had won his spurs at Crachet made a great raid through L'Incredo and in the next autumn led an army ravaging towards the Loire. It was met at Portiers by an army under the new French King John. The French seemed to have made an attempt to copy the English tactics but their armies were courageably aristocratic. The English won a great victory and King John was taken prisoner with the truce theatrically of the 14th century knight. The prince weighed it personally on him at table. King John came in honorable bondage to England and when he went back once to France when it was seen that she could not raise his ransom he came back again and died a prisoner. The mere sketch of the war can give no idea of the misery it brought to France full of revolt and unrest. The effects of the black death built all over Europe were aggravated there by the ravages of the Englishmen and all the miseries which war brings. In 1360 by the Lieutenant Edward who never meant his claim to the throne to be taken seriously formally renounced it but the Duchy of Accreté in its largest interpretation equal to half of France south of the Loire was formally yielded up to him as well as Calais. The Duchy was placed under the government of the black prince who had won it. In 1364 Charles V became king of France and his father. The black prince found Accreté in its swollen form hard to hold and when in 1369 he went to Spain to win victories for the unworthy Pedro the Cruel his French subjects appealed to the French king against his taxation. War broke out again the black prince returning ill from Spain could no longer leave it. He strove however in the south repeated Edward's earlier raiding policy in the north. In 1370 the black prince stained his record by Sacking Limoges the chief town of the small district he had reconquered. It was a characteristic act of medieval cruelty motivated by ungovernable passion. He returned incapacitated to England and died in 1377. His father had fallen into decrepitude old like many medieval at 60. During the next five years England lost all she had won in France. The year 1375 found the victor of Cresci suing for peace. He claimed to truce. Meanwhile depressed and broken in body and spirit Edward had fallen on evil days at home. His reign had seen a steady development in the power of the commons and this was always the nation's opportunity. It was becoming increasingly difficult for the king to live of his own as expenses increased. Feudal aids were dwindling and the profits from the royal domain and royal justice were inadequate. The king had the ancient customs and tried by separate negotiations with the merchants to extend his profits in this direction. In 1340 Edward conceded that no charge or aid should be imposed henceforth without the consent of parliament. Twice later parliament checked the growth of indirect taxation by forbidding any charge to be set upon wool without its consent. Moreover under Edward all evasiveness in meeting the parliament's petition was made impossible. They took the form of bills to which the king must answer definitely with consent or refusal. A certain advance was made in the direction of appropriation of supplies when money was definitely granted for the pursuance of the French war. Edward even conceded to parliament the right to audit the national accounts though this concession was made in the spirit of much of his compliance and became a dead letter. The control of parliament over the executive hardly existed though in the criticisms of the good parliament at the end of the reign a beginning was made even here. The common seem to have been genuinely loath to give advice on foreign policy and even when consulted excuse themselves as too simple and ignorant to give counsel on such. The last few years of the reign when Edward had fallen into senile decay saw much corruption in mal-administration. Two parties opposed each other in the state. The quarrel partook of the nature of a family dispute but had some of the notes of a constitutional struggle. The chief man who had power with the king was his son John of Gaunt, Earl of Lancaster. The chief woman was Alice Perairs a mistress of a low type. Queen Philippa had died in 1369. Many motives combined towards the unpopularity of John of Gaunt. There was the failure of the French war that he could not help. He was hated by the churchmen for he was tainted if not with a new heresy which was filling men's minds with wonder certainly with anti-clericalism. He had caused the dismissal of the king's clerical ministers in 1371 and William of Wikenham, Bishop of Winchester the famous patron of learning who had been chancellor was one of his chief opponents. But he was ambitious beyond his abilities and he had certainly given countenance to the unworthy dependents who surrounded Edward. The opposition to his influence came to a head in the good parliament of 1376. It had the support of the black prince who died while it was in session. It presented 140 petitions and though none of its work was put into permanent form the claims it put forward remain in record and formed a valuable precedent. They fell back on the old device of appointing a council of supervision. The court was cleared of the worthless favourites but next year John of Gaunt was able to pack a parliament through the sheriffs. He had already by royal edict declared the acts of the previous parliament null and void. He had even brought Alice Peraires back and she was there to steal the jewels from the corpse of Edward that was cold. The king died on the 21st of June 1377. The minority of Richard II, the black prince's son reads almost like a chapter out of the last years of Edward's life. After a brief period of retirement John of Gaunt had chief influence in the state. The government was weak. Taxation was heavy. The French were herring the very coast of England yet pride forbade this. Forces which had been at work all through the century now exploded. The 14th century in its social, economic and in the minor degree its religious life presents a deep contrast to the centuries which had gone before. The passivity which had marked the lower strata of the population gave place to a new self-consciousness which is almost modern. Indeed the age is full of anticipations and modern things that must not be overemphasized. Much which arrests the attention of the historian was but transitory and there was indeed less of this spurious modernity in the next century when the medieval system was indeed fast-breaking up. The notes of the new unrest are the social and economic agitations partly resulting on the recurrent visitations of the black death and linked with the incipient forces of heresy in religion represented by John Wycliffe and his followers. The black or foul death was a plague which three times in this century swept over Europe from the east decimating populations and causing untold misery to an age which had no sanitary science. It came to England in 1349, 1361 and 1369. The mysterious scourge had created almost as deep an impression on England as on its own age but it is not so much a determining as an arresting factor in English economic history. It has been estimated that it swept away half the English population which the most generous computation estimates at five millions and the most grudging at two and a half so that even on the more liberal estimate the whole population of England did not equal that of London today. It has been estimated that the population of a large borough in the Middle Ages would be from 500 to 1,000 all told. The immediate and obvious consequence of the plague was a scarcity of labor. Corn ripened and rotted for want of reapers and the general depression threatened the landowners. Tradition used to tell how these strove to undo a process which had been going on and in fact was almost completed before the visitation. The commutation of feudal service for money payment. In fact this process had been going on but was far from completed. With the depletion of the laborers labor was now becoming more valuable than money but the evidence goes to show that it was the villain rather than the Lord who was the innovator in the economic disputes of the period. It is hardly thinkable that the landowners could attempt to revive obsolete rights. On the other hand the great demand for his labor must have compelled the villain irresistibly to push further the system of commutation. Moreover the class of paid laborers which had grown up as a natural corollary to commutation demanded higher wages as the market widened. In the years following the first visitation of the plague Parliament strove with true medieval blindness to the irresistible service to stay up the cause of the landowner as against the laborers and to settle the rate of wages throughout the land but in vain. The landowners themselves evaded the statutes of laborers and paid the higher rate. The process of commutation was hastened rather than retarded for a Lord would sometimes commute labor service so as to keep the villain on his holding for one effect of the centuries unrest was to make the population more mobile. The black death really gave a further impotest forces already at work and the disorganization aided in the growth of the new self-consciousness which marked the times. Apart from the actual physical misery of sickness, the trading and laboring classes profited rather than suffered, the former by a general rise in prices, the latter by the rise of wages. The real sufferers were the landowners who now tended to abandon the system of farming through bailiffs and let portions out to tenant farmers who became the common type of the agricultural population. Thus feudalism which had been practically eliminated from political life became an attenuated element in the economic structure. Nevertheless the age was full of discontent. Strange new heretics were seen flagulating themselves in the streets of London. John Wycliffe at Oxford was formulating his dictum that dominion is founded on grace, which when it filtered through to the people was translated into bad men should be deprived of their property. John Ball known as the mad priest of Kent was preaching a socialist gospel from the text when Adam deathed and Eve span who was then the gentleman. The great medieval English poem peers the ploughman, though chiefly on the moral decay of the age was also quarried for texts. The religious element was certainly less marked than the social in the movement among the people. It had its counterpart in the anti-clericism of John of Gaunt who was a friend of Wycliffe. The anti-papal legislation which had marked the reign of Edward had but a superficial connection with it. In 1351 the statute of provisors forbade papal provision to English benefices and the first statute of premune ire was passed in 1353 forbidding men to draw out any of the realm in plea of low-aimed at papal jurisdiction. A second and more famous statute of premune ire was passed in 1393 and extended in 1400, but like much medieval legislation they expressed the ideal rather than the practice. They formed one manifestation of the growing sense of nationalism which was marked by the increasing use of English as their ordinary speech by the upper classes in which was shown in the blank refusal of the papal demand for the arrears of the tribute John had paid yearly to Rome. The anti-papal policy was partly anti-French for the papal seat being at Avignon that popes were more or less under French influence. It does not represent in any sense a breaking away from the spiritual authority of Rome. The new heresy for the most part reached only the lower classes and only a section of them. The pent-up excitement of the times found most vivid expression in the peasants' results of 1381. The spark which kindled the flame was a heavy pole tax with no adequate gradation ahead on all adult persons. The commissioners who went out to revise the returns were met by risings everywhere. They had in them a strange unanimity. Watch words passed from village to village and gave an impression of elaborate organization. But this is probably delusive. The leaders were local agitators and the grievances were local and definite. True, John Ball helped to inspire the kentish rising. John Wycliffe sent out his poor priests in 1378 to preach a simple gospel life. But there is no real evidence that they took any part in the agitation. Though obviously they form one element the more, tempting men from their routine. The kentish men who marched upon London complained chiefly of misgovernment. Their grievances were political. In Essex and East Anglia the social unrest found voice. The demand was for freedom and the laneage. The isolated risings in the towns of the north and west had for the most part their origin in the discontent of the poor citizens against the rule of an oligarchy. The kentish revolt had most prominence. The political nature of its aims is emphasized by the fact that the Londoners opened their gates to the mob under Wat Tyler. John of Gaunt's palace of the saffron was wrecked with many other buildings. The king rode out to meet Wat Tyler at mile end and gave the rebels the charters they demanded. But Tyler who must have been a mere demagogue went back into the city, broke into the tower, murdering the Chancellor Archbishop Sudburn, the treasurer and other officials. The mob then turned to burning houses and slaying every official they could find, completely alienating the neutral population. Next day the king met them again at Smithfield when Tyler proposed to him a complete socialist program, probably meaning to follow up a refusal with further violence. Richard a slim handsome boy of 14 was cool and collected and when Tyler threatened one of the king's attendants with his dagger William Walworth the mayor struck him dead with his cutlass. Richard with amazing courage held the bewildered mob in Parley while Walworth rode back into the city and returned with a militia. The rebels seen themselves caught in a trap and leaderless soquely dispersed an army marched through Essex and the rebels melted away. Many leaders were hanged John Ball among the number. Parliament declared the king's charters null and void laying stress on the necessity of parliamentary consent to render them valid. The revolt is one of the most picturesque incidents in the Middle Ages but its importance as a historical factor has been exaggerated. It may have affected a temporary reaction against the process by which the serfs were becoming free but it was hardly appreciable. In the next century serfdom is already an anachronism. The general religious excitement too seems to have died down. Though Larlady was a force in the land, Wycliffe in these years had been developing his doctrine and in his denial of transubstantiation was preaching heresy. His teaching was condemned by a council at Black Friars but whether he recanted or not he was allowed to retire to his church at Lutterworth where he died while hearing mass two years later. John O'Gaunt threw off from him for he would not countenance open heresy but there was an anti-clerical tone at the court until the end of the reign. The Wycliffe's followers, the Larlards, were constantly hunted out and imprisoned. For three years after the peasants' revolt the young king who had shown such precocious judgment was under tutelage. When he was emancipated he resented the interference of his uncles. John O'Gaunt went to Spain but Thomas of Woodstock, Duke of Glauchester his younger uncle a factious and unscrupulous man remained. Richard's complete confidence in Michael de la Pôle later made Earl of Suffolk and the young noble Robert de Verre who became Duke of Ireland was resented. One was a wise and neither were bad men but Richard was extravagant in the honors he heaped upon them. He was lavish too in his expenditure and petulant and resentful of interference. The attack which Glauchester made was less a constitutional than a factious opposition that Richard had to bow to it. In 1386 Glauchester by an attack in Parliament forced Richard to dismiss his ministers and accept a council of control. Suffolk was impeached that is presented by the House of Commons at the Bar of the House of Lords a process which the Good Parliament had devised. It was imprisoned but released by Richard in 1387 but Glauchester supported by the Warwick, Arendelle, Nottingham and Henry of Derby, John of Gron's son took up arms and defeated the small royalist army under Suffolk at Redcott Bridge. The Five Lords appealed the King's Friends of Treason. Suffolk and Oxford fled overseas. The merciless Parliament found them and others of the King's Friends guilty of treason and eight or nine were executed. Richard with admirable self-control went to the inevitable and allowed himself to be subjected to a council. The next year he declared himself of an age to rule and chose his own ministers. His conduct now was in strong contrast to his levity before. He chose William of Weichenheim as his Chancellor and restored the appellants to his council in 1390. This pirate was marked by wise rule in a constitutional spirit. In 1896 Richard made a truce of twenty-five years with France marrying Isabella, the seven-year-old daughter of the French King. His first wife Anne of Bohemia hadn't died two years before. There had been a peculiarly deep affection between the King and his wife and Richard was frenzied with grief. The new friendship with France marks the turning point in Richard's career. The whole character of his temper and policy changes. He may have been bitten with a fever of admiration for the despotism of the French kings and resolved to imitate it, or he may have been nursing for eight years the plan of a ghastly revenge. Either explanation seems inadequate. And the psychology of this crisis remains perhaps the greatest mystery in medieval history. The suggestion that Richard's mind was enhinged is a plausible solution. The facts are flagrant enough that the Parliament, which met in January 1397, a member, Haxi, was condemned as a traitor for complaining of court extravagance. Richard affected to believe that the appellants designed new treason. Lauchester was arrested, sent overseas and murdered at Calais. The Earl's of Warwick and Arndelle were executed. The Archbishop Arndelle, the brother of the Earl, vanished. The Earl's of Derby and Nottingham left recently as friends of Richard and were made dukes of Hereford and Norfolk respectively. In the next year a packed Parliament delegated its powers to a committee of the King's friends after granting Richard a life revenue. In the autumn of this year, Hereford and Norfolk were banished from the realm on a frivolous pretext and the King's revenge was complete. The action of the Parliament was most alarming. In the possibility of such submissiveness on the part of the representatives illustrates the limitations of Parliamentary development. Richard seems to have contemplated the despotism very much like that developed later by the tutors but only complete exhaustion made the tutor despotism possible. In England was yet to see a century of struggle and experiment. Richard's rule meanwhile was most arbitrary. Binds and loans were raised by Richard to decide his violent language, his argument against his sanity. His misrule did not last long while he was absent in Ireland in the summer of 1399. He was one of the few medieval Kings who had any statesman-like idea of its government. Henry of Derby, accompanied by Archbishop Arendel, came back to claim his forfeited duchy of Lancaster. So many rallied to his cause in the throne to himself. Richard returned hastily but made no adequate resistance. He seemed completely confused and demoralized and within three weeks consented to abdicate on condition that his life should be spared in an honourable livelihood granted to him. Henry of Bowlingbrook claimed the throne by right of dissent and conquest. The former ground was impossible for his father was the third son of Edward III and Richard's heir, as he had no children, was the child Edmund in March, descended from Lionel, Duke of Clarence, Edward II's son. The claim on the ground of conquest was insulting. Henry's real strength was that he had the nation at his back worried even of Richard's capris. He is the least consistent figure in the role of English kings. Extravagant, even effeminate in his taste, loving the eccentricities of dress which he developed, he yet gives occasional glimpses of seriousness of purpose. It is difficult to forget his reckless boy's courage in face of a peasant mob, and apart from his revenge on the appellants, who had dealt so mercilessly with his friends, no act of cruelty can be laid to his charge. The pulse anonymity of his abdication is almost redeemed by his dignified conviction that he could not put off well anointing. He died within a year, probably done to death, if not by violence, by the more insidious method of privation. It is noted that the Lancastrian revolutions, as well as the dynastic struggles of the next century, was precipitated by Edward III's policy of gathering up great earldoms into the hands of members of the royal family. He sought to disarm baronial killing. He was utterly mistaken. The struggles of the 15th century were chiefly in the nature of the family quarrel. Richard was the first victim of the mistake. With the accession of Henry IV begins a new period, separated by marked differences from the 14th century. If the story of that century has loomed in somber colors it must be remembered that it had other aspects. Against the melancholy, the authors or authors of Piers the Plowman must be set the more perfect poetry of Chaucer with its new joyousness and humor which must have had its counterpart somewhere in the national life. CHAPTER VI of England in the Middle Ages This is a LibriVox recording all LibriVox recordings are in the public domain. For more information or to volunteer please visit LibriVox.org England in the Middle Ages by Elizabeth O'Neill CHAPTER VI The Breakup of the Middle Ages 1399-1485 The 15th century exhibits the worst aspects of the medieval system. Something of idealism redeems the cruelty of the previous centuries but the new century was marked by a new jealousy and coarseness. The age wears itself out in faction fights in which each man seeks his own hand. The second part of the Hundred Years War arose not from the national impulses which form one element in the first part but as a device of a king hard-pressed at home anxious to dazzle opponents by his military prowess. It was an age of spurious romance. It achieved the spurious forms of a constitutionalism which broke for an equally hollow revivalism of feudalism. It had no genuine literature but only imitations. Even the flow of Latin chronicles stopped short. Dress was no less splendid than in the previous age but female dress at least degenerated in design. The time produced a characteristic architecture beautiful at its best but with a tendency to overemphasize detail. The chief mark which the incipient renaissance made on England was in approximation to the violence which characterized the Italian politics of the time. Torture was now first used as part of a legal process whereas in the true Middle Ages a scrupulous delicacy had foreborn to fetter an accused man in court lest this should undermine his self-possession. There were, it is true, side-currents towards better things. In 1477 William Caxton set up his printing press in Westminster sanctuary and produced laboriously beautiful editions of English and Latin works. Yet chief among his patrons was that John Tiptoff, Earl of Worchester, who is constable under Edward IV earned a monstrous reputation for the ruthless doing to death of his political enemies by unprecedented application of the principles of Roman law which he had learnt at Padua. Besides the suppression of heresy in the earlier period there is little to relate of church history. Corporations grew rich and though new monasteries were established the tendency was rather towards the foundation of schools and colleges. This quiet and religious life was perhaps not altogether a bad sign and it finds its parallel and that of the people as apart from the nobles. Trade flourished and the agricultural population was flourishing. It is only the upper classes which have a history. The age is full of incident but it is a repetition of incident and its history is best briefly told in the summary of the tendencies which the details merely served to illustrate. Henry IV came to the throne as a parliamentary sovereign and he reigned as the slave of an assembly which had degenerated in its spirit and policy. Henry had great need of funds to quell the opposition which met his rule on every side. The Welsh and Scots were against him. In Wales Owen Glendauer still held out at Henry's death. The Percy's beat the Scotch for him at Hamilton Hill and then the King himself had to subdue them. The orliness in France invaded Guillaume extensively on Richard's behalf. Henry raised expeditions to face all this opposition but Parliament refused to make adequate supplies and hampered the King so that he could not give the Kingdom that good governance which was the crying need of this century. It is difficult to feel any enthusiasm for the victories of the period for this very reason. The Assembly won rights of control while what was really needed was a strong executive. The tale, however, must be told and the principles which Parliament vindicated had their value as precedence in an age which was ripe for their application. Henry was forced to nominate his councilman Parliament and to agree to appropriation of supplies and audit of accounts. The direct of the reign was the emphasis of orthodoxy. Archbishop Arendelle had helped Henry to win the crown and in 1401 the Statute de Heretetico Comparendo was passed which made death by fire the penalty for obstinance heresy. The first to suffer was William Sotter a lullard priest of London and several clerics and laymen were burnt during the reign. Yet the King had allowed the honorary execution of Archbishop Scrope who had taken part in the Northern Rising. The last years of Henry's reign were more secure but he was dying of leprosy. His son Prince Henry, it was said, had designs on his crown. The court was divided by faction involving no principal. Henry died in March 1413 having drawn little satisfaction from the crown which he had won so questionably. He did not seal any sympathy with him. He seems to typify the sorted aspects of the age and even its spurious graces. The King of 25 who ascended the English throne as Henry V in 1413 has been pictured for us by an inimitable hand as the type of ideal manhood but history does not seal the verdict. Note it for his lightness and loose living as a Prince on the day of his father's death he put these things away. He was genuinely religious in a narrow way and he regarded his kinship as a sacred charge. Within his lights he never solided but his very righteousness is irritating because of his narrow vision and his crude assumptions. He was not sorted but this was the chalice of idealisms. He was already in a stronger position than his father and his first parliament made him a generous grant. It and the nation generally were enthusiastic for the French war which Henry was to renew. His orthodoxy too was pleasing to the nation. Henry IV had enforced the statute against heretics as languidly as he might and had never struck at the great ones who were tainted with lathardy but his son had a fierce hatred of heresy and immediately upon his accession he attacked Sir John Old Castle by courtesy Lord Cobham a notable lullard, leader and scholar when such among laymen were still rare. He was condemned to be burnt but escaped and raised a forlorn revolt which was easily put down. He was still at large till 1418 when he was captured and sent to the stake. But the chief interest of the reign will of the French war. The policy is almost the obvious one for Henry to pursue in order to popularize the dynasty but this is a cynical motive which perhaps acted unconsciously. He seems to have sincerely believed in Edward III's claim and in his own inheritance of it. France was torn by feuds between the two great parties, the omniacs who had possession of this, the Mad King and the Burgundians. Henry landed in Normandy in the summer of 1414 with a well-conceived plan of campaign meaning to reduce the duchy by a series of sieges. Pestulence broke out among his troops and after taking our floor he marched for Calais. An immense omniac army met him at Agincourt on the 25th of October and the famous battle was fought and won by the English in the traditional manner of Cretce or Portiers, the archery doing vast execution against the heavy French cavalry and land which was but Marasse. Henry returned to England with immense prestige which was increased by his alliance with the emperor Sigsizimond with the aim of putting an end to the great schism which had torn Christendom since the return of the Papal seat Rome in 1378. The end was achieved when the Council of Constance elected Pope Martin V from 1417 to 1419. Henry was again in France and conquered all Normandy. In the latter year the Burgundians outraged by the murder of John Duke of Burgundy by the Dauphin Charles and the Armagnac party formed an alliance with Henry. The Burgundians were powerful in the north which alone accepted the treaty of Troy's by which Henry married Catherine the French king's daughter and was recognized as Regent and heir of the Mad King. There was fighting still to do in France and in May 1421 Henry went a third time. On the 31st of August he died of dysentery at Vincennes and in two months Charles the Mad King was dead too. Henry VI the son of Henry and Catherine was not two years old and power was divided out between his two uncles John Duke of Bedford and his younger brother Humphrey Duke of Gloucester. Bedford was Regent but to him fell the conduct of the war. Gloucester remained in England as protector though power really lay with the Council. The home history for twenty years while the king grew to his feeble manhood is merely the story of the quarrels between Gloucester and the Council and especially with Henry Beauford, Bishop of Winchester the last surviving son of John of Gaunt. Gloucester was vain and factious while Beauford was a statesman and a patriot. Meanwhile Bedford was doing his best to fulfill an impossible task and a generation of war leaders were being trained in the ruthlessness and violence which such a war gets in which were to mark the wars of the Roses in the next generation. Bedford's effort to win the south of France from the King of Bourges as the English derisively termed Charles the Seventh were made of no avail when in 1429 Joan of Arc the peasant girl of Doremi forced the English to raise the siege of Orleans, the key to the south and led Charles the Seventh to be crowned at Reims. Joan is the one heroic figure in an age of violence and treachery and she saved the fair land of France for which she had so great pity. The English were demoralized by her prowess and the national spirit which she symbolized. Though she was captured and burnt at Rouen the work she had done went on. In 1435 the Burgundians deserted the English and the death of Bedford destroyed any further hope of victory. In the next year Charles the Seventh recovered Paris yet for some years longer the English kept a desperate grip on their conquest in the north and on Guillaume. The council hated the thoughts of peace and Humphrey of Glauchester was loud in his demands for war. He however fell into insignificance with the disgrace of his wife Eleanor of Cobham in 1441 for practicing magic arts against the life of the young king. Beaufort with his nephew Edmund Beaufort Duke of Somerset in William de la Paul Earl of Suffolk controlled the government and the truce of tours was signed in 1444. Henry who was weak to imbecility was married to Margaret of Anjou the next year a woman of remarkably strong character and lively temperament. She immediately allied herself with Somerset and Suffolk and became involved in the odium which was the inevitable out of those who made peace in a war which had begun so gloriously. In 1447 Anjou and Maine were surrendered and Glauchester appeared once more to have the discontent but was arrested and died in a few days perhaps by foul means. Normandy was re-conquered by French in retaliation for the sallies made by the garrisons. Somerset was in Normandy and Suffolk was made the victim of popular indignation. It was impeached and banished but intercepted by his enemies on his way to Flanders and murdered. In the same month the popular sentiment found expression in a rebellion of the men of Kent the hotbed of political agitation when John Cade led it and terrorized London for two days but early history was repeated and the violence of the mob led to its dispersal by the men of London and Cade was killed. The rising was an indication of the strength of popular feeling. It was significant that Cade had used the name of Mortimer the real representative of that house Richard Duke of York was Lieutenant of Ireland but left his post in England in 1450 when Somerset came back from France. York assumed the position of leader of the opposition to the weak government of the court party which went rapidly from bad to worse. Henry gave and spent without counting and the want of good governance at home aggravated the sense of disaster abroad. In 1453 Guillaume was won by the French and nothing remained of the territory the Englishmen had fought for a century but Calais in the same year Henry went mad and at last Margaret bore him a son Edward. Parliament made Richard protector of the realm and Somerset was impeached and sent to the tower. Richard was occupying his natural position and there is no evidence that he aimed at the throne though the weakness of the Lancastrian rule must have tempted reflections of your rights by dissent from Lionel Duke of Clarence. Richard seemed to have been genuinely anxious for good governance and from one point of view the coming struggle is that of constitutionalism against misrule. It is significant that the Lancastrian party did without Parliament for three years fearing to face it. It was inevitable that Richard when embittered by the Lancastrian interests of his aims should act as he did. When in 1455 Henry recovered and Richard was dismissed and Somerset restored Richard marked with his retainers toward London and was met by troops under the King and Somerset at St. Albans. It was fought the first pitch battle of the Wars of the Roses. Somerset was slain and Henry who would never strike blow against a Christian man taken prisoner. Richard's chief supporter was Richard Neville, Earl of Warwick. He could count besides his relatives the Neville's, the Mobres and the Birchers a great band of noblemen. Some historians have seen in these wars no element but that of baronial jealousy and a certain color is given to the view by the nature of the strife. The great mass of the people went on to fight their routine while the Nobles fought pitched battles through their paid retainers, largely soldiery whom the end of the French Wars had turned loose upon the land. It is significant that private feuds were fought out under the badges of the two Roses in this particularism in aim gave a peculiar quality of bitterness to the struggle. Soon after St. Albans Henry again went mad in York already and possession of the government was declared protector once more. Next year the king recovered and York remained two years out of office. There was even a show of reconciliation in 1458 but Margaret was still bitter against him. Strife broke out again in 1459 and in 1460 York and his chief adherence fled the realm to return in 1460 taking Henry prisoner once more while Margaret fled. York now claimed the throne and as a compromise was recognized as heir. Margaret tried to vindicate her son's rights and York was slain in battle against her at Wakefield. His son Edward Earl of March stepped into his father's position and pretensions and though Margaret retained possession of her husband, the most pathetic figure at this time Edward was recognized as king in London. All the forces of order, the towns and the richer parts of England the south and east held for him in dread of the Lancastrian anarchy. Edward won the north in a series of battles beginning with Tauton. Margaret and her son fled to France and Henry was taken and imprisoned in the tower. For six years Edward held the throne but his marriage to Elizabeth Woodville in the favor he showed her kinsmen alienated Warwick in the Nevels. Warwick had set his heart on a French marriage for the king. He showed his resentment by fomenting rebellions and enlisted the king's brother the Duke of Clarence who was bent on marriage with Warwick's daughter. Edward was actually taken prisoner by the opposition in 1469 but released on terms. In the next year he hunted the rebels out of the country. They returned within six months armed to effect a Lancastrian revolution. The south rallied to the Earl and Edward fled but to return in March 1471 with help from Burgundy. In April he took possession of London and put Henry back in the tower. Within a fortnight Warwick the kingmaker was slain at and Prince Edward at Tewkesbury. Margaret, broken hearted, left England forever. Within a few weeks the unhappy Henry was murdered in the tower. For twelve years Edward ruled England unopposed. He was greedy but thrifty and he managed to live on his revenue and avoid taxation. He extorted a vast sum of money from the French king at the treaty of Piquini being bought off from a war he never meant to wage. He encouraged trade and ruled firmly through a small council of his wise relatives. The country was desirous of rest. Otherwise Edward's rule might have been resented for he was by no means a constitutional king. For years he did not call parliament and he raised benevolences where he could. He was by nature indolent and though handsome and popular he murdered for more revenge his brother Clarence whom one of his infrequent parliaments had attainted. Edward died at the age of 41 having ruined his constitution by excess and slothful ease. He had gradually delegated his duties to his brother Richard of Glauchester a hard-working man who had ever been zealous in his brother's cause. Nothing in his character or career pointed to undue ambition. He easily obtained the protectorship in the person of the 12-year-old king Edward. He imprisoned the queen's relatives and seized and beheaded without trial Lord Hastings the late king's greatest friend. He got possession too of Richard the younger brother of the young king and both were imprisoned in the tower. He had himself crowned king of England declaring his brother's children bastards. They were murdered within a month. Richard posed as a constitutional king and he counted on the support of a nation which he knew now dreaded civil war before all things. But his crimes were too flagrant even for the England of that day. He suppressed the rebellion of Buckingham his chief supporter who shocked by the murder of the princess raised a revolt and was executed but all men were disgusted at the monstrous nature of Richard's crimes. As his wife Anne Neville they died it was rumored that he was already scheming to marry his niece Elizabeth sister of the princess whom he had murdered. She was destined to be the bride of the man who overthrew him. It was inevitable that Henry Earl of Richmond the only representative of the House of Lancaster should make a bid for the throne of England. It was in his name that Buckingham rose in 1483. He was the son of Margaret Buford and Edmund Tudor Yorkist in Lancastrian exiles rallied to his banner as he prepared for the invasion of England. He landed on the 1st of August at Milford Haven and three weeks later slew Richard on Bosworth Field. The Stanley's who had deserted Richard on the field crowned Henry Tudor with the crown of the fallen king and so fittingly ended the final drama in the history of medieval England. End of chapter 6 End of England in the Middle Ages by Elizabeth O'Neill