A Great and Terrible King: Edward I and the Forging of Britain

by Marc Morris

  80 Ibid.; ‘L’Estoire de Eracles Empereur’, Receuil des Historiens des Croisades: Historiens Occidentaux, ed. A. Beugnot et al., vol. 2 (Paris, 1859), 461; Ibn al-Furt, 150.

  81 ‘Gestes des Chiprois’, 777–8; Prestwich, Edward I, 76–7.

  82Cron. Maior., 143.

  83 D. Morgan, The Mongols (Oxford, 1986), provides a good short survey.

  84 Powicke, Henry III, 600–1.

  85Cron. Maior., 143; Powicke, Henry III, 600, 602.

  86 ‘L’Estoire de Eracles Empereur’, 461; Ibn al-Furt, xi.

  87 ‘L’Estoire de Eracles Empereur’, 461; ‘Gestes des Chiprois’, 778–9; Ibn al-Furt, 155. For a description of Qaqun, see H. Kennedy, Crusader Castles (Cambridge, 1994), 35–7, 99.

  88 ‘L’Estoire de Eracles Empereur’, 461.

  89 Ibn al-Furt, xi–xii, 156.

  90 Prestwich, Edward I, 75–6; Parsons, Eleanor of Castile, 29; Tyerman, England and the Crusades, 125; Ibn al-Furt, 157–9.

  91 Ibid., 159; ‘Gestes des Chiprois’, 779; Guisborough, 208–10.

  92 Parsons, Eleanor of Castile, 29–30.

  93Foedera, I, i, 495; Guisborough, 209–10.

  94 ‘L’Estoire de Eracles Empereur’, 462; J. H. Pryor, Commerce, Shipping and Naval Warfare in the Medieval Mediterranean (London, 1987), 378–83; Parsons, Eleanor of Castile, 29–30.

  CHAPTER 4: THE RETURN OF THE KING

  1 Howell, Eleanor of Provence, 252–3.

  2 Ibid.; D. A. Carpenter, ‘The Burial of King Henry III, the Regalia and Royal Ideology’, Reign of Henry III, 429; AM, iv, 252.

  3 Prestwich, Edward I, 74, but it took two months for messages to travel between England and Sicily. Cron. Maior., 158; Trivet, 284.

  4 R. Bartlett, England under the Norman and Angevin Kings (Oxford, 2000), 123–7, provides an excellent short summary.

  5Foedera, I, ii, 497; HBC, 30–1.

  6Cron. Maior., 158.

  7 Wait, ‘The Household and Resources of the Lord Edward’, 136–53.

  8DNB, xlvi, 710; Cron. Maior., 158. The other conciliar casualty was Philip Basset. Powicke, Henry III, 532, 583, 586.

  9AM, iv, 239–40.

  10 Maddicott, Montfort, 370–1; R. Studd, ‘The Marriage of Henry of Almain and Constance of Béarn’, TCE, iii (1991), 176–7; Powicke, Henry III, 606–12.

  11 L. F. Salzman, Edward I (London, 1968), 34–5 T. F. Tout, Edward the First (London, 1893), 86, Parsons, Eleanor of Castile, 30–1; R. Huscroft, ‘Robert Burnell and the Government of England’, TCE, viii (2001), 66.

  12 Powicke, Thirteenth Century, 280.

  13 Parsons, Eleanor of Castile, 31; Maddicott, Montfort, 188; M. Bloch, Feudal Society (2nd edn, 1962), 145–7.

  14 Carpenter, Struggle, 346. The assertion that Louis afterwards said to his barons, ‘He is my man now, and he was not before’ was not made until half a century later, by which time it looks like mere wish-fulfilment on the part of the French. Jean de Joinville, Histoire de St Louis, ed. N. de Wailly (Paris, 1874), 65.

  15EHD, iii, 376–9.

  16 Prestwich, Edward I, 314.

  17Itinerary, i, 16–17; Trabut-Cussac, L’Administration, 42; M. W. Labarge, Gascony, England’s First Colony, 1204–1453 (London, 1980), 43, citing Receuil d’actes relatifs à l’administration des Rois d’Angleterre en Guyenne au XIIIe siècle: Recogniciones feodorum in Aquitania, ed. C. Bémont (Paris, 1914), 52 (no. 174); S. Raban, A Second Domesday? The Hundred Rolls of 1279–80 (Oxford, 2004), 28–33.

  18 Trabut-Cussac, L’Administration, 42–4; J. B. Smith, ‘Adversaries of Edward I: Gaston de Béarn and Llywelyn ap Gruffudd’, Recognitions: essays presented to Edmund Fryde, ed. C. Richmond and I. M. W. Harvey (Aberystwyth, 1996), 68–70.

  19 Raban, Second Domesday, 30–2; Trabut-Cussac, L’Administration, 46–7.

  20 Parsons, Eleanor of Castile, 31; Cron. Maior, 170.

  21Itinerary, i, 31; Political Songs, 128.

  22AM, iv, 259–60; NA SC1/7/46 (from KW, ii, 715). Cf. R. Strong, Coronation: A History of Kingship and the British Monarchy (London, 2005), 133.

  23The Cambridge Urban History of Britain, vol. 1: 600–1540, ed. D. M. Palliser (Cambridge, 2000), 215.

  24 P. Binski, The Painted Chamber at Westminster (London, 1986), 33–69; idem, Westminster Abbey and the Plantagenets: Kingship and the Representation of Power 1200–1400 (New Haven and London, 1995), 130.

  25 Binski, Westminster Abbey, 130–2; KW, ii, 1044.

  26 Binski, Westminster Abbey, 130, 134.

  27 H. G. Richardson, ‘The Coronation in Medieval England’, Traditio, 16 (1960), 151–61, 171–3.

  28 D. A. Carpenter, ‘King Henry III and the Cosmati Work at Westminster Abbey’, and idem, ‘Burial of King Henry III’, Reign of Henry III, 409–26, 435–7; Binski, Westminster Abbey, 130.

  29 Strong, Coronation, 87–8; Carpenter, ‘Burial of King Henry III’, 443–54.

  30 J. R. Maddicott, ‘Edward I and the Lessons of Baronial Reform’, TCE, i (1986), 10; W. Stubbs, The Constitutional History of England (3rd edn, Oxford, 1887), ii, 109n.

  31 Prestwich, Edward I, 103–5; below, 366–7.

  32 Guisborough, 216, exhibits a similar confusion reporting the baronial reaction.

  33 D. A. Carpenter, ‘King, Magnates and Society: The Personal Rule of King Henry III, 1234–1258’, Reign of Henry III, 85–8, 99–106.

  34 Maddicott, ‘Edward I and the Lessons of Baronial Reform’, 1–10. For a more positive assessment, cf. Huscroft, ‘Robert Burnell and the Government of England’, passim.

  35DNB, viii, 898–900. For the fullest treatment, see R. Huscroft, ‘The Political and Personal Life of Robert Burnell, Chancellor of Edward I’ (Ph.D. thesis, London, 2000).

  36 Huscroft, ‘Should I Stay or Should I Go?’, passim; idem, ‘Robert Burnell and the Government of England’, 65–6.

  37 Carpenter, Struggle, 64–5, 199, 475, 479; HBC, 85, 228.

  38 Maddicott, ‘Edward I and the Lessons of Baronial Reform’, 19; Carpenter, Struggle, 63–4, 92–3.

  39EHD, iii, 392–6; Maddicott, ‘Edward I and the Lessons of Baronial Reform’, 19.

  40Ibid., 12–14.

  41 Ibid., 19.

  42 Ibid., 11, 14; EHD, iii, 397–410.

  43 Prestwich, Edward I, 96; Huscroft, ‘Robert Burnell and the Government of England’, 69–70.

  44 Maddicott, ‘Edward I and the Lessons of Baronial Reform’, 14–16; EHD, iii, 397, 409–10.

  45 Above, 16–17.

  46 Maddicott, ‘Edward I and the Lessons of Baronial Reform’, 23–5; Carpenter, Struggle, 479.

  47 Ibid., 31, 33–4, 37, 40, 42–3, 45–6.

  48 Kaeuper, Bankers, 135 –51; EHD, iii, 410; Carpenter, Struggle, 40; Davies, Lordship and Society, 119.

  49 Kaeuper, Bankers, 1–4, 75–86, 118–21, 164–5. Cf. Prestwich, Edward I, 240–1.

  50 Ibid., 79–81; Lloyd, English Society and the Crusade, 144–7; Powicke, Henry III, 568–9; AM, iv, 265. Edward had also obtained £4,000 from the Jewry. His other debts, beyond those owed to the Riccardi, amounted to at least £14,000. Prestwich, Edward I, 80–1.

  51 Stacey, ‘Expulsion’, 96–7.

  52 Ibid., 95–6; Huscroft, Expulsion, 110–11.

  53EHD, iii, 411–12; Maddicott, ‘Edward I and the Lessons of Baronial Reform’, 17; Prestwich, Edward I, 102.

  54EHD, iii, 411–12. Huscroft, Expulsion, 119–21.

  55 Maddicott, Montfort, 15–16, 268, 315; Howell, Eleanor of Provence, 277–9, 299; Huscroft, Expulsion, 86, 102.

  56EHD, iii, 411–12; Huscroft, Expulsion, 69, 84.

  57EHD, iii, 412–13.

  58Itinerary, i, 53; KW, ii, 715–23.

  59 Ibid., i, 150.

  60 Salzman, Edward I, 44; Flores, iii, 44–5.

  61 Maddicott, ‘Edward I and the Lessons of Baronial Reform’, 16; The Brut, ed. F. W. D. Brie, Early English Text Society, 131 (1906), 179; Prestwich, Edward I, 89. Note, however, that the food orders were for a coronation on 8 April.

  62DNB,
xxxviii, 809; xlvi, 710; xlix, 136, 139.

  63HBC, 456, 463, 465, 468, 470, 473, 476, 479, 484, 486.

  64The Brut, ed. Brie, 179–80.

  CHAPTER 5: THE DISOBEDIENT PRINCE

  1AWR, 555–6.

  2 Davies, Age of Conquest, 312.

  3 Maddicott, Montfort, 212–13, 228, 263, 289, 307, 337–8. Llywelyn did, however, send some Welsh troops to fight at Evesham. Ibid., 340.

  4AWR, 538, 541, 549; CACW, 11.

  5AWR, 536–42; Smith, Llywelyn, 1–2, 177–86.

  6AWR, 537, 539.

  7 Smith, Llywelyn, 175–6, 340–3.

  8 Ibid., 344–7; Lloyd, ‘Gilbert de Clare’, 53, 55–6.

  9 Smith, Llywelyn, 351–4.

  10 Ibid., 355–9; CACW, 57, 109–10.

  11 Smith, Llywelyn, 360–3; AWR, 553–4.

  12Oxford Book of Welsh Verse in English, ed. G. Jones (Oxford, 1977), 22.

  13Gerald of Wales, The Journey through Wales and The Description of Wales, ed. L. Thorpe (London, 1978), 220.

  14AWR, 627–8; Davies, Age of Conquest, 160–5; idem, Empire, 162; T. Jones-Pierce, ‘The Growth of Commutation in Gwynedd in the Thirteenth Century’, Bulletin of the Board of Celtic Studies, 10 (1941), 329.

  15AWR, 497–8, 506–7 (figures incorrectly given as marks), 536–42; Davies, Age of Conquest, 256, 267.

  16 Smith, Llywelyn, 255–9, 363–6, 586; AWR, 557.

  17CCR, 1272–79, 2; CACW, 57.

  18 Morris, Bigod Earls, 114–16; Smith, Llywelyn, 367–9.

  19 Ibid., 369–72.

  20 Ibid., 72–3, 86–7, 154, 180–1.

  21 Ibid., 372–3.

  22AWR, 537–8, 540, 562–4.

  23 Paris, iv, 324.

  24 Smith, Llywelyn, 385.

  25 Ibid., 388; AWR, 568–70.

  26AWR, 568–70.

  27Itinerary, i, 49 Brut y Tywysogyon, or The Chronicle of the Princes (Red Book of Hergest Version), ed. and trans. T. Jones (Cardiff, 1952), 263; Davies, Age of Conquest, 327.

  28 Smith, Llywelyn, 388n.

  29CPR, 1272–81, 126.

  30 Maddicott, Montfort, 325; Smith, Llywelyn, 390.

  31 Ibid., 391, 399–401, 403; AWR, 574; CCR, 1272–79, 266; CPR, 1272–81, 131.

  32 Smith, Llywelyn, 389, 402.

  33AWR, 568–70, 575–6; CACW, 53, 162.

  34AWR, 574.

  35 Smith, Llywelyn, 404, 406; PW, 5.

  36AWR, 579–88; Smith, Llywelyn, 407–14.

  37Itinerary, i, 71–2.

  38 Prestwich, Edward I, 136.

  39 Ibid., 147–8; Morris, Welsh Wars, 115.

  40 Ibid., 115, 118–21; DNB, iv, 604; xii, 109; xxxii, 181; Howell, Eleanor of Provence, 80.

  41RCWL, 9; Itinerary, i, 72.

  42 Smith, Llywelyn, 414–25.

  43Itinerary, i, 74–5; Prestwich, Edward I, 177–9.

  44 Smith, Llywelyn, 422–5; RCWL, 9–10. See also AWR, 231–4, 238–9 for the surrenders of Rhys ap Maredudd and Rhys Wyndod.

  45Itinerary, i, 79; PW, 193–6.

  46 Carpenter, Struggle, 84; M. Prestwich, Armies and Warfare in the Middle Ages: The English Experience (New Haven and London, 1996), 68–71; Morris, Welsh Wars, 60.

  47 Ibid., 60, 62–5.

  48 Ibid., 126, 136 –7.

  49 Ibid., 127, 137.

  50 Ibid., 127–8.

  51 Ibid., 88, 128; Prestwich, Armies and Warfare, 121–3.

  52 Ibid., 123–4, 133–4.

  53 Morris, Welsh Wars, 119; Prestwich, Edward I, 179; WPF, 119; D. S. Bachrach, ‘Military Logistics during the Reign of Edward I of England, 1272–1307’, War in History, 13 (2006), 423.

  54 Morris, Welsh Wars, 38, 106, 128; Prestwich, Armies and Warfare, 62–3.

  55Itinerary, i, 80.

  56 Prestwich, Edward I, 180.

  57 Paris, v, 639.

  58Gerald of Wales, ed. Thorpe, 233–4.

  59KW, i, 309; A. J. Taylor, ‘Castle-Building in the Later Thirteenth Century: the Prelude to Construction’, Studies in Castles and Castle-Building (London, 1985), 124–5n.

  60KW, i, 309–10.

  61 Ibid., 310; Itinerary, i, 80–1.

  62KW, i, 299–300; Morris, Welsh Wars, 136 –8.

  63KW, i, 310; Morris, Welsh Wars, 128.

  64Itinerary, i, 80–1.

  65 Powicke, Henry III, 722; KW, i, 248–57; The Ledger Book of Vale Royal Abbey, ed. J. Brownhill (Record Society of Lancashire and Cheshire, 68, 1914), 4–5. The conventional foundation date is 13 August, but by then Edward was back in the Wirral: Itinerary, i, 81.

  66KW, i, 310–11; Morris, Welsh Wars, 130, 138–9; EHD, iii, 461.

  67Foedera, I, ii, 544; Smith, Llywelyn, 425–6.

  68 Morris, Welsh Wars, 130–2; Smith, Llywelyn, 428; KW, i, 318–19.

  69 Morris, Welsh Wars, 134.

  70 Smith, Llywelyn, 104–5; Morris, Welsh Wars, 132.

  71 Ibid., 134–5; Gerald of Wales, ed. Thorpe (London, 1978), 187, 230; Cotton, 155.

  72Itinerary, i, 82; Morris, Welsh Wars, 136–8; Morris, Bigod Earls, 118.

  73 Smith, Llywelyn, 434–6, 438–9, 443.

  74 Ibid., 444–5; Itinerary, i, 86.

  75AM, iv, 274; Smith, Llywelyn, 445.

  CHAPTER 6: ARTHUR’S CROWN

  1 Davies, Age of Conquest, 333, and 333–42 for this section.

  2KW, i, 319.

  3 Ibid., 295, 329; Smith, Llywelyn, 125–7, 421.

  4 A. J. Taylor, ‘Master James of St George’, Studies in Castles and Castle-Building, 63–97.

  5 Davies, Age of Conquest, 339–41.

  6KW, i, 301–4, 310–11, 322; Davies, Age of Conquest, 371–2.

  7AWR, 590. Smith, Llywelyn, 446–7.

  8CCR, 1272–79, 493; Smith, Llywelyn, 448–50; Davies, Empire, 22–3.

  9 Prestwich, Edward I, 120. Cf. Powicke, Henry III, 724.

  10 For a comprehensive debunking of the Arthur myth, see N. J. Higham, King Arthur: Myth-Making and History (London, 2002), passim. For a good short treatment, see M. Wood, In Search of England: Journeys into the English Past (London, 1999), 23–42.

  11Geoffrey of Monmouth, History of the Kings of Britain, ed. L. Thorpe (London, 1966), 9.

  12 Ibid., 17; Davies, Empire, 39.

  13King Arthur in Legend and History, ed. R. White (London, 1997), 517–19; Higham, King Arthur, 230.

  14DNB, xlvi, 711; Howell, Eleanor of Provence, 7; Crouch, Tournament, 116–21; R. S. Loomis, ‘Edward I, Arthurian Enthusiast’, Speculum, 28 (1953), 116–17. Pace Loomis, Edward himself does not appear to have attended Mortimer’s tournament: cf. Itinerary, i, 116.

  15King Arthur in Legend and History, ed. White, 520–3.

  16 Loomis, ‘Arthurian Enthusiast’, 115; Stevenson, Documents, ii, 468; Prestwich, Edward I, 118, 120–2.

  17King Arthur in Legend and History, ed. White, 529; Loomis, ‘Arthurian Enthusiast’, 116; C. Shenton, ‘Royal Interest in Glastonbury and Cadbury: Two Arthurian Itineraries, 1278 and 1331’, EHR, 114 (1999), 1249–55. Cf. J. C. Parsons, ‘The Second Exhumation of King Arthur’s Remains at Glastonbury, 19 April 1278’, Arthurian Literature, 12 (1993), 173–7.

  18Geoffrey of Monmouth, ed. Thorpe, 17.

  19 See J. Gillingham, ‘The Context and Purposes of Geoffrey of Monmouth’s History of the Kings of Britain’, and ‘The Beginnings of English Imperialism’, in idem, The English in the Twelfth Century (Woodbridge, 2000), 3–39, for this section.

  20Geoffrey of Monmouth, ed. Thorpe, 54–5, 66, 72, 74–5, 80, 131, 207.

  21Chrétien de Troyes, Arthurian Romances, ed. and trans. W. W. Kibler and C. W. Carroll (London, 1991), 384; AM, iv, 168; Paris, iii, 202; Smith, Llywelyn, 480–1.

  22 Kaeuper, Bankers, 177–80; Davies, Age of Conquest, 339. The castles at Builth, Aberystwyth, Flint and Rhuddlan together came to £22,500: KW, i, 298, 307, 317, 324.

  23PW, 214–16, 218, 220–1; EHD, iii, 413. Edward also imposed an old-fashioned levy called a scutage, but not until February 1279. H. M. Chew, ‘Scutage under Edward I’,
EHR, 37 (1922), 326–7.

  24 Prestwich, Edward I, 244–5; Huscroft, Expulsion, 124.

  25 Prestwich, Edward I, 245; Huscroft, Expulsion, 124–8.

  26 Ibid., 124–6, 140. Confiscated goods raised £11,000 and the remint a further £25,000: Prestwich, Edward I, 245, 247.

  27 Powicke, Thirteenth Century, 288; CCR, 1272–7, 493.

  28 Powicke, Thirteenth Century, 285–9; Smith, ‘Adversaries of Edward I’, 55–88.

  29 Powicke, Thirteenth Century, 289–93; H. Johnstone, ‘The County of Ponthieu, 1279–1307’, EHR, 29 (1914), 437; Crouch, Tournament, 37, 45–6, 77.

  30 Maddicott, ‘Edward I and the Lessons of Baronial Reform’, 27–30.

  31PROME, 32–40; Prestwich, Edward I, 238 (cf. 569), 249–55.

  32 Ibid., 258–64; RCWL, 12–43.

  33Itinerary, i, 93, 114–16, 121–2, 129–33, 136–8, 147–8; KW, i, 550–1; ii, 944, 984, 1002; AM, ii, 393; Prestwich, Edward I, 115–17.

  34 Trivet, 281–2; Parsons, Eleanor of Castile, 53–5; Itinerary, i, 127, 129, 133, 138, 142–4; KW, ii, 695–7, 970–1; J. Ashbee, ‘“The Chamber called Gloriette”: Living at Leisure in Thirteenth and Fourteenth-Century Castles’, Journal of the British Archaeological Association, 157 (2004), 17–40.

  35 Parsons, ‘Year of Eleanor of Castile’s Birth’, 262–4.

  36Itinerary, i, 90–1, 108, 123–4, 139–40, 155–6. The delights of this area appear to have been discovered in 1276. Ibid., 56.

  37AWR, 600–1, 615–16, 622, 624; Davies, Age of Conquest, 344–7.

  38AWR, 627–8.

  39 Smith, Llywelyn, 455–7, 505–6.

  40 Ibid., 460–3; AWR, 651–3.

  41 Ibid., 240–1; 648–9.

  42 Smith, Llywelyn, 451; KW, i, 329–30.

  43 Ibid., 304, 322–3; PW, 222. That some burgesses escaped from Aberystwyth is suggested by the order to the earl of Gloucester in May to see to their resettlement. Morris, Welsh Wars, 165.

  44 Smith, Llywelyn, 451–2.

  45 Ibid., 465–7, 506–10.

  46 Ibid., 460; PW, 222.

  47 Ibid., 222–4; Morris, Welsh Wars, 155; KW, i, 323n, 331; Prestwich, Edward I, 189, 198.

  48PW, 222–5; RCWL, 44; Morris, Welsh Wars, 155–8; Prestwich, Edward I, 196.

  49Itinerary, i, 159; RCWL, 44; PW, 222.

  50 Morris, Welsh Wars, 160.