Volume Ii Part 5 (1/2)

[Sidenote: Knights of the s.h.i.+re]

It was easy to give this principle a further extension by the choice of representatives of the lesser barons in the s.h.i.+re courts to which they were summoned; but it was only slowly and tentatively that this process was applied to the reconst.i.tution of the Great Council. As early as the close of John's reign there are indications of the approaching change in the summons of ”four discreet knights” from every county. Fresh need of local support was felt by both parties in the conflict of the succeeding reign, and Henry and his barons alike summoned knights from each s.h.i.+re ”to meet on the common business of the realm.” It was no doubt with the same purpose that the writs of Earl Simon ordered the choice of knights in each s.h.i.+re for his famous Parliament of 1265. Something like a continuous attendance may be dated from the accession of Edward, but it was long before the knights were regarded as more than local deputies for the a.s.sessment of taxation or admitted to a share in the general business of the Great Council. The statute ”Quia Emptores,” for instance, was pa.s.sed in it before the knights who had been summoned could attend. Their partic.i.p.ation in the deliberative power of Parliament, as well as their regular and continuous attendance, dates only from the Parliament of 1295. But a far greater const.i.tutional change in their position had already taken place through the extension of electoral rights to the freeholders at large. The one cla.s.s ent.i.tled to a seat in the Great Council was, as we have seen, that of the lesser baronage; and it was of the lesser baronage alone that the knights were in theory the representatives. But the necessity of holding their election in the County Court rendered any restriction of the electoral body physically impossible. The court was composed of the whole body of freeholders, and no sheriff could distinguish the ”aye, aye” of the yeoman from the ”aye, aye” of the lesser baron. From the first moment therefore of their attendance we find the knights regarded not as mere representatives of the baronage but as knights of the s.h.i.+re, and by this silent revolution the whole body of the rural freeholders were admitted to a share in the government of the realm.

[Sidenote: Boroughs and the Crown]

The financial difficulties of the Crown led to a far more radical revolution in the admission into the Great Council of representatives from the boroughs. The presence of knights from each s.h.i.+re was the recognition of an older right, but no right of attendance or share in the national ”counsel and a.s.sent” could be pleaded for the burgesses of the towns. On the other hand the rapid developement of their wealth made them every day more important as elements in the national taxation. From all payment of the dues or fines exacted by the king as the original lord of the soil on which they had in most cases grown up the towns had long since freed themselves by what was called the purchase of the ”farm of the borough”; in other words, by the commutation of these uncertain dues for a fixed sum paid annually to the Crown and apportioned by their own magistrates among the general body of the burghers. All that the king legally retained was the right enjoyed by every great proprietor of levying a corresponding taxation on his tenants in demesne under the name of ”a free aid” whenever a grant was made for the national necessities by the barons of the Great Council. But the temptation of appropriating the growing wealth of the mercantile cla.s.s proved stronger than legal restrictions, and we find both Henry the Third and his son a.s.suming a right of imposing taxes at pleasure and without any authority from the Council even over London itself. The burgesses could refuse indeed the invitation to contribute to the ”free aids” demanded by the royal officers, but the suspension of their markets or trading privileges brought them in the end to submission. Each of these ”free aids” however had to be extorted after a long wrangle between the borough and the officers of the Exchequer; and if the towns were driven to comply with what they considered an extortion they could generally force the Crown by evasions and delays to a compromise and abatement of its original demands.

[Sidenote: Burgesses in Parliament]

The same financial reasons therefore existed for desiring the presence of borough representatives in the Great Council as existed in the case of the s.h.i.+res; but it was the genius of Earl Simon which first broke through the older const.i.tutional tradition and summoned two burgesses from each town to the Parliament of 1265. Time had indeed to pa.s.s before the large and statesmanlike conception of the great patriot could meet with full acceptance. Through the earlier part of Edward's reign we find a few instances of the presence of representatives from the towns, but their scanty numbers and the irregularity of their attendance show that they were summoned rather to afford financial information to the Great Council than as representatives in it of an Estate of the Realm. But every year pleaded stronger and stronger for their inclusion, and in the Parliament of 1295 that of 1265 found itself at last reproduced. ”It was from me that he learnt it,” Earl Simon had cried, as he recognized the military skill of Edward's onset at Evesham; ”it was from me that he learnt it,” his spirit might have exclaimed as he saw the king gathering at last two burgesses ”from every city, borough, and leading town” within his realm to sit side by side with the knights, n.o.bles, and barons of the Great Council. To the Crown the change was from the first an advantageous one. The grants of subsidies by the burgesses in Parliament proved more profitable than the previous extortions of the Exchequer. The proportions of their grant generally exceeded that of the other estates. Their representatives too proved far more compliant with the royal will than the barons or knights of the s.h.i.+re; only on one occasion during Edward's reign did the burgesses waver from their general support of the Crown.

[Sidenote: Reluctance to attend]

It was easy indeed to control them, for the selection of boroughs to be represented remained wholly in the king's hands, and their numbers could be increased or diminished at the king's pleasure. The determination was left to the sheriff, and at a hint from the royal Council a sheriff of Wilts would cut down the number of represented boroughs in his s.h.i.+re from eleven to three, or a sheriff of Bucks declare he could find but a single borough, that of Wycombe, within the bounds of his county. Nor was this exercise of the prerogative hampered by any anxiety on the part of the towns to claim representative privileges. It was hard to suspect that a power before which the Crown would have to bow lay in the ranks of soberly-clad traders, summoned only to a.s.sess the contributions of their boroughs, and whose attendance was as difficult to secure as it seemed burthensome to themselves and the towns who sent them. The ma.s.s of citizens took little or no part in their choice, for they were elected in the county court by a few of the princ.i.p.al burghers deputed for the purpose; but the cost of their maintenance, the two s.h.i.+llings a day paid to the burgess by his town as four were paid to the knight by his county, was a burden from which the boroughs made desperate efforts to escape. Some persisted in making no return to the sheriff. Some bought charters of exemption from the troublesome privilege. Of the 165 who were summoned by Edward the First more than a third ceased to send representatives after a single compliance with the royal summons. During the whole time from the reign of Edward the Third to the reign of Henry the Sixth the sheriff of Lancas.h.i.+re declined to return the names of any boroughs at all within that county ”on account of their poverty.” Nor were the representatives themselves more anxious to appear than their boroughs to send them. The busy country squire and the thrifty trader were equally reluctant to undergo the trouble and expense of a journey to Westminster. Legal measures were often necessary to ensure their presence. Writs still exist in abundance such as that by which Walter le Rous is ”held to bail in eight oxen and four cart-horses to come before the King on the day specified” for attendance in Parliament. But in spite of obstacles such as these the presence of representatives from the boroughs may be regarded as continuous from the Parliament of 1295. As the representation of the lesser barons had widened through a silent change into that of the s.h.i.+re, so that of the boroughs--restricted in theory to those in the royal demesne--seems practically from Edward's time to have been extended to all who were in a condition to pay the cost of their representatives' support. By a change as silent within the Parliament itself the burgess, originally summoned to take part only in matters of taxation, was at last admitted to a full share in the deliberations and authority of the other orders of the State.

[Sidenote: Parliament and the Clergy]

The admission of the burgesses and knights of the s.h.i.+re to the a.s.sembly of 1295 completed the fabric of our representative const.i.tution. The Great Council of the Barons became the Parliament of the Realm. Every order of the state found itself represented in this a.s.sembly, and took part in the grant of supplies, the work of legislation, and in the end the control of government. But though in all essential points the character of Parliament has remained the same from that time to this, there were some remarkable particulars in which the a.s.sembly of 1295 differed widely from the present Parliament at St. Stephen's. Some of these differences, such as those which sprang from the increased powers and changed relations of the different orders among themselves, we shall have occasion to consider at a later time. But a difference of a far more startling kind than these lay in the presence of the clergy. If there is any part in the parliamentary scheme of Edward the First which can be regarded as especially his own, it is his project for the representation of the ecclesiastical order. The King had twice at least summoned its ”proctors” to Great Councils before 1295, but it was then only that the complete representation of the Church was definitely organized by the insertion of a clause in the writ which summoned a bishop to Parliament requiring the personal attendance of all archdeacons, deans, or priors of cathedral churches, of a proctor for each cathedral chapter, and two for the clergy within his diocese. The clause is repeated in the writs of the present day, but its practical effect was foiled almost from the first by the resolute opposition of those to whom it was addressed. What the towns failed in doing the clergy actually did. Even when forced to comply with the royal summons, as they seem to have been forced during Edward's reign, they sat jealously by themselves, and their refusal to vote supplies in any but their own provincial a.s.semblies, or convocations, of Canterbury and York left the Crown without a motive for insisting on their continued attendance. Their presence indeed, though still at times granted on some solemn occasions, became so pure a formality that by the end of the fifteenth century it had sunk wholly into desuetude.

In their anxiety to preserve their existence as an isolated and privileged order the clergy flung away a power which, had they retained it, would have ruinously hampered the healthy developement of the state. To take a single instance, it is difficult to see how the great changes of the Reformation could have been brought about had a good half of the House of Commons consisted purely of churchmen, whose numbers would have been backed by the weight of their property as possessors of a third of the landed estates of the realm.

[Sidenote: Parliament at Westminster]

A hardly less important difference may be found in the gradual restriction of the meetings of Parliament to Westminster. The names of Edward's statutes remind us of its convocation at the most various quarters, at Winchester, Acton Burnell, Northampton. It was at a later time that Parliament became settled in the straggling village which had grown up in the marshy swamp of the Isle of Thorns beside the palace whose embattled pile towered over the Thames and the new Westminster which was still rising in Edward's day on the site of the older church of the Confessor. It is possible that, while contributing greatly to its const.i.tutional importance, this settlement of the Parliament may have helped to throw into the background its character as a supreme court of appeal. The proclamation by which it was called together invited ”all who had any grace to demand of the King in Parliament, or any plaint to make of matters which could not be redressed or determined by ordinary course of law, or who had been in any way aggrieved by any of the King's ministers or justices or sheriffs, or their bailiffs, or any other officer, or have been unduly a.s.sessed, rated, charged, or surcharged to aids, subsidies, or taxes,” to deliver their pet.i.tions to receivers who sat in the Great Hall of the Palace of Westminster. The pet.i.tions were forwarded to the King's Council, and it was probably the extension of the jurisdiction of that body and the rise of the Court of Chancery which reduced this ancient right of the subject to the formal election of ”Triers of Pet.i.tions” at the opening of every new Parliament by the House of Lords, a usage which is still continued. But it must have been owing to some memory of the older custom that the subject always looked for redress against injuries from the Crown or its ministers to the Parliament of the realm.

[Sidenote: Conquest of Scotland]

The subsidies granted by the Parliament of 1295 furnished the king with the means of warfare with both Scotland and France while they a.s.sured him of the sympathy of his people in the contest. But from the first the reluctance of Edward to enter on the double war was strongly marked. The refusal of the Scotch baronage to obey his summons had been followed on Balliol's part by two secret steps which made a struggle inevitable, by a request to Rome for absolution from his oath of fealty and by a treaty of alliance with Philip the Fair. As yet however no open breach had taken place, and while Edward in 1296 summoned his knighthood to meet him in the north he called a Parliament at Newcastle in the hope of bringing about an accommodation with the Scot king. But all thought of accommodation was roughly ended by the refusal of Balliol to attend the Parliament, by the rout of a small body of English troops, and by the Scotch investment of Carlisle. Taken as he was by surprise, Edward showed at once the vigour and rapidity of his temper. His army marched upon Berwick. The town was a rich and well-peopled one, and although a wooden stockade furnished its only rampart the serried ranks of citizens behind it gave little hope of an easy conquest. Their taunts indeed stung the king to the quick. As his engineers threw up rough entrenchments for the besieging army the burghers bade him wait till he won the town before he began digging round it. ”Kynge Edward,”

they shouted, ”waune thou havest Berwick, pike thee; waune thou havest geten, dike thee.” But the stockade was stormed with the loss of a single knight, nearly eight thousand of the citizens were mown down in a ruthless carnage, and a handful of Flemish traders who held the town-hall stoutly against all a.s.sailants were burned alive in it. The ma.s.sacre only ceased when a procession of priests bore the host to the king's presence, praying for mercy. Edward with a sudden and characteristic burst of tears called off his troops; but the town was ruined for ever, and the greatest merchant city of northern Britain sank from that time into a petty seaport.

At Berwick Edward received Balliol's formal defiance. ”Has the fool done this folly?” the king cried in haughty scorn; ”if he will not come to us, we will come to him.” The terrible slaughter however had done its work, and his march northward was a triumphal progress. Edinburgh, Stirling, and Perth opened their gates, Bruce joined the English army, and Balliol himself surrendered and pa.s.sed without a blow from his throne to an English prison. No further punishment however was exacted from the prostrate realm.

Edward simply treated it as a fief, and declared its forfeiture to be the legal consequence of Balliol's treason. It lapsed in fact to its suzerain; and its earls, barons, and gentry swore homage in Parliament at Berwick to Edward as their king. The sacred stone on which its older sovereigns had been installed, an oblong block of limestone which legend a.s.serted to have been the pillow of Jacob as angels ascended and descended upon him, was removed from Scone and placed in Westminster by the shrine of the Confessor. It was enclosed by Edward's order in a stately seat, which became from that hour the coronation chair of English kings. To the king himself the whole business must have seemed another and easier conquest of Wales, and the mercy and just government which had followed his first success followed his second also. The government of the new dependency was entrusted to John of Warenne, Earl of Surrey, at the head of an English Council of Regency. Pardon was freely extended to all who had resisted the invasion, and order and public peace were rigidly enforced.

[Sidenote: Confirmation of the Charters]

But the triumph, rapid and complete as it was, had more than exhausted the aids granted by the Parliament. The treasury was utterly drained. The struggle indeed widened as every month went on; the costly fight with the French in Gascony called for supplies, while Edward was planning a yet costlier attack on northern France with the aid of Flanders. Need drove him on his return from Scotland in 1297 to measures of tyrannical extortion which seemed to recall the times of John. His first blow fell on the Church. At the close of 1294 he had already demanded half their annual income from the clergy, and so terrible was his wrath at their resistance that the Dean of St. Paul's, who stood forth to remonstrate, dropped dead of sheer terror at his feet. ”If any oppose the King's demand,” said a royal envoy in the midst of the Convocation, ”let him stand up that he may be noted as an enemy to the King's peace.” The outraged Churchmen fell back on an untenable plea that their aid was due solely to Rome, and alleged the bull of ”Clericis Laicos,” issued by Boniface the Eighth at this moment, a bull which forbade the clergy to pay secular taxes from their ecclesiastical revenues, as a ground for refusing to comply with further taxation. In 1297 Archbishop Winchelsey refused on the ground of this bull to make any grant, and Edward met his refusal by a general outlawry of the whole order. The King's Courts were closed, and all justice denied to those who refused the king aid. By their actual plea the clergy had put themselves formally in the wrong, and the outlawry soon forced them to submission; but their aid did little to recruit the exhausted treasury. The pressure of the war steadily increased, and far wider measures of arbitrary taxation were needful to equip an expedition which Edward prepared to lead in person to Flanders. The country gentlemen were compelled to take up knighthood or to compound for exemption from the burthensome honour, and forced contributions of cattle and corn were demanded from the counties.

Edward no doubt purposed to pay honestly for these supplies, but his exactions from the merchant cla.s.s rested on a deliberate theory of his royal rights. He looked on the customs as levied absolutely at his pleasure, and the export duty on wool--now the staple produce of the country--was raised to six times its former amount. Although he infringed no positive provision of charter or statute in his action, it was plain that his course really undid all that had been gained by the Barons' war.

But the blow had no sooner been struck than Edward found stout resistance within his realm. The barons drew together and called a meeting for the redress of their grievances. The two greatest of the English n.o.bles, Humfrey de Bohun, Earl of Hereford, and Roger BiG.o.d, Earl of Norfolk, placed themselves at the head of the opposition. The first was Constable, the second Earl Marshal, and Edward bade them lead a force to Gascony as his lieutenants while he himself sailed to Flanders. Their departure would have left the Baronage without leaders, and the two earls availed themselves of a plea that they were not bound to foreign service save in attendance on the king to refuse obedience to the royal orders. ”By G.o.d, Sir Earl,” swore the king to the Earl Marshal, ”you shall either go or hang!” ”By G.o.d, Sir King,” was the cool reply, ”I will neither go nor hang!” Both parties separated in bitter anger; the king to seize fresh wool, to outlaw the clergy, and to call an army to his aid; the barons to gather in arms, backed by the excommunication of the Primate. But the strife went no further than words. Ere the Parliament he had convened could meet, Edward had discovered his own powerlessness; Winchelsey offered his mediation; and Edward confirmed the Great Charter and the Charter of Forests as the price of a grant from the clergy and a subsidy from the Commons. With one of those sudden revulsions of feeling of which his nature was capable the king stood before his people in Westminster Hall and owned with a burst of tears that he had taken their substance without due warrant of law. His pa.s.sionate appeal to their loyalty wrested a reluctant a.s.sent to the prosecution, of the war, and in August Edward sailed for Flanders, leaving his son regent of the realm. But the crisis had taught the need of further securities against the royal power, and as Edward was about to embark the barons demanded his acceptance of additional articles to the Charter, expressly renouncing his right of taxing the nation without its own consent. The king sailed without complying, but Winchelsey joined the two earls and the citizens of London in forbidding any levy of supplies till the Great Charter with these clauses was again confirmed, and the trouble in Scotland as well as the still pending strife with France left Edward helpless in the barons' hands. The Great Charter and the Charter of the Forests were solemnly confirmed by him at Ghent in November; and formal pardon was issued to the Earls of Hereford and Norfolk.

[Sidenote: Revolt of Scotland]

The confirmation of the Charter, the renunciation of any right to the exactions by which the people were aggrieved, the pledge that the king would no more take ”such aids, tasks, and prizes but by common a.s.sent of the realm,” the promise not to impose on wool any heavy customs or ”maltote” without the same a.s.sent, was the close of the great struggle which had begun at Runnymede. The clauses so soon removed from the Great Charter were now restored; and, evade them as they might, the kings were never able to free themselves from the obligation to seek aid solely from the general consent of their subjects. It was Scotland which had won this victory for English freedom. At the moment when Edward and the earls stood face to face the king saw his work in the north suddenly undone. Both the justice and injustice of the new rule proved fatal to it. The wrath of the Scots, already kindled by the intrusion of English priests into Scotch livings and by the grant of lands across the border to English barons, was fanned to fury by the strict administration of law and the repression of feuds and cattle-lifting. The disbanding too of troops, which was caused by the penury of the royal exchequer, united with the licence of the soldiery who remained to quicken the national sense of wrong. The disgraceful submission of their leaders brought the people themselves to the front. In spite of a hundred years of peace the farmer of Fife or the Lowlands and the artizan of the towns remained stout-hearted Northumbrian Englishmen.

They had never consented to Edward's supremacy, and their blood rose against the insolent rule of the stranger. The genius of an outlaw knight, William Wallace, saw in their smouldering discontent a hope of freedom for his country, and his daring raids on outlying parties of the English soldiery roused the country at last into revolt.

[Sidenote: Wallace]