In July the king achieved a great political triumph with his formal reconciliation with Winchelsey. Part of the understanding between the two men was that if the clergy who had been summoned for a convocation in the summer made a grant, then Edward would confirm the Charters. Winchelsey was to negotiate a settlement between the king and the earls. But the latter refused any overtures from Edward, who decided to carry out his plans for a Flemish campaign without their support.[950] For this, further financial support was needed from the clergy, and so he approached convocation for an aid, hoping for a moiety.[951] Although the clergy were reasonably sympathetic, they insisted on getting permission from Rome before making a grant. This was similar to the situation in France, and the awareness of the English clergy of events across the Channel is shown by the inclusion of correspondence between the French bishops and the papacy in the registers of Winchelsey[952] and the bishop of Carlisle.[953] The king’s reaction to this reasonable demand was typical. He at once imposed a tax of a third on all the temporalities of the church, with the option of paying a fifth on all ecclesiastical property. It was stated in a royal proclamation that as the clergy were forbidden to defend the country by force of arms, they should do it by paying money.[954] There is no evidence of the collection of substantial sums from this tax; it seems to have suffered the same fate as the eighth on moveables.
This was not just a question of the clergy being prohibited by papal bull from paying the taxes which the king demanded. Winchelsey’s attitude of extreme legalism was not generally shared. His failure to carry his own Convocation with him over his refusal to pay the fines demanded by the king shows the isolation of his position, as does the reaction of the northern clergy. Winchelsey did nothing to prepare the way for Boniface VIII’s withdrawal, in the bull Etsi de Statu, from the extreme view he had set out in Clericis Laicos. It is plain that the personal attitude of the archbishop was in large part responsible for the gravity of the crisis between church and state in 1297.
Winchelsey had not been archbishop long. Elected in 1293 and enthroned in 1295, he refused to take the oath of fealty in the terms demanded by the king, but confined his obligation to his temporalities.[955] Shortly afterwards Edward demanded that Winchelsey pay off debts totalling £3,568 in the course of three years, a very harsh request.[956] So even before 1297 relations between king and primate were not congenial. The archbishop was an inflexible man, lacking the kind of political skill that was to be displayed by Stratford in the 1340-1 crisis. He never combined his forces with those of the lay opposition, and at a crucial point in the development of the crisis the king achieved a form of reconciliation with him. Winchelsey seems to have erroneously imagined that he could play the part of a peacemaker at a time when it should have been evident that no agreement between the king and the earls was possible. It is striking that of all the leaders of the opposition of 1297, it was only against Winchelsey that the king held a deep and bitter grudge for the rest of his life.
Relations between the crown and the church had not been smooth during the earlier years of the reign, and the crisis can be seen as the culmination of previous difficulties. There had been arguments over taxation, but the main issue had been that of jurisdiction. This dispute was largely settled in 1286 when the writ Circumspecte Agatis, which later came to have the force of a statute, was issued. Edward was a conventionally religious man, a lavish patron of the abbey of Vale Royal, but he had never been willing to show subservience to the church. Pecham on one occasion wrote to him, suggesting that he might do well to display in his actions the faith in God and the church to which he was constantly making reference.[957] The dispute of 1297 arose out of the special circumstances of war, and was aggravated by the intransigence of an obstinate and inexperienced archbishop, but in view of Edward’s general attitude, it was hardly surprising that the church should play a significant rôle in the opposition.
The opposition in 1297 did not set out an elaborate programme. They proposed no new schemes of government after the pattern of the 1258 reforms, and they demanded no purges of the administrative personnel. Their attitude was essentially a conservative one, with the request for the confirmation of the Charters, the maintenance of the customary laws and liberties of the land, and the abandonment of the novel and arbitrary exactions to which the king had been forced to resort in the past few years. The documents expressing the views of Bigod, Bohun and their allies, the Monstraunces and De Tallagio non Concedendo, did not make any radical claims. The first of these laid more stress on the burden imposed on the country by Edward’s policy than on the legal and constitutional technicalities of the right of the king to prises and taxation: it was a splendid piece of propaganda, but was not a carefully argued case. The De Tallagio, a draft settlement of the crisis probably drawn up after the king had sailed for Flanders, did not set out any new principles. The document stressed that the consent of all men down to the rank of freeman was required for taxation. Although this was found unacceptable by the crown, and was modified in the Confirmatio to the less specific ‘common assent of the realm’, the De Tallagio did not go very far. In 1295 the king had proclaimed in a summons to the clergy the principle that ‘what touches all should be approved by all’, and the writ for the collection of the tax of an eleventh and seventh in that year stated that consent had been given by earls, barons, knights, citizens, burgesses and others of the realm.[958] The solution offered by the De Tallagio to the problem of prises, that no goods should be taken without consent, merely echoed Edward’s own legislation in the First Statute of Westminster.[959]
The only sanction the opposition proposed to place on Edward in the De Tallagio was the excommunication of all who acted contrary to the Charters and the additions made to them in the document. But Edward was not prepared to add new clauses to the Charters, and although in the Confirmatio Cartarum, the official settlement of the crisis, he was willing to allow that Magna Carta and the Charter of the Forest should be enforced by means of threats of excommunication made twice a year, this provision does not seem to have been applied to the new concessions made in the document. In these he promised not to make a precedent of the ‘aids, mises and prises’ taken by him. In future such aids were to be taken with the consent of the realm, and the maltolt was abolished.[960] From this settlement, it might seem that the differences between the king and the opposition were not considerable, and that once the immediate circumstances of the French war and the Flemish campaign were over, the constitutional struggle would end. But the personal grievances of Bigod, Bohun and Winchelsey were not satisfied by the outcome of the crisis of 1297. The arguments about military service had not been resolved: no mention was made of the matter in the Confirmatio Cartarum. And, of course, the war in Scotland meant that the king could not abandon all the expedients to which he resorted between 1294 and 1297. Troops still had to be recruited. Purveyance was as necessary as ever. Money still had to be collected for the financing of war, even if the level of expenditure was not to be quite so high as it was in the years of the French war. And the events of the last ten years of Edward I’s reign reveal that there was a general suspicion of the king’s intentions and methods which went beyond the particular conditions of 1297 that had caused the crisis of that year.
XII. Politics and the King, 1298-1307
Edward I was presented with considerable problems in the last years of his reign. His financial difficulties were acute, he faced continuing arguments over the issue of military service, and he failed to conquer Scotland. But in spite of all this, no major crisis occurred after 1297. It was not until Edward II’s reign that the government and its methods came under severe criticism and attack once more. It has even been argued, by Professor Rothwell, that Edward triumphed over his opponents in his later years, successfully preserving his prerogative rights, and forcing them to abandon the demand for the confirmation of the Charters which had been the main plank of their programme.[961] In view of the crisis that followed the king’s death, the ext
ent of this triumph seems rather questionable, and it is necessary to see to what extent the problems confronting Edward II were the result of the legacy his father left him, as well as to analyse the nature of the political situation in the old king’s later years.
The inadequate nature of the settlement made in the autumn of 1297 was demonstrated soon after the king’s return from Flanders in 1298. Bigod and Bohun suspected that Edward might argue that the promises he had made were invalid, since they had been made abroad. They therefore requested a new confirmation at the opening of the campaign that was to see the great victory of Falkirk. The king was unwilling to swear in person, but the deadlock was resolved by the earl of Lincoln, Earl Warenne, the bishop of Durham and Ralph de Monthermer who pledged that if victory was achieved the king would implement his promises.[962] The connection between war and politics is made very clear by this: Edward was essentially offering a concession in return for military assistance. The particular issue that concerned Bigod and Bohun at this time was that of the Forest. The harshness of Forest administration had been one of the complaints in the Monstraunces,[963] and what they wanted was a commission to enquire into the proper boundaries of the Forest. It was suspected that the crown was exercising Forest jurisdiction in areas where it had no rights to do so. This was a direct attack on a financially valuable aspect of the royal prerogative, and was much resented by Edward.
After the battle of Falkirk the English army retired to Carlisle, where Bigod and Bohun refused to countenance further operations in Scotland, asserting that they had not been consulted as was their right. Edward wrote in October to the Exchequer asking them to look up the rights and duties of the two earls in their capacities as Marshal and Constable so it seems that this question was once more in dispute, as it had been in 1297. The reply was hardly satisfactory, for it did no more than summarize the fees of the two officers as set out in the twelfth-century Constitutio Domus Regis. The Constable was to receive 5s. a day when out of court, along with some provisions, and 3s. 6d. if he dined in the household. Archaic and irrelevant though these fees were, the young Humphrey de Bohun was paid on this basis on the 1300 campaign, receiving the meagre total of £17 5s. 9d.[964] But in 1298 his father and Bigod were not to be satisfied so easily, and following their departure from the army, the king decided against further operations in Scotland that autumn and winter.
At the Lent parliament in 1299 arguments between the king and the earls continued. Humphrey de Bohun had died late in the previous year, but his place was taken by his son and namesake, who with Bigod demanded the reissue of the charters that had been promised before Falkirk. The king prevaricated, and then confirmed the suspicions of the opposition by issuing the statute known as De Finibus Levatis in April. Although a perambulation of the bounds of the Forest was promised, there was a saving clause protecting the rights of the crown, and it was made clear that the findings of the commissioners were not to be automatically implemented, but would be referred to the king. Edward’s attitude was made abundantly clear by the reissue of the Forest Charter that went with the statute, which omitted the first five clauses dealing with the boundaries of the Forest. There was great anger when this was read out in the cemetery of St. Paul’s, and the extent of the king’s evasiveness and trickery became apparent. A new assembly was held, at which the king was forced to agree to the perambulation. This was in May 1299, too late in the year for the plans for a campaign in Scotland that year to be revived. The political quarrels were influencing the conduct of the war in the most unwelcome way for the king.[965]
Following the failure of the winter campaign of 1299-1300, when the magnates refused to co-operate because of the inclement conditions and because they alleged that the terms of the Confirmation were not being adhered to,[966] the king was forced to take a conciliatory line towards the opposition. At the parliament held in March 1300 in London the charters were yet again confirmed, and a series of articles known as the Articuli super Cartas granted by the king. These dealt at length with abuses of the royal right of prises, prohibited the use of the privy seal in common law cases, limited the jurisdiction of the steward and marshal of the household, and stated that sheriffs were henceforth to be elected in the county courts. The clauses of the Confirmatio Cartarum of 1297 were not repeated, but where they had proved inadequate, in the matter of prises, the new Articuli provided a remedy. It was now made clear that the right of prise could only be used to supply the royal household, and not the entire army.[967] The result was that in 1301 the king negotiated the purveyance he took for the campaign in Scotland with the county communities, something he had not felt obliged to do as a result of the Confirmatio.[968] The prerogative right of prise itself was not challenged, but it was now defined in a way that severely limited it.
Perversely, Rothwell saw in the parliament of 1300 a victory for the king. He made the valid point that the concessions of the Articuli were qualified by a clause saving the king’s prerogative, but continued by arguing that whereas in 1297 the Confirmatio was added to the Charters, and that ‘prises were treated as a matter to which the Charters were applicable’, in 1300 the concessions were separated from the matter of the Charters. Accordingly prise offences were treated as ‘maladministration of the prerogative’.[969] Although the opposition in 1297 may well have intended to have additional articles inserted in Magna Carta, as Guisborough erroneously supposed was done, the Confirmatio was a quite separate document from the Charters, written in French not Latin, and issued in the form of letters patent. The clauses in it relating to aids, mises, prises and the maltolt were not given the same force as the Charters, which were backed by the sanction of excommunication. Just as in 1300, the concessions of 1297 were separate from the Charters, and the Articuli did not represent a retreat from the position gained in the Confirmatio.[970]
Although the king was prepared to grant the Articuli he remained stubborn over the question of the perambulation. Arrangements were in hand for the commissions to start work, but he refused to accept that their findings should be accepted without question. The opposition made the grant of a twentieth conditional upon this, and the king therefore declined to levy the tax. But in the following year, after the expense of the Caerlaverock campaign, he had to swallow his pride. At the Lincoln parliament in 1301 the opposition expressed their demands in a bill presented by Henry Keighley, who was to suffer imprisonment five years later for his action.[971] The confirmation of the Charters was requested, together with the cancellation of statutes that contravened them. Purveyance was to be abolished and, along with other reforms, the findings of the perambulation were to be put into effect in return for a grant of a fifteenth. Edward agreed to this last demand, and the fifteenth was granted with the insulting proviso that it was not to be collected before Michaelmas, by which time it would be possible to see if the government was meeting the conditions imposed. Early in October the grant was officially confirmed by the magnates in the royal army at Glasgow and those in the prince of Wales’ company at Ayr.[972]
The perambulations of the Forest that were the price of the fifteenth caused much land to be put out of the Forest jurisdiction. There was no question of Edward I having extended the boundaries: the jurors alleged illegal afforestation under Henry II, Richard and John, stating that they knew this from the tales of their ancestors and the common talk of the county. The evidence was inadequate, and the results of the perambulations clearly unjust. But Edward could do little, for in letters patent he had agreed that districts which lay outside the boundaries agreed by the commissioners should be disafforested.[973] All he could do was to prohibit those now put out of the Forest from exercising rights of common within its boundaries, unless they chose to return to their original state.[974]
The other major issue over which the king conceded victory to the opposition in the early years of the fourteenth century was that of military service. His attempt to summon all those holding forty librates of land in 1300 was criticized, and was not repeated. N
either was the novel expedient of sending individual requests for service at pay to about 935 men, adopted in lieu of such a summons in 1301, repeated. No official documents set out the king’s concessions on this issue, but the extent of the opposition’s victory can be seen from the fact that after 1301 all major summonses for cavalry service used the traditional strict feudal formula.[975]
There was also argument in 1301 over the old question of the rôle of the Marshal. In May John Benstead, Controller of the Wardrobe, was sent to discuss the matter with Bigod. The outcome of the negotiations was an agreement that John Segrave, who acted as Marshal’s deputy on the campaign, should receive £100 in lieu of the booty to which he was entitled. Bigod only agreed to this on condition that the king promised to make no allegations that the Marshal or his deputy were not doing their duty in the army, and that no precedent was to be made of the arrangement. Bohun, the Constable, was more accommodating, and made over to the king his rights to the fees pertaining to his office; this was, however, to be only for the one campaign, and was not to prejudice any future claims. Edward was unable to remove the Marshal and Constable from their hereditary positions which gave them important powers over the army.[976]
One victory, however, Edward did win in 1301. It was agreed in parliament to set up a committee of twenty-six to adjudicate on the matters in dispute between the king and community of the realm. However, presumably as a result of royal pressure, the members refused to act as judges over their monarch.[977] According to one account, a similar commission was set up in the next year, but nothing is known of the outcome.[978]
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