This Sceptred Isle

by Christopher Lee

  The first thing Edward did was to establish a base at Chester. Then, just as a modern general would have to do, Edward set up a line of communications. He cut a road through the wooded coastline to Aberconwy. He sent his fleet round to Anglesey and his Marcher Lords in from the east and south. It took time, it was bloody, but it worked. Within two years of the signing of a treaty at Aberconwy, much of the Welsh holdings were being organized on an English county system. All seemed settled but all was not.

  On Palm Sunday, 1282, the Welsh attacked. Daffyd, the brother of Llywelyn ap Gruffudd, the self-proclaimed Lord of Aberffraw and Prince of Wales, invaded Cardigan and captured Aberystwyth. Early in December, Llewelyn left north Wales, where he was safe, for the Upper Wye Valley. He was killed, not in some great battle, but at what might have been, except for his death, an insignificant skirmish close to Builth Wells in 1282. Six months later, Dafydd was betrayed to the English and executed. Following this, the Statute of Rhuddlan declared that the land held by the Princes of Gwynedd using the umbrella of Princes of Wales (hence Wales has always been a principality) were now part of England or English rule. But this was not the whole of Wales as we know the land. Some of it in the south from Pembrokeshire (where the Norman knights had held sway since the eleventh century) to the south Wales border with England was already ruled by the Marcher barons. If Edward regarded himself as the conqueror of the Welsh, it was something of an illusion and it would be more than two centuries before Wales was incorporated into union with England, with representation in the Parliament. However, at the closing of the thirteenth century and the opening of the fourteenth century, the closest of all Anglo–Welsh constitutional ties became fixed. In Carnarvon Castle the English King’s son, Edward, was born during the same year as the Statute of Rhuddlan was proclaimed, 1284. Seventeen years later, in 1301, this Edward became the first English Prince of Wales. One day he too would be king.

  Edward I assumed he had Wales. He did not have Scotland. He never had Scotland and never would even though it was the strongest military ambition of his reign. It was possible, of course, that the brutal animosities of the Scots and English could be settled at the altar rather than the battlefield. When in 1286 Alexander III died his heir was his granddaughter, a toddler of three, Margaret, known as the Maid of Norway. It was an obvious hope that Edward I’s son would take her as his bride, and thus bring the two kingdoms together. In 1290, Margaret was sent for from Norway. She perished during the stormy crossing. Who would have the throne of Scotland? It came down to Robert Bruce (1210–95) or John Balliol (1250–1313).

  Balliol had hardly been in Scotland as a landowner. Most of his holdings were in England and France, not so unusual in the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries. Whatever his powers, Balliol would always be caught between two demands: those of Edward his King and the Scottish chieftains who by all means were determined to resist the demands of the English monarch. Robert Bruce’s credentials were altogether more credible because he was the young brother of William the Lion whom many had regarded as heir from 1237 to 1241. We can see then the splintered and shattered claims of the various petitioners for the Scottish throne. None was certain and straightforward. For the English monarch this was no local matter to be decided by the Scots themselves and curiously, considering what was to follow, the Scots themselves believed Edward should have an interest in the future of the Scottish throne.

  Ever since the ninth century and the conquests of the Picts by the Scots, the kings of the Scots had regarded a lot of what is now northern England as fair game. Had the Scots been less clannish and had they avoided their own internal jealousies, then perhaps the lands of the Scots might have expanded. But it was never to be. Under the true kingship of David I during the first half of the twelfth century, the Scots achieved recognition for his claims to the English northern counties. But by the time of Alexander II in 1237, those claims were abandoned by the Treaty of York, in return for yet more contrived family relations, payment in silver as compensation for English broken promises and a few thousand acres of land. But by the time of the question of succession, relations were sound and Edward I was called upon to arbitrate between the claims for the Scottish throne.

  The act of arbitration was a sensible idea because unless there was some peaceful acceptance of a new monarch, then Scotland would probably go to civil war. Edward I’s reputation for legal and constitutional wisdom was everything in this matter. Edward insisted before arbitration that he would expect that whoever took the crown would submit to his (Edward’s) authority and that, to confirm that authority and Scottish acceptance of it, castles would be given to the English monarch. It was under these circumstances that Edward, hardly unexpectedly, picked John Balliol. Balliol was ostensibly a puppet monarch, or was expected to be. The Scottish barons knew this and so instituted a twelve-man council to advise their monarch – to make sure that he did not lose sight of Scottish interests. We need at this point to understand that Edward I was also Duke of Aquitaine and so was a vassal of the French monarch, Philip IV, Philip the Fair, who would later become his brother-in-law when he married Philip’s sister, Marguerite, after the death of his beloved wife Eleanor of Castile. The 1290s were not good years for the relationship between the English and French monarchs. This relationship perished to the point that within forty years the two States would embark on what became the Hundred Years War. That war, as we shall see, came about because of trade – especially the specialist wool trade to Flanders, the extent of English lands in France and, for our immediate understanding, the long alignment of France against the English.

  Returning to the period of selecting a new Scottish king, it was at this stage that Philip IV insisted that Edward pay more taxes (which he could only do by taxing his own people English and Scots) and obey a summons to the French court. Edward by this time was totally absorbed in what was going on north of his border. Philip either used this as an excuse or really did regard it Edward’s refusal to attend him as an enormous slight. Whatever the real reason or opportunity, Philip stripped Edward of his titles to his French possessions and, to make sure that Edward was vulnerable on two fronts, made a secret arrangement to support the Scots, led by the man Edward had placed on the Scottish throne. Military hostilities were inevitable and therefore even greater taxes on all the people, whether breeched or kilted.

  Edward was furious. He demanded that Balliol meet him at Berwick but the Scottish baronage told their King not to go. The time for consultations was over. Edward regarded the Scots’ defiance and alignment with France as an act of war. He unsheathed his swords and marched on Berwick and, in an act of savagery, sacked the once peaceful town. Thousands were slaughtered and the town surrendered. Balliol had no option but to renounce his allegiance to Edward I. At Dunbar in April 1296 they met in battle. Balliol was defeated and taken prisoner. He gave his kingdom to Edward who held him prisoner and eventually released him in France. By that time, Balliol was no threat although his son, Edward Balliol, was to claim the Scottish throne. Bruce was never going to be the man to hold Scotland, never mind northern England. He gave up his claim on the throne to his later generations. The hero of Scotland at this stage then was not Balliol or Bruce. It was William Wallace (1270–1305).

  Wallace appears in our history in September 1297 when he and Andrew Moray (d.1297), one of Scotland’s unsung warriors who had that summer kept his lands in north-eastern Scotland from the British, joined forces. Balliol was in captivity but still King. Wallace now led Balliol’s army to Stirling Bridge and in a terrible, bloody affair defeated the English and so, for a moment, had Scotland back for the Scots and his monarch. He went on to raid the northern counties of England and was such a hero (the Scots had few at the time) was appointed guardian of Scotland in the King’s absence. His celebrity was not to last for that generation. The deciding battle took place at Falkirk on 22 July 1298. Wallace made a simple and centuries-old mistake: instead of fighting the advancing forces in a series of disrupting skirmishes, he
fought in open battle. His cavalry fled. Wallace had relied on his spearmen, but Edward had brought his longbow-men from Wales. They fired volley after volley at the Scottish schiltrons (circles of spearmen) until there were more dead and wounded than standing.

  It was now the time of a second Bruce. The earlier Robert grew too old for the challenge and his son, Robert, Earl of Carrick (1253–1304), took up the gauntlet. He did not have long to claim back the throne and so passed the duty to his son, another Robert. It was this Robert who became known as Robert the Bruce (1274–1329).

  To say Robert the Bruce was an opportunist may seem a little unfair considering the fickle loyalties of the age. Yet this Bruce had actually fought on Edward I’s side against his own King, Balliol. Then he changed sides when Wallace looked like being successful in 1297. Between 1302 and 1305 Bruce bent his knee in submission to Edward. His ambitions were higher. One of those who deserted Wallace was thought to have been John III Comyn, Lord of Badenoch (c.1270–1306). We cannot know the truth of this, but he clearly had enemies especially when he was appointed joint guardian of Scotland with Bruce the younger. In 1304 he helped to arrange a truce with Edward I. It is at this point that, with the help of the bishops, Robert the Bruce sought an agreement that he should be King. Comyn was his only opposition. In February 1306 the two men met at the Church of the Grey Friars at Dumfries. What caused their differences to become violent disagreement is not really known (although Bruce wanted to attack the English, Comyn did not; and both wanted to be King). Bruce stabbed Comyn and another knight finished him off. Bruce was crowned King. For the mythical storyteller, Bruce is recalled because after he was defeated that same year, 1306, he fled to Rathlin Island off the Antrim coast, and the legend has it that while there he watched a spider trying, again and again, to climb a single slender strand, and that the spider’s eventual success inspired the Bruce to return to Scotland and continue to fight. Edward, now too weak to ride, was carried to do battle once more against the rebellious Scots. But in 1307 he died on the road as the rebellion continued. Bruce is sometimes recorded as the best of Scottish kings.

  CHAPTER ELEVEN

  1307–30

  Edward’s legacy is rarely doubted. Winston S. Churchill had him as ‘a master-builder of British life, character, and fame’. He laid the basis of taxation through Parliament, established a documented and efficient administrative process and made clear the laws of his kingdom. And he did most of this without excessively offending an aristocracy that was becoming increasingly class conscious. Equally, Edward left the country in debt because of his wars on two fronts – France and Scotland. He left the matter of the monarch’s standing as the Duke of Aquitaine unsettled. And this could, and would, threaten the peace of Europe.

  He also left an heir, Edward II (1284–1327), who may be described as a feckless prince whose obsession for Piers Gaveston, son of Sir Arnaud de Gaveston (or Gabeston), a Gascon knight who had seen service with Edward I, was to bring about anarchy and war.

  As Prince of Wales, Edward had become infatuated with Gaveston. Immediately he became King, Edward made his young friend Earl of Cornwall. When the King went to France to marry Isabella, the twelve-year-old daughter of Philip IV, he left Gaveston as ‘keeper of the realm’, effectively ruler of England. At the coronation on 25 February 1308, it was Gaveston who carried, in procession, the crown and the sword of St Edward. It was Gaveston who was described as being dressed more like the god Mars than a mere mortal. After the coronation, Isabella’s kinsmen returned to France. They took with them a story that Edward loved Gaveston more than his Queen. The movement against Edward grew. At its head was Henry, the Earl of Lincoln. The barons would stand for no more of this domination by the King’s favourite. An ordinance was presented to Edward, demanding that dignity be returned to the Crown. Indiscretion was one thing but allowing the object of that indiscretion to become a powerful figure in the governance of the realm was quite another. In other words, Gaveston must be banished.

  At the April Parliament the barons forced the King to agree to their wishes. But Edward could not bear to lose his friend for so long. He appointed him his Lieutenant in Ireland and, when the time came for his sailing from Bristol, Edward was there to see him off. But even this temporary exile did not settle the aristocracy’s long list of grievances. When that list was presented, in 1309, Edward agreed to reforms but in return demanded the recall of Gaveston.

  The counter-balance to Edward II’s self-indulgence was the establishment in 1311 of the Lords Ordainers. This was a committee of twenty-one lay, ecclesiastical and lordly representatives led by the grandson of Henry III, Thomas Plantagenet, Second Earl of Lancaster (1278–1322). The task of the Ordainers was simple: to safeguard the State – by which they meant the aristocracy – from the anticipated excesses of Edward II. It was this group that penned the forty-one articles which have become known as the Ordinances of 1311. The Ordinances, among other things, declared that the King was not to leave the realm without the consent of the barons, was not to appoint a keeper of the realm (as he had Gaveston), was not to appoint whomsoever he wished as senior officials, and that all officials had to take an oath to uphold the Ordinances.

  Perhaps Gaveston was all the things the barons said he was. He was also a scapegoat for Edward’s weaknesses and lack of kingship. Gaveston was exiled, yet again, this time to Flanders. And, yet again, he returned. In May of that year, 1312, Lancaster, the leader of the Ordainers, raised his army against the king and his favourite at Newcastle. The pair escaped south and Gaveston was trapped in Scarborough Castle, thinking perhaps that the King would safeguard him. Gaveston was too sure of his royal protection. He understood the King himself could not defend him but he had been promised the safety of the Earl of Pembroke. Neither could save Gaveston. The Ordainers had him under siege in Scarborough Castle and so Gaveston made terms. His mistake was to believe that the Ordainers spoke with one voice. A group led by one of their number, the Earl of Warwick, captured and executed Gaveston at Blacklow Hill on Lancaster’s estate near Warwick. It would be no great comfort to the King’s friends that years later he would have Lancaster executed. Their immediate worry was the King’s sanity. Yet there was another factor in that event at Blacklow Hill. Some of the barons may have had their way, but the effect of Gaveston’s execution was the utter distraction of Edward and disunity among the Lords Ordainers. Nevertheless, by and large the barons had the changes they had wanted.

  The King’s reason may have been questioned, but he remained King and thus still possessed significant powers, and he was going to need them for wars awaited him. There was still France to war against and always there was unfinished and costly business in the north. Taxes were raised along with grumpiness from reluctant donors. Edward had no mind of this. He raised an army of more than 20,000 foot soldiers, archers and gentlemen armoured cavalry, and in 1314 set against the Scots led still by Robert the Bruce who had learned to deploy and defend his much smaller force. The lesson of Falkirk was not lost. The two armies met at Bannockburn on 24 June 1314. The story of what happened at Bannockburn has been told in verse and chronicle. None could have imagined Edward’s defeat. Many of his soldiers, such as the archers from Wales and the foot soldiers from the Midlands and the north-west, were experienced and in little hurry to get into battle with what they saw as a well-organized enemy positioned with flanks covered and deeply dug defiles to disrupt the cavalry. Moreover, Edward’s forces needed time to reconnoitre and reconsider their tactics against such a well dug-in if much smaller force. In fact, the King’s nephew, the Earl of Gloucester, wisely said that the troops should be rested for a day after their long march. Edward would have none of this. He accused Gloucester of cowardice. The young Earl immediately and foolishly led his cavalry against the massed schiltrons – those oblong hedges of Scottish shields and pikes – and was killed. It was the way of this battle. So close was the hand-to-hand combat that many of the English fell to their own archers, who were not able to aim wit
h any accuracy. As the English retreated they did so in confusion into their own ranks of reinforcements. The Scots followed and cut them down. Not until the fourteenth-century wars in France would chivalry be so butchered.

  Bruce himself was a hero and sent his troops to raid and kill in northern England and destroy great swathes as far south as Yorkshire. Edward’s own authority was reduced even further. After Bannockburn he was unpopular and very much reliant upon his closest officials. The growing aristocracy wanted control of the inner cabinet of the King’s advisers – the King’s wardrobe – without either destroying the monarchy or bringing about the downfall of the bureaucracy so necessary for the running of State affairs. Edward very quickly found himself at the contemptuous mercy of his own people, particularly the group of Lords Ordainers still led by Thomas Lancaster who was becoming the power of the realm rather than the King. However, Lancaster may have held the power but he did not have the confidence of all the barons. It may have been that many of them did admire their King, and they certainly protected the establishment of their monarchy and the embryo civil service so important to the future of the country and its governance. In time there was a very practical as well as constitutional questioning of Lancaster’s hold on the ring of power.

  From the autumn of 1315, Lancaster’s authority had been unchallenged. He had control of the country’s administration. He gave instructions to the Chancellor, made appointments and even issued pardons. He was Steward of England. And while all this was going on, the people were suffering a famine. For three years torrential rains ruined the harvests of Europe from as far north as Scotland and Russia, south to Italy. In England, men murdered for food. Cannibalism was recorded. Prices rose by as much 800 per cent in one year. Families fought each other. Counties were in rebellion. Thomas not only had a revolt in his own county, but his wife, Alice de Lacy (1281–1348; incidentally an indirect ancestor of Sarah Ferguson, the former wife of the present Prince Andrew) left him and took up with Sir Ebulo Lestrange (whom she later married) thus starting a private war with Yorkshire. Lancaster, inflicting the nation with his incompetent stewardship, was not the man to resolve the nation’s troubles. Loosening his grip was, however, hardly an easy matter.