The Quo Warranto proceedings were ‘always slow, usually incomplete, and often futile’.[834] But they do illustrate the aggressive nature of Edward’s government, even if they also demonstrate the way in which it was not always possible to translate intentions into effective action. Part of the object of the enquiry was obviously the recovery of a multitude of usurped franchises. But it also served the purpose of establishing royal authority over the exercise of franchisal justice, emphasizing the power of the crown. The recovery of franchises was a matter of political, rather than financial importance to Edward, since it reduced the authority of men such as the earl of Gloucester. The stress placed on Bractonian theories of kingship by the royal attorneys was a development of Henry III’s autocratic ideas.[835] It may be that Gislingham and Thornton pressed their arguments further than the king intended, for there is certainly no indication that Edward was ever aiming at a general revocation of franchisal rights, but it is quite clear that in official circles the concept of kingship was one where the king ruled, rather than co-operated with his magnates.
A further indication of the government’s attitude to franchises is provided by the treatment of urban liberties. London was taken into the king’s hands in 1285, following the protest of the mayor at an apparent extension of royal judicial authority over the city. It was ruled through a warden appointed by Edward for the next thirteen years, and rights of self-government were only restored in return for 2,000 marks. Edward’s hostility to London was of course of long standing, going back to the years of the Barons’ War. Even the highly-favoured town of Hull, acquired from Meaux abbey, was not granted full self-government, but was ruled by royal officials. Bristol was fined £500 by the king in 1285, and in 1294 was taken into his hands. York was deprived of its rights of self-government between 1280 and 1282, and again in 1297. Other towns that received similar treatment in the course of the reign included Newcastle-upon-Tyne and Canterbury. In addition to such measures, smaller towns were losing their burghal status, as the crown gained new methods of defining their status with the introduction of a double rate of taxation, higher for towns and ancient demesnes than for the rest of the country, and as urban representation developed in parliament. The franchises of the towns were not destroyed by the government, but they were undoubtedly being eroded.[836]
It is striking that when Edward I most needed the support of the magnates, at the beginning of his struggle with Philip IV, a far more considerable opponent than Llywelyn of Wales had been, he should have abandoned the Quo Warranto enquiries. However the courts chose to treat these actions, they could never have been welcome to the possessors of franchises. Another change of policy took place in 1294 that was plainly the result of the alteration in the situation resulting from the French war. Part of the enquiry of 1274 was concerned with the question of whether tenants-in-chief had alienated any of the fees they held of the crown. In a royal ordinance of 1256 such alienations had been brought under crown control: they could only be made by special licence. The concern of the crown was not with the military aspects of feudalism, for as has been shown, this was of no great importance in the later thirteenth century. Rather, the purpose of the ordinance was to protect the royal rights to the profitable feudal incidents of wardship and marriage. In the first part of his reign Edward I enforced this policy rigidly. Between 1272 and 1294 only fifty licences to alienate were issued to tenants-in-chief, and when it was discovered that an unlicensed alienation had taken place, the land in question was taken into the crown’s hands until satisfaction had been made. From 1294 to 1307 no less than 294 licences were issued. Clearly Edward’s attitude changed radically, and it seems that the reason was his need for support for his military policies. Of the thirty-one licences issued in 1294, no fewer than fifteen were granted to men who it was stated were going to Gascony on the king’s service.[837]
The magnates felt justly aggrieved that while the crown rigidly controlled alienations made by tenants-in-chief, these latter had no power to control alienations made by their own mesne tenants. This grievance was partly met by the Statute of Quia Emptores, issued in the July parliament of 1290. This put an end to further sub-infeudation, permitting instead the practice of substitution should a mesne tenant wish to alienate some of his land. In this way the tenant-in-chief preserved his rights to the feudal incidents. But Quia Emptores did not apply to the relations between the crown and the tenants-in-chief, and it was only by the grant of licences to alienate that Edward could satisfy the demands of the great magnates.[838]
Attempts to categorize the legislation of Edward I in class terms, or as ‘feudal’ or ‘anti-feudal’ are doomed to failure. The intention was to clarify the law, and to remedy specific grievances, but no one group was consistently favoured. Although much of the legislation dealing with the vexed question of the relations between lords and tenants served to protect the latter from undue oppression, measures were also devised to put an end to various devious tricks by which tenants were able to evade their obligations to do services. In one well-known case, that of De Donis Conditionalibus, the first clause of Westminster II, the intention was to protect the interest of donors by making entails of land more secure, but amendment of the initial draft thwarted this to a considerable extent. In neither draft nor amendment, however, can any direct political purpose be assumed.[839]
Edward himself was not the kind of man to concern himself with the inevitably technical aspects of legal reform. It may be that the guiding influence in the legal reforms was that of Robert Burnell. He had been in Edward’s service since at least 1260, and on two occasions the king attempted to have him elected as archbishop of Canterbury: he was clearly of very great importance as a royal adviser until his death in 1292.[840] But the man who can be linked most closely with the process of legal reform is Ralph Hengham, Chief Justice of King’s Bench, whose family was connected by marriage with Burnell’s. Not only do Hengham’s own writings betray a very close acquaintance with the new statutes, but his epitaph and statements attributed both to himself and to other justices in the Year Books also suggest he played a leading part.[841] The king’s own attitude to the law is suggested by an incident when he was presiding in parliament over a case brought against Isabella de Redvers. Her attorney objected to the summons that she had been sent, on the grounds that it did not specify the charges being brought. Two justices were prepared to uphold the writ, but Hengham argued strongly against them. Edward, plainly impatient with their arguments, interrupted, saying ‘I have nothing to do with your disputations, but, God’s blood! you shall give me a good writ before you arise hence.’[842] The remark characterizes Edward’s view of legal reform: the details were the responsibility of his justices and clerks, while his concern was simply to get his own way.
A study of Quo Warranto and of the grants of licences to alienate suggests that the policies adopted towards the aristocracy were more aggressive in the years up to 1294 than in the later part of the reign. But although few new legal procedures were introduced in the latter years, Edward had quite sufficient weapons at his disposal to continue to challenge some of the great franchise holders. One target was the Welsh Marcher lords. The success of the Welsh wars had depended to a considerable extent on the co-operation of these men, but once success had been achieved in the wars, Edward could afford to adopt a much more rigorous attitude towards them.
The king had in his youth witnessed the vital rôle performed by the Marcher lords in the politics and campaigns of the Barons’ Wars. Their military power was considerable, and in addition the liberties they enjoyed placed them in a very special position. The king’s writ did not run in the Marcher lands; the only jurisdiction that the crown could claim was over advowsons, and in cases where there was a disputed claim to a lordship. The unique powers and privileges of the Marchers, inherited from the Welsh rulers whose lands the Normans had conquered,[843] were left largely unchallenged by Edward I in the Quo Warranto enquiries.[844] The king might challenge the greatest of t
he Marchers, Gilbert de Clare, over his English franchises, but he could not afford to face the united opposition of all the Marcher lords that an attack on the great Clare liberty of Glamorgan would probably have provoked.
Edward I made his attitude to the extensive liberties of the Welsh Marches plain early in the reign. In the Statute of Westminster I it was stated that ‘in the marches of Wales, or in any other place where the king’s writ runs not, then the king who is sovereign lord shall do right therein unto all such as will complain’. Clearly the king was not of a mind to accept limitations on his authority, even if they were justified by custom.[845] Two cases from the year 1281, however, do not suggest that in the period of the conquest of Wales the king was prepared to antagonize the Marchers by an enthusiastic application of this doctrine. In one, some citizens of Hereford complained that the earl of Hereford’s officials had distrained upon their property in contravention of royal statute. The earl asserted that the king’s statutes had no validity within his lands. Edward might have been expected to react vigorously to such a challenge, but although Hereford was summoned before the King’s Bench, and his lands in Essex attached, the case seems to have been allowed to drop. The other case saw the earl of Gloucester summoned before the king to answer an accusation made by William de Braose, to the effect that his bailiffs had assaulted William on the king’s highway. The earl claimed that he was not answerable for the case in the royal courts, as it had occurred within his liberty of Glamorgan. Once again there was no proper conclusion: the crown does not seem to have answered Gloucester’s claim that he held his lands by conquest, and that he ought not to have to reply without the deliberation of the other Marcher lords.[846]
The defeat and death of Llywelyn at Orewin Bridge late in 1282 took the heart out of the Welsh resistance. In June 1283 his brother Dafydd was taken, and the conquest of Wales was achieved, though revolts necessitated further campaigns in 1287 and 1294-5. The issue of the Statute of Wales in 1284, which extended an English-style administration and legal system to Wales, marked the end of formal Welsh independence. No longer was there any strategic reason for the continued existence of the Marcher lordships, nor was it still necessary for the king to woo the support of the Marchers. Rather, their strength and independence represented a considerable potential threat to the aggressive monarchy of Edward I. At the close of the second Welsh war the earl of Gloucester had made great display of his position by paying the expenses of the king when Edward passed through Glamorgan. The monarch’s ungrateful response was to adopt a very much tougher attitude towards the privileges of the Welsh Marchers during the rest of the reign.
The cause célèbre of Marcher privileges was of course that of the private war between the earls of Gloucester and Hereford, the result of a boundary dispute. The story is a well-known one, and need not be repeated at length. The right of the Marchers to wage such wars was well established, but in a strongly-worded proclamation the king ordered the earls in 1290 to desist. Until a final lapse, Hereford, the plaintiff, heeded this instruction, but Gloucester’s men persisted in frequent raids. After lengthy hearings, and despite the clear hostility of many of the Marchers to the proceedings, the two earls were condemned to confiscation of their lands and imprisonment. After a relatively short period, Gloucester was allowed to redeem himself for 10,000 marks, and Hereford for 1,000 marks: the size of the sums reflecting the relative gravity of the two men’s offences. Their lands were restored to them.[847] Another case also concerned Gloucester, who claimed the right to the custody of the bishopric of Llandaff during vacancies. The conclusion of this was that Gloucester surrendered his rights to Llandaff to the crown, but by the king’s grace they were restored to him for his life only, to revert to the crown subsequently.[848] In a dispute between the prior of Goldcliff and Gloucester the king succeeded in establishing the royal right to hear cases concerning advowsons within the liberty of Glamorgan.[849]
It is plain that Gilbert earl of Gloucester was singled out for special treatment by Edward. He was of course the most notable of the Marchers, but in addition it must be remembered that he was Edward’s antagonist in the 1260s, and that it was he who replaced the king’s nominee Tiptoft in command in South Wales in 1282. There was a long record of hostility between the two men. But other Marcher lords suffered heavy-handed treatment from the king. In 1292 Theobald de Verdun was sentenced to imprisonment for various offences and his liberty of Ewyas Lacy was confiscated. He was restored to his lands, like Gloucester and Hereford, and like them paid a fine to redeem his body. In his case, the sum was £500.[850] In 1299 the crown challenged the position of the Braose lordship of Gower, claiming that it was a part of the county of Carmarthen. During the lengthy legal proceedings the old Bractonian arguments about the inalienability of royal rights were once again cited. In the end, the king re-conferred the liberty on William de Braose, but pressure was brought on him to grant his tenants a charter which severely limited his authority.[851] In his various dealings with the Marchers the king did not intend to destroy their liberties. He was quite willing to confirm Edmund Mortimer in the full enjoyment of his rights in Wigmore when these were challenged by Bogo de Clare in his capacity as royal bailiff of Montgomery.[852] But Edward was determined to impose some check on unlimited Marcher authority, and to establish the right of the tenants of the March to appeal to the crown. The custom of private war he was determined to eradicate.
The political effect of the king’s determined policy toward the Marchers in the 1290s was plain to see. It seems highly probable that Humphrey de Bohun’s part in the constitutional crisis of 1297 was prompted to some extent by the harsh treatment he had received in his great case against Gloucester. Unfortunately there are no full lists of all the men involved in the opposition in 1297, but strong Marcher participation is suggested by the fact that an opposition gathering, termed by the chronicler a parliament, took place in the forest of Wyre in the March.[853] It is also significant that no important Marcher accompanied the king to Flanders, and that in the Monstraunces presented to the king it was complained that men were being excluded from their franchises by the king’s arbitrary will.[854]
Edward’s treatment of the privileges of the Marchers in the later years of the reign demonstrates that the abandonment of the Quo Warranto enquiries did not mean an end to attacks on franchises. A further illustration of this is provided by the complex story of the intervention in the palatinate of Durham, which was taken into the king’s hands twice, from 1302 to 1303, and again from late in 1305 until the end of the reign. At the heart of the dispute was the question of the extent of royal jurisdictional authority, but many issues were intermingled. There was the cause célèbre of Antony Bek’s quarrel with the prior of Durham, and also the dispute of the leading tenants of the palatinate with the bishop. Edward was provoked to intervene by such incidents as the imprisonment of one of the priory tenants for displaying royal letters of protection that had been issued on the prior’s behalf, and the similar treatment accorded to royal messengers. He was further irritated by Bek’s departure for Rome in 1302 to pursue his case against the prior at the Curia. It is very unlikely that the king would have taken such extreme measures as he did were it not for the obvious military importance of Durham in the Scotch wars. Bek’s administration had been shown as incompetent by the mutiny of the Durham men in the winter campaign of 1299-1300. It was obviously more satisfactory to have the palatinate under the control of a trusted soldier, Robert Clifford. Interestingly, Edward used the same device as in Gower to weaken the power of a franchise holder: Bek had to grant a charter to his tenants. In Durham, as in the other cases, the king did not aim at the destruction of the liberty, but he was anxious to define and to limit it, ensuring that it was efficiently governed. So determined was Edward in this that he was prepared to break with as loyal and long-serving an adviser as Antony Bek.[855]
Edward I’s treatment of the franchises is a good example of the attitude that he adopted toward his magnates, one
of aggressiveness which might be modified if he needed support for his wars. There were other ways in which the king could bring pressure to bear on his magnates and compel them to co-operate with his policies. In 1295 nineteen barons were ordered to go to Gascony at royal wages.[856] Several of them, headed by the earl of Arundel, proved unwilling, so Edward in a vicious letter ordered the Exchequer to collect the debts that they owed to the crown, to distrain their lands harshly, to offer them no manner of favour, but to oppress them with all available means. The debts that these men owed to the crown were impressive, the list being headed by Arundel with £5,232 and William de Vescy with £1,019. In the normal way, such debts were allowed to run on unpaid for years. Of Arundel’s debt £4,496 was the residue of a relief of 10,000 marks that dated back to the reign of King John. The threat that such debts would be collected was sufficient to force the dissident barons to abandon their stand, and they dutifully, if resentfully, set off to Gascony.[857]
Most of the important men in England owed money to the Exchequer in this way, and so were potentially vulnerable to royal pressure. Even the wealthy Edmund of Cornwall had debts of £1,205.[858] An unusually large debt was that of Baldwin Wake, who early in the reign owed a total of £8,172 to the crown. Much of this dated back to a fine of 10,000 marks offered to John by Nicholas de Stuteville in 1205.[859] Humphrey de Bohun, the son of Edward’s opponent in 1297, owed at least £4,000, but in 1304 was excused further payment.[860] On a smaller scale, Henry de Grey’s debts at the end of the reign stood at £412,[861] while Reginald de Grey owed £351.[862] It was standard procedure at the beginning of every campaign for writs granting respite of debts to be issued to cover the period that the men were in the army. In November 1303 Edward sent a writ to the Exchequer informing the barons that some of those who had been thus favoured had left the army without permission. Writs were to be issued to the sheriffs asking them to collect the debts that these men owed, and all royal officials, including the justices, were reminded to regard those who were still in Scotland with as much favour as possible.[863]
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