Edward I

• 1. Introduction

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  In 1774 the Society of Antiquaries of London opened a royal tomb in Westminster Abbey. Inside lay Edward I, dead for 467 years, and his body was still well preserved. The antiquaries used the occasion to determine how tall the king had been in life. Edward stood 6 ft 2 in, far above most men of his age. His nickname, Longshanks, meant long legs or long shins.

  He ruled England from 1272 to 1307. He was also Lord of Ireland, and from 1254 to 1306 he held Gascony as Duke of Aquitaine, a vassal of the French king. Contemporaries feared his temper. They also respected him as a soldier, an administrator and a man of faith.

  How did a prince who once backed his father's enemies become a king whose English subjects never took up arms against him? Why does the same man appear in histories as a founder of Parliament and as a ruler condemned for vindictiveness? What did he build, in stone and in law, that outlasted him? And why are historians still divided over what to make of him?

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• 2. From Hostage to King

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  Edward was born at the Palace of Westminster on the night of the 17th to the 18th of June 1239. His father, Henry III, revered Edward the Confessor and gave the saint's Anglo-Saxon name to his firstborn, although aristocrats had rarely used it since the Norman Conquest. The boy was baptised at Westminster Abbey three days later. He fell ill in 1246-1247 and 1251, yet grew into a strong, athletic man. His cousin Henry of Almain became a companion for life.

  On the 1st of November 1254 the fifteen-year-old prince married thirteen-year-old Eleanor, half-sister of King Alfonso X of Castile, at the Abbey of Santa María la Real de Las Huelgas. The match was political. England feared a Castilian invasion of Gascony, and Alfonso gave up his claims there. Henry granted his son Gascony, most of Ireland and lands in Wales and England, including the Earldom of Chester. But Henry kept control of much of the income. In Gascony, Simon de Montfort already drew the revenue as royal lieutenant. In Ireland, eleven different Justiciars were appointed between 1254 and 1272, and corruption spread. Edward held great titles and little power.

  In May 1258 a group of magnates drew up the Provisions of Oxford, aimed largely at the Lusignans, the half-brothers of Henry III who had become Edward's allies. Edward strongly opposed the Provisions. Within a year he changed course. In March 1259 he allied with Richard de Clare, Earl of Gloucester, and on the 15th of October he declared support for the barons and their leader, Montfort, Earl of Leicester. The motive may have been practical, since Montfort could help him in Gascony. Henry came to suspect his son of plotting a coup, and the two were reconciled only through mediators.

  By 1263 Edward had switched sides again. The king seemed ready to yield to the barons, so Edward committed himself to defending royal rights and retook Windsor Castle from the rebels. The Second Barons' War followed, and Edward opened the fighting by capturing Gloucester. At the Battle of Lewes, on the 14th of May 1264, he routed the London contingent on the right wing. Then he chased the fleeing men too far. When he returned, the rest of the royal army had been beaten, and he and Henry of Almain were handed over as hostages.

  Edward stayed in captivity until March 1265. On the 28th of May, while out riding at Hereford, he escaped and joined Gilbert de Clare, Earl of Gloucester, who had lately gone over to the king's side. Edward surprised the younger Simon de Montfort at Kenilworth Castle, then cut off the elder Montfort. At Evesham, on the 4th of August 1265, Montfort was defeated and killed, and his corpse was mutilated. Edward's name had suffered earlier, when he broke a truce with the Earl of Derby. That summer he began to learn from his mistakes, and his clemency toward enemies won him admiration. The last rebels at Kenilworth surrendered only in October 1266, after the conciliatory Dictum of Kenilworth.

  On the 24th of June 1268, Edward took the crusader's vow in an elaborate ceremony, alongside his brother Edmund Crouchback and Henry of Almain. Money was the obstacle. King Louis IX of France, who led the crusade, lent about £17,500. The rest came from a tax on the laity, the first since 1237. In May 1270 Parliament granted one-twentieth of all movable property. In return the king agreed to reconfirm Magna Carta and to restrict Jewish money lending.

  Edward sailed from Dover on the 20th of August 1270 with probably fewer than 1000 men, including around 225 knights. The French had meant to found a stronghold at Tunis, but an epidemic in their camp killed Louis on the 25th of August. A storm off Sicily then discouraged the other French leaders, and Edward went on alone. He landed at Acre on the 9th of May 1271. His men strengthened the garrison, but the Mamluk leader Baibars held the advantage, and a raid on Qaqun that November failed.

  In June 1272, after Hugh III of Cyprus had agreed a ten-year truce with Baibars, a member of the Syrian Order of Assassins attacked Edward, supposedly on Baibars's orders. Edward killed the man but was struck in the arm by a dagger feared to be poisoned. He weakened for months and left Acre on the 24th of September 1272. In Sicily he learned that his father had died on the 16th of November.

  He did not hurry home. His health was poor, a council led by Robert Burnell kept the realm calm, and he was proclaimed king without waiting for a coronation. On the way he visited Pope Gregory X, paid homage to Philip III in Paris, and put down a revolt in Gascony led by Gaston de Béarn. He landed at Dover on the 2nd of August 1274 and was crowned at Westminster Abbey on the 19th of August. Right after the anointing, he removed the crown. He would not wear it again, he said, until he had recovered the crown lands his father had surrendered.

  One man in Wales, Llywelyn ap Gruffudd, would refuse to do him homage.

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• 3. Wales in Stone

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  The 1267 Treaty of Montgomery recognised Llywelyn ap Gruffudd as Prince of Wales and confirmed his hold on the Four Cantrefs of Perfeddwlad. His rule was heavy-handed and unpopular. He took hostages and quarrelled with the Welsh church. In 1272 he lost badly to Gilbert de Clare. After a failed attempt on Llywelyn's life, the chief suspects, his younger brother Dafydd and Gruffudd ap Gwenwynwyn of Powys, fled to the English court. Llywelyn cited that refuge and the continuing hostilities in refusing homage. His planned marriage to Eleanor, daughter of Simon de Montfort the Elder, gave Edward a further grievance.

  Edward declared war in November 1276. In July 1277 he invaded with 15,500 men, of whom 9,000 were Welsh. No major battle followed, and Llywelyn saw that he had to surrender. Under the Treaty of Aberconwy in November 1277 he kept only Gwynedd, though he was allowed to keep the title Prince of Wales.

  War returned in 1282. The Welsh saw a fight for their national identity and their traditional law. Edward saw a chance to "put an end finally to … the malice of the Welsh". It began with a rebellion by Dafydd, who was unhappy with his reward from 1277. Llywelyn joined him, and the early attacks succeeded. Gloucester was defeated at Llandeilo Fawr in June. On the 6th of November, while Archbishop John Peckham was conducting peace talks, Luke de Tany crossed a pontoon bridge from Anglesey. The Welsh ambushed him, and his men suffered heavy losses at Moel-y-don.

  The tide turned on the 11th of December 1282, when Llywelyn was lured into a trap and killed at Orewin Bridge. Dafydd was captured in June 1283 and taken to Shrewsbury. He was executed as a traitor the following year, and Edward ordered his head displayed on London Bridge.

  The 1284 Statute of Rhuddlan folded the principality into England. It gave Wales counties policed by sheriffs, introduced English law in criminal cases, and let the Welsh keep their own customary law in some property disputes. Edward then planted English settlers in new towns such as Flint, Aberystwyth and Rhuddlan. The Welsh were banned from living in them, and many were protected by extensive walls.

  The castle-building was directed by James of Saint George, an architect Edward had met in Savoy on his way home from the crusade. Beaumaris, Caernarfon, Conwy and Harlech were meant to serve as fortresses, royal palaces and centres of civil and judicial administration. Four of the eight castles Edward founded followed the concentric design, a legacy of the Crusades. Their imagery borrowed from the Byzantine Empire and from King Arthur, to lend his rule legitimacy. The programme also helped spread arrowslits in castle walls across Europe.

  The Welsh aristocracy lost nearly all their lands, and Edward himself gained the most. Local revolts flared in 1287-88, partly because Edward failed to reward former Welsh allies. A more serious revolt came in 1294 under Madog ap Llywelyn, a distant relative of Llywelyn ap Gruffudd. Its causes included resentment of the occupation, colonial-style governance and very heavy taxation. Both risings were put down, and punishment after the second included taking 200 hostages.

  In 1284 Edward's son, the future Edward II, was born at Caernarfon Castle, probably as a statement about the new order. In 1301, at Lincoln, the young Edward became the first English prince invested as Prince of Wales. His father gave him the Earldom of Chester and lands across North Wales, hoping to give him some financial independence.

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• 4. Scotland and the Hammer

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  Margaret, aged seven, sailed from Norway for Scotland in late 1290 and fell ill on the voyage. She died in Orkney. Her grandfather, Alexander III, had died in 1286 and left the three-year-old girl as his sole surviving descendant. Under the Treaty of Birgham, she was to marry Edward's six-year-old son, Edward of Caernarfon, while Scotland stayed free of English overlordship. Relations had been fairly harmonious. In 1278 Alexander, Edward's brother-in-law, had paid homage, apparently only for the lands he held in England.

  Without an heir, Scotland faced a succession dispute known as the Great Cause. Fourteen claimants came forward, led by John Balliol and Robert de Brus, 5th Lord of Annandale. The Scottish magnates asked Edward to run the proceedings, not to decide the outcome. That task went to 104 auditors: 40 chosen by Balliol, 40 by Brus, and 24 selected by Edward. Edward insisted that to settle the matter he must be recognised as Scotland's feudal overlord. The Scots answered that a country without a king had nobody who could grant that. The claimants broke the deadlock by agreeing to hand the realm to Edward until a rightful heir was found. On the 17th of November 1292, the decision went to Balliol.

  Edward went on asserting authority. He agreed to hear appeals against rulings of the guardians who had governed during the interregnum. In a case brought by Macduff, son of Malcolm II, Earl of Fife, he demanded that Balliol answer in person before the English Parliament. Then he demanded Scottish military service for his war against France. The Scots refused, formed an alliance with France, and launched an unsuccessful attack on Carlisle.

  In 1296 Edward invaded and took Berwick-upon-Tweed, where civilians were massacred. At the Battle of Dunbar, Scottish resistance was effectively crushed. Edward carried the Stone of Destiny, the Scottish coronation stone, to Westminster and placed it in what became known as King Edward's Chair. He deposed Balliol, sent him to the Tower of London, and installed Englishmen to govern.

  The triumph was brief. Andrew de Moray in the north and William Wallace in the south raised resistance. On the 11th of September 1297, their much smaller army routed a large English force under John de Warenne and Hugh de Cressingham at Stirling Bridge. Edward beat Wallace at Falkirk on the 22nd of July 1298, his only major battle since Evesham in 1265. He could not follow up, and the Scots retook Stirling Castle the next year. After his siege of Caerlaverock Castle in 1300, the Scots refused open battle, raiding the English countryside in small groups instead.

  The Scots appealed to Pope Boniface VIII, who asserted a papal claim of overlordship. The Barons' Letter of 1301 rejected it on Edward's behalf. Diplomacy did more than the sword. A 1303 peace between England and France broke up the Franco-Scottish alliance. Robert the Bruce sided with the English in the winter of 1301-02, and by 1304 most other Scottish nobles had pledged loyalty. In 1305 Sir John de Menteith betrayed Wallace to the English, who took him to London and executed him in public.

  On the 10th of February 1306, Robert the Bruce murdered his rival John Comyn. On the 25th of March he was crowned King of Scotland. Edward was too ill to lead the response himself. He gave commands to Aymer de Valence and Henry Percy, while the Prince of Wales led the main army. Valence routed Bruce at Methven on the 19th of June, and Bruce went into hiding.

  Edward's treatment of Bruce's circle was unusually brutal. Bruce's sister Mary was held in a cage at Roxburgh Castle for four years. Isabella MacDuff, Countess of Buchan, who had crowned Bruce, was caged at Berwick Castle. Bruce's younger brother Neil was hanged, drawn and quartered. Edward now saw the struggle as the suppression of disloyal subjects, not a war between nations. The cruelty rallied support for Bruce instead of breaking it.

  In May 1307 Bruce defeated Valence at Loudoun Hill. Edward had rallied somewhat and set out north himself, but dysentery overtook him on the road.

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• 5. Law and Parliament

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  In 1295 Edward summoned a Parliament unlike any before it. Alongside the secular and ecclesiastical lords came two knights from every county and two representatives from every borough. Commons in Parliament was an old idea. What changed was the authority behind the summons. The representatives were to arrive with full power, plena potestas, to commit their communities to its decisions. That gave the king firm backing to tax the whole population. Henry III had collected only four lay subsidies in his reign, while Edward collected nine. The format became the pattern for later Parliaments, and the historian William Stubbs named the assembly the Model Parliament.

  Behind it lay years of groundwork. In 1274 Edward made Robert Burnell chancellor, and Burnell stayed one of his closest associates until 1292. That same year most local officials, including sheriffs and escheators, were replaced. The change prepared the way for a countrywide inquest into abuses by royal officers and into what land and rights the Crown had lost under Henry III. The inquest produced the Hundred Rolls, census documents likened to the Domesday Book of the 11th century.

  The rolls fed the Quo warranto proceedings, which asked by what warrant lords held their liberties. Following the legal scholar Henry de Bracton, the Crown held that a liberty without a royal licence should revert to the king. The Statute of Gloucester in 1278 revived the general eyres, tours by royal justices, and multiplied such cases. The aristocracy protested that long use was licence enough. In 1290 a compromise accepted any liberty exercised since the coronation of Richard the Lionheart in 1189. Few liberties came back to the king. He had nonetheless won the principle that every liberty flowed from the Crown.

  That was one strand of a wider legislative programme, among the most important contributions of the reign. The Statute of Westminster in 1275 asserted royal prerogative and restricted liberties. The Statutes of Mortmain in 1279 addressed land grants to the Church. In 1285 came Westminster II, whose first clause, De donis conditionalibus, dealt with family settlement of land. The Statute of Merchants set firm rules for recovering debts, and the Statute of Winchester strengthened local policing. Quia emptores in 1290 tackled land disputes caused by subinfeudation. The age of the great statutes largely ended with Burnell's death in 1292.

  By 1279 the coinage was in poor shape. Edward's new coins proved better than those already circulating, and the new pennies, halfpences and farthings were joined by a groat, which failed. The moneyer William Turnemire introduced a more efficient method, cutting blanks from a silver rod instead of stamping them from sheets. Mint administration became so centralised that coins no longer carried the moneyer's name. In August 1280 Edward banned the old long cross coinage, forcing people to switch. English coins were counterfeited on the Continent, especially in the Low Countries, and were secretly exported despite a ban in 1283.

  Wars needed funds beyond the mint. In 1275 Edward agreed a permanent duty on wool, England's main export, with the domestic merchants. A similar deal followed with foreign merchants in 1303. The Riccardi, bankers from Lucca in Italy, handled the customs revenue and lent to the crown, which helped finance the Welsh Wars. When war with France broke out, the French king confiscated their assets, and the bank went bankrupt. The Frescobaldi of Florence took over as the crown's moneylenders.

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• 6. The Expulsion

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  In 1279, using a crackdown on coin-clippers as a pretext, Edward ordered the arrest of all the heads of Jewish households in England. Unlike Christians, Jews were allowed to charge interest on loans. The church was growing intolerant of that practice and of Judaism itself. The Jews were the king's personal property, and he could tax them at will. Heavy taxation forced them to sell their debt bonds cheaply, and the crown used this to shift vast land wealth from indebted landholders to courtiers. That caused widespread resentment.

  In 1275, facing discontent in Parliament, Edward had issued the Statute of the Jewry. It outlawed loans with interest and urged Jews to take up other trades. The arrests of 1279 went much further. About a tenth of the Jewish population, around 300 people, were executed. Others were allowed to pay fines. At least £16,000 was raised through fines and the seizure of property from the dead. In 1280 Edward ordered all Jews to attend sermons by Dominican friars, hoping to persuade them to convert. The sermons did not work.

  On Easter Sunday 1287, in Gascony, Edward was standing in a tower when the floor collapsed. He fell 80 feet and broke his collarbone, and several others died. He was bedridden for months. Soon after he recovered, he ordered the local Jews expelled from Gascony, seemingly as a thank-offering for his survival.

  By 1280 the Jews of England had been squeezed so hard that they were of little further financial use to the crown. They could still serve as a bargaining chip. In 1290 the Edict of Expulsion formally expelled all Jews from England. Crossing the Channel to France, some fell victim to piracy, and many more were dispossessed or died in the October storms. The Crown disposed of their property through sales and grants to courtiers and family.

  The Edict appears to have been part of a deal to win a lay subsidy of £110,000 from Parliament, the largest granted in the medieval period. Local, temporary expulsions had happened before. This one was unprecedented because it was permanent. Edward claimed to act "in honour of the Crucified" and blamed the Jews for treachery and criminality. He also helped pay to renovate the tomb of Little Saint Hugh, a child falsely said to have been ritually crucified by Jews, in the style of the Eleanor crosses. The historian Richard Stacey observed that "a more explicit identification of the crown with the ritual crucifixion charge can hardly be imagined."

  The ban on Jews in England was reversed only in the 1650s.

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• 7. The Price of War

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  In 1293 piracy and informal war broke out between English, Gascon, Norman and French sailors. Edward's brother Edmund Crouchback, hoping to show good faith, let Philip IV occupy Gascony's chief fortresses. Philip refused to give them back. When Edward declined to appear before him in Paris, Philip declared Gascony forfeit. A war at sea between English and Norman privateers followed in 1294, and Philip the Fair used it to confiscate the duchy. Edward renounced his homage and declared war.

  Both kings bought allies at great expense. Edward joined forces with Adolf of Nassau, King of Germany, the Count of Flanders, the barons of Franche-Comté, and two of his sons-in-law, the Duke of Brabant and the Count of Bar-le-Duc. His plan was to attack the French on every front until their forces broke. Most allies did cause damage in Champagne, Burgundy, Gascony and the Toulousaine. But the King of Germany never joined Edward in Flanders, and the allies sought a truce in October 1297. The Treaties of Montreuil in 1299 froze the war and arranged Edward's marriage to Philip's sister Margaret. Philip returned Ponthieu as her dowry, but Gascony was not formally restored until the 1303 Treaty of Paris.

  The cost fell on his subjects. Before 1294 Edward had levied only three lay subsidies, but four were granted in the years 1294-1297, raising over £200,000. People also bore the seizure of wool and hides, and a duty on wool nicknamed the maltolt, meaning unjustly taken. The first serious resistance came from the clergy. In 1294 Edward demanded half of all clerical revenues and threatened opponents with outlawry until they gave in. Then Robert Winchelsey, the new Archbishop of Canterbury, received the papal bull Clericis laicos in 1296, which forbade clergy to pay lay taxes without the Pope's consent. The later bull Etsi de statu allowed such taxes in urgent cases, and Edward collected considerable sums.

  The laity resisted next. At the Salisbury Parliament of February 1297, the Earl Marshal Roger Bigod objected to a summons to military service. Bigod argued that service was owed alongside the king, so Edward could not send men to Gascony while he sailed for Flanders. In July, Bigod and Humphrey de Bohun, Earl of Hereford, drew up complaints known as the Remonstrances. Edward asked for yet another subsidy, seeking consent from only a few magnates. While he prepared his Flanders campaign at Winchelsea, Bigod and de Bohun went to the Exchequer to stop collection. The kingdom seemed close to civil war.

  The English defeat in Scotland that autumn gave king and magnates a common cause. Edward signed the Confirmatio cartarum, confirming Magna Carta and the Charter of the Forest, and the nobility agreed to serve with him in Scotland. Edward was held to his promises for years. In the Parliament of 1301 he had to order an assessment of the royal forests, but in 1305 he obtained a papal bull releasing him from that concession. Personnel changes ended the opposition. De Bohun died late in 1298, and in 1302 the childless Bigod made Edward his heir in return for a generous annual grant. In 1305 Clement V, a Gascon sympathetic to Edward, became pope, and Winchelsey was suspended from office.

  Ireland paid as well. Edward saw it chiefly as a source of soldiers, supplies and money for his wars in Gascony, Wales, Scotland and Flanders. Officials were corrupt and record keeping was poor. Revenue and troops were drained away, leaving castles, bridges and roads in disrepair. Forced purchases of supplies brought lawlessness, speculation and inflation, and troops on the move looted and fought with townspeople. Gaelic Ireland revived in the absence of English magnates, and in 1277 Edward's government condemned Gaelic law as "displeasing to God and to reason". By the 1297 Irish Parliament, the distress had left many lands and villages abandoned.

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• 8. Temper, Faith and Legacy

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  In 1295 the Dean of St Paul's wished to confront Edward over high taxation. According to one story, the dean fell down and died as soon as he stood in the king's presence. A 14th-century chronicler blamed Edward's harsh conduct for the death of Archbishop Thomas of York. When Edward of Caernarfon demanded an earldom for his favourite Piers Gaveston, the king supposedly tore out handfuls of his son's hair. The Song of Lewes in 1264 compared the young Edward to a leopard, an animal seen as powerful and unpredictable.

  There was a gentler side. Edward was devoted to his large family and gave his daughters expensive gifts when they visited court. Eleanor of Castile died on the 28th of November 1290. The couple loved each other, and Edward was faithful to her throughout their marriage. He marked her death by ordering twelve Eleanor crosses, one at each place where her funeral procession stopped for the night.

  His faith was conventional and intense. He attended chapel regularly, gave generously to the poor and was fervently devoted to the Virgin Mary and Saint Thomas Becket. He took part in the royal touch, a tradition believed to cure scrofula, and records suggest he touched upwards of a thousand people each year. Even so, he often clashed with the Archbishops of Canterbury and with Rome over taxing the clergy.

  Edward was also fascinated by King Arthur. In 1278 he visited Glastonbury Abbey to open what was then believed to be the tomb of Arthur and Guinevere. After conquering North Wales he received "Arthur's crown" from Llywelyn. He held Round Table events with tournaments and feasting in 1284 and 1302, and chroniclers compared his court to Arthur's. The legends also served policy, helping to discredit the Welsh belief that Arthur might return as their political saviour.

  On the 6th of July 1307 Edward encamped at Burgh by Sands, just south of the Scottish border. The next morning his servants came to lift him up so that he could eat, and the king died in their arms. One tradition says he asked for his heart to be carried to the Holy Land with an army. A more dubious story says he wanted his bones carried on future campaigns against the Scots. The more credible account, from a chronicle, says he charged Henry de Lacy, Guy de Beauchamp, Aymer de Valence and Robert de Clifford with looking after his son. In particular, they were to keep the banished Piers Gaveston out of England. Edward II recalled his favourite almost immediately.

  Edward I's body lay in state at Waltham Abbey and was buried at Westminster Abbey on the 27th of October. The funeral cost £473. His tomb was a plain sarcophagus of Purbeck marble with no royal effigy, possibly because money was short. Traces of a painted Latin inscription survive, reading Edwardus Primus Scottorum Malleus hic est, 1308. Pactum Serva. It means "Here is Edward I, Hammer of the Scots, 1308. Keep the Troth". The inscription is not from his own time, since Abbot John Feckenham added it in the 16th century.

  Historians have argued over Edward ever since. In the 17th century the lawyer Edward Coke called him the English Justinian for his legislation. The Victorian William Stubbs saw a king who shaped national history and helped England toward a parliamentary and constitutional monarchy. Stubbs's student Thomas Tout first agreed, then after research into the royal household came to see a self-interested, conservative leader who used Parliament as a device of an autocrat. R. R. Davies called Edward's "gratuitous belittling of his opponents" one of the most consistent and unattractive features of his character as king. His examples included the seizure of fragments of the Holy Cross from Wales in 1283.

  The last two words of the tomb inscription, Pactum Serva, recall his vow to avenge Robert the Bruce's rebellion.

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