Part 2 — Chapter III. (These four articles abrogated by the four articles following them, 118-122.) Article 118. The Federal Constitution may at any time be amended. (continued 17)

Lord Campbell, Lives of the Lord Chancellors, chapter 3.

"What did Henry II. propose to do with a clerk who was accused of a crime? … Without doing much violence to the text, it is possible to put two different interpretations upon that famous clause in the Constitutions of Clarendon which deals with criminous clerks. … According to what seems to be the commonest opinion, we might comment upon this clause in some such words as these:—Offences of which a clerk may be accused are of two kinds. They are temporal or they are ecclesiastical. Under the former head fall murder, robbery, larceny, rape, and the like; under the latter, incontinence, heresy, disobedience to superiors, breach of rules relating to the conduct of divine service, and so forth. If charged with an offence of the temporal kind, the clerk must stand his trial in the king's court; his trial, his sentence, will be like that of a layman. For an ecclesiastical offence, on the other hand, he will be tried in the court Christian. The king reserves to his court the right to decide what offences are temporal, what ecclesiastical; also he asserts the right to send delegates to supervise the proceedings of the spiritual tribunals. … Let us attempt a rival commentary. The author of this clause is not thinking of two different classes of offences. The purely ecclesiastical offences are not in debate. No one doubts that for these a man will be tried in and punished by the spiritual court. He is thinking of the grave crimes, of murder and the like. Now every such crime is a breach of temporal law, and it is also a breach of canon law. The clerk who commits murder breaks the king's peace, but he also infringes the divine law, and—no canonist will doubt this—ought to be degraded. Very well. A clerk is accused of such a crime. He is summoned before the king's court, and he is to answer there—let us mark this word respondere—for what he ought to answer for there. What ought he to answer for there? The breach of the king's peace and the felony. When he has answered, … then, without any trial, he is to be sent to the ecclesiastical court. In that court he will have to answer as an ordained clerk accused of homicide, and in that court there will be a trial (res ibi tractabitur). If the spiritual court convicts him it will degrade him, and thenceforth the church must no longer protect him. He will be brought back into the king's court, … and having been brought back, no longer a clerk but a mere layman, he will be sentenced (probably without any further trial) to the layman's punishment, death or mutilation. The scheme is this: accusation and plea in the temporal court; trial, conviction, degradation, in the ecclesiastical court; sentence in the temporal court to the layman's punishment. This I believe to be the meaning of the clause."

F. W. Maitland, Henry II. and the Criminous Clerks (English Historical Review, April, 1892), pages 224-226.

The Assize of Clarendon, sometimes confused with the Constitutions of Clarendon, was an important decree approved two years later. It laid down the principles on which the administration of justice was to be carried out, in twenty-two articles drawn up for the use of the judges.

Mrs. J. R Green, Henry the Second, chapters 5-6.

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"It may not be without instruction to remember that the Constitutions of Clarendon, which Becket spent his life in opposing, and of which his death procured the suspension, are now incorporated in the English law, and are regarded, without a dissentient voice, as among the wisest and most necessary of English institutions; that the especial point for which he surrendered his life was not the independence of the clergy from the encroachments of the Crown, but the personal and now forgotten question of the superiority of the see of Canterbury to the see of York."

A. P. Stanley, Historical Memorials of Canterbury, page 124.

ALSO IN: W. Stubbs, Constitutional History of England, chapter 12, sections 139-141.

W. Stubbs, Select Charters, part 4.

J. C. Robertson, Becket.

J. A. Giles, Life and Letters of Thomas à Becket.

R. H. Froude, History of the Contest between Archbishop Thomas à Becket and Henry II. (Remains, part 2, volume 2).

J. A. Froude, Life and Times of Thomas Becket.

C. H. Pearson, History of England during the Early and Middle Ages, volume 1, chapter 29.

See, also, BENEFIT OF CLERGY, and JURY, TRIAL BY.

ENGLAND: A. D. 1189. Accession of King Richard I. (called Cœur de Lion).

ENGLAND: A. D. 1189-1199. Reign of Richard Cœur de Lion. His Crusade and campaigns in France.

"The Third Crusade [see CRUSADES: A. D. 1188-1192], undertaken for the deliverance of Palestine from the disasters brought upon the Crusaders' Kingdom by Saladin, was the first to be popular in England. … Richard joined the Crusade in the very first year of his reign, and every portion of his subsequent career was concerned with its consequences. Neither in the time of William Rufus nor of Stephen had the First or Second Crusades found England sufficiently settled for such expeditions. … But the patronage of the Crusades was a hereditary distinction in the Angevin family now reigning in England: they had founded the kingdom of Palestine; Henry II. himself had often prepared to set out; and Richard was confidently expected by the great body of his subjects to redeem the family pledge. … Wholly inferior in statesmanlike qualities to his father as he was, the generosity, munificence, and easy confidence of his character made him an almost perfect representative of the chivalry of that age. He was scarcely at all in England, but his fine exploits both by land and sea have made him deservedly a favourite. The depreciation of him which is to be found in certain modern books must in all fairness be considered a little mawkish. A King who leaves behind him such an example of apparently reckless, but really prudent valour, of patience under jealous ill-treatment, and perseverance in the face of extreme difficulties, shining out as the head of the manhood of his day, far above the common race of kings and emperors,—such a man leaves a heritage of example as well as glory, and incites posterity to noble deeds. His great moral fault was his conduct to Henry, and for this he was sufficiently punished; but his parents must each bear their share of the blame. … The interest of English affairs during Richard's absence languishes under the excitement which attends his almost continuous campaigns. … Both on the Crusade and in France Richard was fighting the battle of the House which the English had very deliberately placed upon its throne; and if the war was kept off its shores, if the troubles of Stephen's reign were not allowed to recur, the country had no right to complain of a taxation or a royal ransom which times of peace enabled it, after all, to bear tolerably well. … The great maritime position of the Plantagenets made these sovereigns take to the sea."

M. Burrows, Commentaries on the History of England, book 1, chapter 18.

Richard "was a bad king; his great exploits, his military skill, his splendour and extravagance, his poetical tastes, his adventurous spirit, do not serve to cloak his entire want of sympathy, or even consideration for his people. He was no Englishman. … His ambition was that of a mere warrior."

W. Stubbs, Constitutional History of England, section. 150 (volume 1).

ALSO IN: K. Norgate, England under the Angevin Kings, volume 2, chapter 7-8.

ENGLAND: A. D. 1199. Accession of King John.

ENGLAND: A. D. 1205. The loss of Normandy and its effects.

In 1202 Philip Augustus, king of France, summoned John of England, as Duke of Normandy (therefore the feudal vassal of the French crown) to appear for trial on certain grave charges before the august court of the Peers of France. John refused to obey the summons; his French fiefs were declared forfeited, and the armies of the French king took possession of them (see FRANCE: A. D. 1180-1224). This proved to be a lasting separation of Normandy from England,—except as it was recovered momentarily long afterwards in the conquests of Henry V. "The Norman barons had had no choice but between John and Philip. For the first time since the Conquest there was no competitor, son, brother, or more distant kinsman, for their allegiance. John could neither rule nor defend them. Bishops and barons alike welcomed or speedily accepted their new lord. The families that had estates on both sides of the Channel divided into two branches, each of which made terms for itself; or having balanced their interests in the two kingdoms, threw in their lot with one or other, and renounced what they could not save. Almost immediately Normandy settles down into a quiet province of France. … For England the result of the separation was more important still. Even within the reign of John it became clear that the release of the barons from their connexion with the continent was all that was wanted to make them Englishmen. With the last vestiges of the Norman inheritances vanished the last idea of making England a feudal kingdom. The Great Charter was won by men who were maintaining, not the cause of a class, as had been the case in every civil war since 1070, but the cause of a nation. From the year 1203 the king stood before the English people face to face."

W. Stubbs, Constitutional History of England, chapter 12, section 152.

See FRANCE: A. D. 1180-1224.

ENGLAND: A. D. 1205-1213. King John's quarrel with the Pope and the Church.

On the death, in 1205, of Archbishop Hubert, of Canterbury, who had long been chief minister of the crown, a complicated quarrel over the appointment to the vacant see arose between the monks of the cathedral, the suffragan bishops of the province, King John, and the powerful Pope Innocent III. Pope Innocent put forward as his candidate the afterwards famous Stephen Langton, secured his election in a somewhat irregular way (A. D. 1207), and consecrated him with his own hands. King John, bent on filling the primacy with a creature of his own, resisted the papal action with more fury than discretion, and proceeded to open war with the whole Church. {802} "The monks of Canterbury were driven from their monastery, and when, in the following year, an interdict which the Pope had intrusted to the Bishops of London, Ely and Worcester, was published, his hostility to the Church became so extreme that almost all the bishops fled; the Bishops of Winchester, Durham, and Norwich, two of whom belonged to the ministerial body, being the only prelates left in England. The interdict was of the severest form; all services of the Church, with the exception of baptism and extreme unction, being forbidden, while the burial of the dead was allowed only in unconsecrated ground; its effect was however, weakened by the conduct of some of the monastic orders, who claimed exemption from its operation, and continued their services. The king's anger knew no bounds. The clergy were put beyond the protection of the law; orders were issued to drive them from their benefices, and lawless acts committed at their expense met with no punishment. … Though acting thus violently, John showed the weakness of his character by continued communication with the Pope, and occasional fitful acts of favour to the Church; so much so, that, in the following year, Langton prepared to come over to England, and, upon the continued obstinacy of the king, Innocent, feeling sure of his final victory, did not shrink from issuing his threatened excommunication. John had hoped to be able to exclude the knowledge of this step from the island … ; but the rumour of it soon got abroad, and its effect was great. … In a state of nervous excitement, and mistrusting his nobles, the king himself perpetually moved to and fro in his kingdom, seldom staying more than a few days in one place. None the less did he continue his old line of policy. … In 1211 a league of excommunicated leaders was formed, including all the princes of the North of Europe; Ferrand of Flanders, the Duke of Brabant, John, and Otho [John's Guelphic Saxon nephew, who was one of two contestants for the imperial crown in Germany], were all members of it, and it was chiefly organized by the activity of Reinald of Dammartin, Count of Boulogne. The chief enemy of these confederates was Philip of France; and John thought he saw in this league the means of revenge against his old enemy. To complete the line of demarcation between the two parties, Innocent, who was greatly moved by the description of the disorders and persecutions in England, declared John's crown forfeited, and intrusted the carrying out of the sentence to Philip. In 1213 armies were collected on both sides. Philip was already on the Channel, and John had assembled a large army on Barhamdown, not far from Canterbury." But, at the last moment, when the French king was on the eve of embarking his forces for the invasion of England, John submitted himself abjectly to Pandulf, the legate of the Pope. He not only surrendered to all that he had contended against, but went further, to the most shameful extreme. "On the 15th of May, at Dover, he formally resigned the crowns of England and Ireland into the hands of Pandulf, and received them again as the Pope's feudatory."

J. F. Bright, History of England (3d edition), volume 1, pages 130-134.

ALSO IN: C. H. Pearson, History of England during the Early and Middle Ages, volume 2, chapter 2.

E. F. Henderson, Select Historical Documents of the Middle Ages, Book 4, number 5.

See, also, BOUVINES, BATTLE OF.

ENGLAND: A. D. 1206-1230. Attempts of John and Henry III. to recover Anjou and Maine.

See ANJOU: A. D. 1206-1442.

ENGLAND: A. D. 1215. Magna Carta.

"It is to the victory of Bouvines that England owes her Great Charter [see BOUVINES]. … John sailed for Poitou with the dream of a great victory which should lay Philip [of France] and the barons alike at his feet. He returned from his defeat to find the nobles no longer banded together in secret conspiracies, but openly united in a definite claim of liberty and law. The author of this great change was the new Archbishop [Langton] whom Innocent had set on the throne of Canterbury. … In a private meeting of the barons at St. Paul's, he produced the Charter of Henry I., and the enthusiasm with which it was welcomed showed the sagacity with which the Primate had chosen his ground for the coming struggle. All hope, however, hung on the fortunes of the French campaign; it was the victory at Bouvines that broke the spell of terror, and within a few days of the king's landing the barons again met at St. Edmundsbury. … At Christmas they presented themselves in arms before the king and preferred their claim. The few months that followed showed John that he stood alone in the land. … At Easter the barons again gathered in arms at Brackley and renewed their claim. 'Why do they not ask for my kingdom?' cried John in a burst of passion; but the whole country rose as one man at his refusal. London threw open her gates to the army of the barons, now organized under Robert Fitz-Walter, 'the marshal of the army of God and the holy Church.' The example of the capital was at once followed by Exeter and Lincoln; promises of aid came from Scotland and Wales; the northern nobles marched hastily to join their comrades in London. With seven horsemen in his train John found himself face to face with a nation in arms. … Nursing wrath in his heart the tyrant bowed to necessity, and summoned the barons to a conference at Runnymede. An island in the Thames between Staines and Windsor had been chosen as the place of conference: the king encamped on one bank, while the barons covered the marshy flat, still known by the name of Runnymede, on the other. Their delegates met in the island between them. … The Great Charter was discussed, agreed to, and signed in a single day [June 15, A. D. 1215]. One copy of it still remains in the British Museum, injured by age and fire, but with the royal seal still hanging from the brown, shriveled parchment."

J. R Green, Short History of the England People, chapter 3, sections 2-3.

"As this was the first effort towards a legal government, so is it beyond comparison the most important event in our history, except that, Revolution without which its benefits would have been rapidly annihilated. The constitution of England has indeed no single date from which its duration is to be reckoned. The institutions of positive law, the far more important changes which time has wrought in the order of society, during six hundred years subsequent to the Great Charter, have undoubtedly lessened its direct application to our present circumstances. But it is still the key-stone of English liberty. All that has since been obtained is little more than as confirmation or commentary. … The essential clauses of Magna Charta are those which protect the personal liberty and property of all freemen, by giving security from arbitrary imprisonment and arbitrary spoliation. {803} 'No freeman (says the 29th chapter of Henry III.'s charter, which, as the existing law, I quote in preference to that of John, the variations not being very material) shall be taken or imprisoned, or be disseised of his freehold, or liberties, or free customs, or be outlawed, or exiled, or any otherwise destroyed; nor will we pass upon him, nor send upon, but by lawful judgment of his peers, or by the law of the land. We will sell to no man, we will not deny or delay to any man, justice or right.' It is obvious that these words, interpreted by any honest court of law, convey an ample security for the two main rights of civil society."

H. Hallam, The Middle Ages, chapter 8, part 2.

"The Great Charter, although drawn up in the form of a royal grant, was really a treaty between the king and his subjects. … It is the collective people who really form the other high contracting party in the great capitulation,—the three estates of the realm, not, it is true, arranged in order according to their profession or rank, but not the less certainly combined in one national purpose, and securing by one bond the interests and rights of each other, severally and all together. … The barons maintain and secure the right of the whole people as against themselves as well as against their master. Clause by clause the rights of the commons are provided for as well as the rights of the nobles. … The knight is protected against the compulsory exaction of his services, and the horse and cart of the freeman against the irregular requisition even of the sheriff. … The Great Charter is the first great public act of the nation, after it has realised its own identity. … The whole of the constitutional history of England is little more than a commentary on Magna Carta."

W. Stubbs, Constitutional History of England, chapter 12, section 155.

The following is the text of Magna Carta;

"John, by the Grace of God, King of England, Lord of Ireland, Duke of Normandy, Aquitaine, and Count of Anjou, to his Archbishops, Bishops, Abbots, Earls, Barons, Justiciaries, Foresters, Sheriffs, Governors, Officers, and to all Bailiffs, and his faithful subjects, greeting. Know ye, that we, in the presence of God, and for the salvation of our soul, and the souls of all our ancestors and heirs, and unto the honour of God and the advancement of Holy Church, and amendment of our Realm, by advice of our venerable Fathers, Stephen, Archbishop of Canterbury, Primate of all England and Cardinal of the Holy Roman Church; Henry, Archbishop of Dublin; William, of London; Peter, of Winchester; Jocelin, of Bath and Glastonbury; Hugh, of Lincoln; Walter, of Worcester; William, of Coventry; Benedict, of Rochester—Bishops; of Master Pandulph, Sub-Deacon and Familiar of our Lord the Pope; Brother Aymeric, Master of the Knights-Templars in England; and of the noble Persons, William Marescall, Earl of Pembroke; William, Earl of Salisbury; William, Earl of Warren; William, Earl of Arundel; Alan de Galloway, Constable of Scotland; Warin FitzGerald, Peter FitzHerbert, and Hubert de Burgh, Seneschal of Poitou; Hugh de Neville, Matthew FitzHerbert, Thomas Basset, Alan Basset, Philip of Albiney, Robert de Roppell, John Mareschal, John FitzHugh, and others, our liegemen, have, in the first place, granted to God, and by this our present Charter confirmed, for us and our heirs forever;

1. That the Church of England shall be free, and have her whole rights, and her liberties inviolable; and we will have them so observed, that it may appear thence that the freedom of elections, which is reckoned chief and indispensable to the English Church, and which we granted and confirmed by our Charter, and obtained the confirmation of the same from our Lord the Pope Innocent III., before the discord between us and our barons, was granted of mere free will; which Charter we shall observe, and we do will it to be faithfully observed by our heirs for ever.

2. We also have granted to all the freemen of our kingdom, for us and for our heirs for ever, all the underwritten liberties, to be had and holden by them and their heirs, of us and our heirs for ever; If any of our earls, or barons, or others, who hold of us in chief by military service, shall die, and at the time of his death his heir shall be of full age, and owe a relief, he shall have his inheritance by the ancient relief—that is to say, the heir or heirs of an earl, for a whole earldom, by a hundred pounds; the heir or heirs of a baron, for a whole barony, by a hundred pounds; the heir or heirs of a knight, for a whole knight's fee, by a hundred shillings at most; and whoever oweth less shall give less, according to the ancient custom of fees.

3. But if the heir of any such shall be under age, and shall be in ward, when he comes of age he shall have his inheritance without relief and without fine.

4. The keeper of the land of such an heir being under age, shall take of the land of the heir none but reasonable issues, reasonable customs, and reasonable services, and that without destruction and waste of his men and his goods; and if we commit the custody of any such lands to the sheriff, or any other who is answerable to us for the issues of the land, and he shall make destruction and waste of the lands which he hath in custody, we will take of him amends, and the land shall be committed to two lawful and discreet men of that fee, who shall answer for the issues to us, or to him to whom we shall assign them; and if we sell or give to anyone the custody of any such lands, and he therein make destruction or waste, he shall lose the same custody, which shall be committed to two lawful and discreet men of that fee, who shall in like manner answer to us as aforesaid.

5. But the keeper, so long as he shall have the custody of the land, shall keep up the houses, parks, warrens, ponds, mills, and other things pertaining to the land, out of the issues of the same land; and shall deliver to the heir, when he comes of full age, his whole land, stocked with ploughs and carriages, according as the time of wainage shall require, and the issues of the land can reasonably bear.

6. Heirs shall be married without disparagement, and so that before matrimony shall be contracted, those who are near in blood to the heir shall have notice.

7. A widow, after the death of her husband, shall forthwith and without difficulty have her marriage and inheritance; nor shall she give anything for her dower, or her marriage, of her inheritance, which her husband and she held at the day of his death; and she may remain in the mansion house of her husband forty days after his death, within which time her dower shall be assigned.

8. No widow shall be distrained to marry herself, so long as she has a mind to live without a husband; but yet she shall give security that she will not marry without our assent, if she hold of us; or without the consent of the lord of whom she holds, if she hold of another.

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9. Neither we nor our bailiffs shall seize any land or rent for any debt so long as the chattels of the debtor are sufficient to pay the debt; nor shall the sureties of the debtor be distrained so long as the principal debtor has sufficient to pay the debt; and if the principal debtor shall fail in the payment of the debt, not having wherewithal to pay it, then the sureties shall answer the debt; and if they will they shall have the lands and rents of the debtor, until they shall be satisfied for the debt which they paid for him, unless the principal debtor can show himself acquitted thereof against the said sureties.

10. If anyone have borrowed anything of the Jews, more or less, and die before the debt be satisfied, there shall be no interest paid for that debt, so long as the heir is under age, of whomsoever he may hold; and if the debt falls into our hands, we will only take the chattel mentioned in the deed.

11. And if anyone shall die indebted to the Jews, his wife shall have her dower and pay nothing of that debt; and if the deceased left children under age, they shall have necessaries provided for them, according to the tenement of the deceased; and out of the residue the debt shall be paid, saving, however, the service due to the lords, and in like manner shall it be done touching debts due to others than the Jews.

12. No scutage or aid shall be imposed in our kingdom, unless by the general council of our kingdom; except for ransoming our person, making our eldest son a knight, and once for marrying our eldest daughter; and for these there shall be paid no more than a reasonable aid. In like manner it shall be concerning the aids of the City of London.

13. And the City of London shall have all its ancient liberties and free customs, as well by land as by water: furthermore, we will and grant that all other cities and boroughs, and towns and ports, shall have all their liberties and free customs.

14. And for holding the general council of the kingdom concerning the assessment of aids, except in the three cases aforesaid, and for the assessing of scutages, we shall cause to be summoned the archbishops, bishops, abbots, earls, and greater barons of the realm, singly by our letters. And furthermore, we shall cause to be summoned generally, by our sheriffs and bailiffs, all others who hold of us in chief, for a certain day, that is to say, forty days before their meeting at least, and to a certain place; and in all letters of such summons we will declare the cause of such summons. And summons being thus made, the business shall proceed on the day appointed, according to the advice of such as shall be present, although all that were summoned come not.

15. We will not for the future grant to anyone that he may take aid of his own free tenants, unless to ransom his body, and to make his eldest son a knight, and once to marry his eldest daughter; and for this there shall be only paid a reasonable aid.

16. No man shall be distrained to perform more service for a knight's fee, or other free tenement, than is due from thence.

17. Common pleas shall not follow our court, but shall be holden in some place certain.

18. Trials upon the Writs of Novel Disseisin, and of Mort d'ancestor, and of Darrein Presentment, shall not be taken but in their proper counties, and after this manner: We, or if we should be out of the realm, our chief justiciary, will send two justiciaries through every county four times a year, who, with four knights of each county, chosen by the county, shall hold the said assizes in the county, on the day, and at the place appointed.

19. And if any matters cannot be determined on the day appointed for holding the assizes in each county, so many of the knights and freeholders as have been at the assizes aforesaid shall stay to decide them as is necessary, according as there is more or less business.

20. A freeman shall not be amerced for a small offence, but only according to the degree of the offence; and for a great crime according to the heinousness of it, saving to him his contenement; and after the same manner a merchant, saving to him his merchandise. And a villein shall be amerced after the same manner, saving to him his wainage, if he falls under our mercy; and none of the aforesaid amerciaments shall be assessed but by the oath of honest men in the neighbourhood.

21. Earls and barons shall not be amerced but by their peers, and after the degree of the offence.

22. No ecclesiastical person shall be amerced for his lay tenement, but according to the proportion of the others aforesaid, and not according to the value of his ecclesiastical benefice.

23. Neither a town nor any tenant shall be distrained to make bridges or embankments, unless that anciently and of right they are bound to do it.

24. No sheriff, constable, coroner, or other our bailiffs, shall hold "Pleas of the Crown."

25. All counties, hundreds, wapentakes, and trethings, shall stand at the old rents, without any increase, except in our demesne manors.

26. If anyone holding of us a lay fee die, and the sheriff, or our bailiffs, show our letters patent of summons for debt which the dead man did owe to us, it shall be lawful for the sheriff or our bailiff to attach and register the chattels of the dead, found upon his lay fee, to the amount of the debt, by the view of lawful men, so as nothing be removed until our whole clear debt be paid; and the rest shall be left to the executors to fulfil the testament of the dead; and if there be nothing due from him to us, all the chattels shall go to the use of the dead, saving to his wife and children their reasonable shares.

27. If any freeman shall die intestate, his chattels shall be distributed by the hands of his nearest relations and friends, by view of the Church, saving to everyone his debts which the deceased owed to him.

28. No constable or bailiff of ours shall take corn or other chattels of any man unless he presently give him money for it, or hath respite of payment by the good-will of the seller.

29. No constable shall distrain any knight to give money for castle-guard, if he himself will do it in his person, or by another able man, in case he cannot do it through any reasonable cause. And if we have carried or sent him into the army, he shall be free from such guard for the time he shall be in the army by our command.

30. No sheriff or bailiff of ours, or any other, shall take horses or carts of any freeman for carriage, without the assent of the said freeman.

31. Neither shall we nor our bailiffs take any man's timber for our castles or other uses, unless by the consent of the owner of the timber.

32. We will retain the lands of those convicted of felony only one year and a day, and then they shall be delivered to the lord of the fee.

33. All kydells (wears) for the time to come shall be put down in the rivers of Thames and Medway, and throughout all England, except upon the seacoast.

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34. The writ which is called prœcipe, for the future, shall not be made out to anyone, of any tenement, whereby a freeman may lose his court.

35. There shall be one measure of wine and one of ale through our whole realm; and one measure of corn, that is to say, the London quarter; and one breadth of dyed cloth, and russets, and haberjeets, that is to say, two ells within the lists; and it shall be of weights as it is of measures.

36. Nothing from henceforth shall be given or taken for a writ of inquisition of life or limb, but it shall be granted freely, and not denied.

37. If any do hold of us by fee-farm, or by socage, or by burgage, and he hold also lands of any other by knight's service, we will not have the custody of the heir or land, which is holden of another man's fee by reason of that fee-farm, socage, or burgage; neither will we have the custody of the fee-farm, or socage, or burgage, unless knight's service was due to us out of the same fee-farm. We will not have the custody of an heir, nor of any land which he holds of another by knight's service, by reason of any petty serjeanty by which he holds of us, by the service of paying a knife, an arrow, or the like.

38. No bailiff from henceforth shall put any man to his law upon his own bare saying, without credible witnesses to prove it.

39. No freeman shall be taken or imprisoned, or disseised, or outlawed, or banished, or any ways destroyed, nor will we pass upon him, nor will we send upon him, unless by the lawful judgment of his peers, or by the law of the land.

40. We will sell to no man, we will not deny to any man, either justice or right.

41. All merchants shall have safe and secure conduct, to go out of, and to come into England, and to stay there and to pass as well by land as by water, for buying and selling by the ancient and allowed customs, without any unjust tolls; except in time of war, or when they are of any nation at war with us. And if there be found any such in our land, in the beginning of the war, they shall be attached, without damage to their bodies or goods, until it be known unto us, or our chief justiciary, how our merchants be treated in the nation at war with us; and if ours be safe there, the others shall be safe in our dominions.

42. It shall be lawful, for the time to come, for anyone to go out of our kingdom, and return safely and securely by land or by water, saving his allegiance to us; unless in time of war, by some short space, for the common benefit of the realm, except prisoners and outlaws, according to the law of the land, and people in war with us, and merchants who shall be treated as is above mentioned.

43. If any man hold of any escheat, as of the honour of Wallingford, Nottingham, Boulogne, Lancaster, or of other escheats which be in our hands, and are baronies, and die, his heir shall give no other relief, and perform no other service to us than he would to the baron, if it were in the baron's hand; and we will hold it after the same manner as the baron held it.

44. Those men who dwell without the forest from henceforth shall not come before our justiciaries of the forest, upon common summons, but such as are impleaded, or are sureties for any that are attached for something concerning the forest.

45. We will not make any justices, constables, sheriffs, or bailiffs, but of such as know the law of the realm and mean duly to observe it.

46. All barons who have founded abbeys, which they hold by charter from the kings of England, or by ancient tenure, shall have the keeping of them, when vacant, as they ought to have.

47. All forests that have been made forests in our time shall forthwith be disforested; and the same shall be done with the water-banks that have been fenced in by us in our time.

48. All evil customs concerning forests, warrens, foresters, and warreners, sheriffs and their officers, water-banks and their keepers, shall forthwith be inquired into in each county, by twelve sworn knights of the same county, chosen by creditable persons of the same county; and within forty days after the said inquest be utterly abolished, so as never to be restored: so as we are first acquainted therewith, or our justiciary, if we should not be in England.

49. We will immediately give up all hostages and charters delivered unto us by our English subjects, as securities for their keeping the peace, and yielding us faithful service.

50. We will entirely remove from their bailiwicks the relations of Gerard de Atheyes, so that for the future they shall have no bailiwick in England; we will also remove Engelard de Cygony, Andrew, Peter, and Gyon, from the Chancery; Gyon de Cygony, Geoffrey de Martyn, and his brothers; Philip Mark, and his brothers, and his nephew, Geoffrey, and their whole retinue.

51. As soon as peace is restored, we will send out of the kingdom all foreign knights, cross-bowmen, and stipendiaries, who are come with horses and arms to the molestation of our people.

52. If anyone has been dispossessed or deprived by us, without the lawful judgment of his peers, of his lands, castles, liberties, or right, we will forthwith restore them to him; and if any dispute arise upon this head, let the matter be decided by the five-and-twenty barons hereafter mentioned, for the preservation of the peace. And for all those things of which any person has, without the lawful judgment of his peers, been dispossessed or deprived, either by our father King Henry, or our brother King Richard, and which we have in our hands, or are possessed by others, and we are bound to warrant and make good, we shall have a respite till the term usually allowed the crusaders; excepting those things about which there is a plea depending, or whereof an inquest hath been made, by our order before we undertook the crusade; but as soon as we return from our expedition, or if perchance we tarry at home and do not make our expedition, we will immediately cause full justice to be administered therein.

53. The same respite we shall have, and in the same manner, about administering justice, disafforesting or letting continue the forests, which Henry our father, and our brother Richard, have afforested; and the same concerning the wardship of the lands which are in another's fee, but the wardship of which we have hitherto had, by reason of a fee held of us by knight's service; and for the abbeys founded in any other fee than our own, in which the lord of the fee says he has a right; and when we return from our expedition, or if we tarry at home, and do not make our expedition, we will immediately do full justice to all the complainants in this behalf.

54. No man shall be taken or imprisoned upon the appeal of a woman, for the death of any other than her husband.

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55. All unjust and illegal fines made by us, and all amerciaments imposed unjustly and contrary to the law of the land, shall be entirely given up, or else be left to the decision of the five-and-twenty barons hereafter mentioned for the preservation of the peace, or of the major part of them, together with the aforesaid Stephen, Archbishop of Canterbury, if he can be present, and others whom he shall think fit to invite; and if he cannot be present, the business shall notwithstanding go on without him; but so that if one or more of the aforesaid five-and-twenty barons be plaintiffs in the same cause, they shall be set aside as to what concerns this particular affair, and others be chosen in their room, out of the said five-and-twenty, and sworn by the rest to decide the matter.

56. If we have disseised or dispossessed the Welsh of any lands, liberties, or other things, without the legal judgment of their peers, either in England or in Wales, they shall be immediately restored to them; and if any dispute arise upon this head, the matter shall be determined in the Marches by the judgment of their peers; for tenements in England according to the law of England, for tenements in Wales according to the law of Wales, for tenements of the Marches according to the law of the Marches: the same shall the Welsh do to us and our subjects.

57. As for all those things of which a Welshman hath, without the lawful judgment of his peers, been disseised or deprived of by King Henry our father, or our brother King Richard, and which we either have in our hands or others are possessed of, and we are obliged to warrant it, we shall have a respite till the time generally allowed the crusaders; excepting those things about which a suit is depending, or whereof an inquest has been made by our order, before we undertook the crusade: but when we return, or if we stay at home without performing our expedition, we will immediately do them full justice, according to the laws of the Welsh and of the parts before mentioned.

58. We will without delay dismiss the son of Llewellin, and all the Welsh hostages, and release them from the engagements they have entered into with us for the preservation of the peace.

59. We will treat with Alexander, King of Scots, concerning the restoring his sisters and hostages, and his right and liberties, in the same form and manner as we shall do to the rest of our barons of England; unless by the charters which we have from his father, William, late King of Scots, it ought to be otherwise; and this shall be left to the determination of his peers in our court.

60. All the aforesaid customs and liberties, which we have granted to be holden in our kingdom, as much as it belongs to us, all people of our kingdom, as well clergy as laity, shall observe, as far as they are concerned, towards their dependents.

61. And whereas, for the honour of God and the amendment of our kingdom, and for the better quieting the discord that has arisen between us and our barons, we have granted all these things aforesaid; willing to render them firm and lasting, we do give and grant our subjects the underwritten security, namely that the barons may choose five-and-twenty barons of the kingdom, whom they think convenient; who shall take care, with all their might, to hold and observe, and cause to be observed, the peace and liberties we have granted them, and by this our present Charter confirmed in this manner; that is to say, that if we, our justiciary, our bailiffs, or any of our officers, shall in any circumstance have failed in the performance of them towards any person, or shall have broken through any of these articles of peace and security, and the offence be notified to four barons chosen out of the five-and-twenty before mentioned, the said four barons shall repair to us, or our justiciary, if we are out of the realm, and, laying open the grievance, shall petition to have it redressed without delay: and if it be not redressed by us, or if we should chance to be out of the realm, if it should not be redressed by our justiciary within forty days, reckoning from the time it has been notified to us, or to our justiciary (if we should be out of the realm), the four barons aforesaid shall lay the cause before the rest of the five-and-twenty barons; and the said five-and-twenty barons, together with the community of the whole kingdom, shall distrain and distress us in all the ways in which they shall be able, by seizing our castles, lands, possessions, and in any other manner they can, till the grievance is redressed, according to their pleasure; saving harmless our own person, and the persons of our Queen and children; and when it is redressed, they shall behave to us as before. And any person whatsoever in the kingdom may swear that he will obey the orders of the five-and-twenty barons aforesaid in the execution of the premises, and will distress us, jointly with them, to the utmost of his power; and we give public and free liberty to anyone that shall please to swear to this, and never will hinder any person from taking the same oath.

62. As for all those of our subjects who will not, of their own accord, swear to join the five-and-twenty barons in distraining and distressing us, we will issue orders to make them take the same oath as aforesaid. And if anyone of the five-and-twenty barons dies, or goes out of the kingdom, or is hindered any other way from carrying the things aforesaid into execution, the rest of the said five-and-twenty barons may choose another in his room, at their discretion, who shall be sworn in like manner as the rest. In all things that are committed to the execution of these five-and-twenty barons, if, when they are all assembled together, they should happen to disagree about any matter, and some of them, when summoned, will not or cannot come, whatever is agreed upon, or enjoined, by the major part of those that are present shall be reputed as firm and valid as if all the five-and-twenty had given their consent; and the aforesaid five-and-twenty shall swear that all the premises they shall faithfully observe, and cause with all their power to be observed. And we will procure nothing from anyone, by ourselves nor by another, whereby any of these concessions and liberties may be revoked or lessened; and if any such thing shall have been obtained, let it be null and void; neither will we ever make use of it either by ourselves or any other. And all the ill-will, indignations, and rancours that have arisen between us and our subjects, of the clergy and laity, from the first breaking out of the dissensions between us, we do fully remit and forgive: moreover, all trespasses occasioned by the said dissensions, from Easter in the sixteenth year of our reign till the restoration of peace and tranquillity, we hereby entirely remit to all, both clergy and laity, and as far as in us lies do fully forgive. We have, moreover, caused to be made for them the letters patent testimonial of Stephen, Lord Archbishop of Canterbury, Henry, Lord Archbishop of Dublin, and the bishops aforesaid, as also of Master Pandulph, for the security and concessions aforesaid.

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63. Wherefore we will and firmly enjoin, that the Church of England be free, and that all men in our kingdom have and hold all the aforesaid liberties, rights, and concessions, truly and peaceably, freely and quietly, fully and wholly to themselves and their heirs, of us and our heirs, in all things and places, for ever, as is aforesaid. It is also sworn, as well on our part as on the part of the barons, that all the things aforesaid shall be observed in good faith, and without evil subtilty. Given under our hand, in the presence of the witnesses above named, and many others, in the meadow called Runingmede, between Windsor and Staines, the 15th day of June, in the 17th year of our reign."

W. Stubbs, Select Charters, part 5.

Old South Leaflets, General Series, number 5.

Also IN: E. F. Henderson, Select Historical Documents of the Middle Ages, book 1, number 7.

C. H. Pearson, History of England during the Early and Middle Ages, volume 2, chapter 3.

ENGLAND: A. D. 1216-1274. Character and reign of Henry III. The Barons' War. Simon de Montfort and the evolution of the English Parliament.

King John died October 17, 1216. "His legitimate successor was a child of nine years of age. For the first time since the Conquest the personal government was in the hands of a minor. In that stormy time the great Earl of Pembroke undertook the government, as Protector. … At the Council of Bristol, with general approbation and even with that of the papal legate, Magna Charta was confirmed, though with the omission of certain articles. … After some degree of tranquillity had been restored, a second confirmation of the Great Charter took place in the autumn of 1217, with the omission of the clauses referring to the estates, but with the grant of a new charta de foresta, introducing a vigorous administration of the forest laws. In 9 Henry III. Magna Charta was again confirmed, and this is the form in which it afterwards took its place among the statutes of the realm. Two years later, Henry III. personally assumes the reins of government at the Parliament of Oxford (1227), and begins his rule without confirming the two charters. At first the tutorial government still continues, which had meanwhile, even after the death of the great Earl of Pembroke (1219), remained in a fairly orderly condition. The first epoch of sixteen years of this reign must therefore be regarded purely as a government by the nobility under the name of Henry III. The regency had succeeded in removing the dominant influence of the Roman Curia by the recall of the papal legate, Pandulf, to Rome (1221), and in getting rid of the dangerous foreign mercenary soldiery (1224). … With the disgraceful dismissal of the chief justiciary, Hubert de Burgh, there begins a second epoch of a personal rule of Henry III. (1232-1252), which for twenty continuous years, presents the picture of a confused and undecided struggle between the king and his foreign favourites and personal adherents on the one side, and the great barons, and with them soon the prelates, on the other. … In 21 Henry III. the King finds himself, in consequence of pressing money embarrassments, again compelled to make a solemn confirmation of the charter, in which once more the clauses relating to the estates are omitted. Shortly afterwards, as had happened just one hundred years previously in France, the name 'parliamentum' occurs for the first time (Chron. Dunst., 1244; Matth. Paris, 1246), and curiously enough, Henry III. himself, in a writ addressed to the Sheriff of Northampton, designates with this term the assembly which originated the Magna Charta. … The name 'parliament,' now occurs more frequently, but does not supplant the more definite terms concilium, colloquium, etc. In the meanwhile the relations with the Continent became complicated, in consequence of the family connections of the mother and wife of the King, and the greed of the papal envoys. … From the year 1244 onwards, neither a chief justice nor a chancellor, nor even a treasurer, is appointed, but the administration of the country is conducted at the Court by the clerks of the offices."

R. Gneist, History of the English Constitution, volume 1, pages 313-321.

"Nothing is so hard to realise as chaos; and nothing nearer to chaos can be conceived than the government of Henry III. Henry was, like all the Plantagenets, clever; like very few of them, he was devout; and if the power of conceiving a great policy would constitute a great King, he would certainly have been one. … He aimed at making the Crown virtually independent of the barons. … His connexion with Louis IX., whose brother-in-law he became, was certainly a misfortune to him. In France the royal power had during the last fifty years been steadily on the advance; in England it had as steadily receded; and Henry was ever hearing from the other side of the Channel maxims of government and ideas of royal authority which were utterly inapplicable to the actual state of his own kingdom. This, like a premature Stuart, Henry was incapable of perceiving; a King he was, and a King he would be, in his own sense of the word. It is evident that with such a task before him, he needed for the most shadowy chance of success, an iron strength of will, singular self-control, great forethought and care in collecting and husbanding his resources, a rare talent for administration, the sagacity to choose and the self-reliance to trust his counsellors. And not one of these various qualities did Henry possess. … Henry had imbibed from the events and the tutors of his early childhood two maxims of state, and two alone: to trust Rome, and to distrust the barons of England. … He filled the places of trust and power about himself with aliens, to whom the maintenance of Papal influence was like an instinct of self-preservation. Thus were definitely formed the two great parties out of whose antagonism the War of the Barons arose, under whose influence the relations between the crown and people of England were remodelled, and out of whose enduring conflict rose, indirectly, the political principles which contributed so largely to bring about the Reformation of the English Church. The few years which followed the fall of Hubert de Burgh were the heyday of Papal triumph. And no triumph could have been worse used. … Thus was the whole country lying a prey to the ecclesiastical aliens maintained by the Pope, and to the lay aliens maintained by the King, … when Simon de Montfort became … inseparably intermixed with the course of our history. … In the year 1258 opened the first act of the great drama which has made the name of Simon de Montfort immortal. … The Barons of England, at Leicester's suggestion, had leagued for the defence of their rights. They appeared armed at the Great Council. … {808} They required as the condition of their assistance that the general reformation of the realm should be entrusted to a Commission of twenty-four members, half to be chosen by the crown, and half by themselves. For the election of this body, primarily, and for a more explicit statement of grievances, the Great Council was to meet again at Oxford on the 11th of June, 1258. When the Barons came, they appeared at the head of their retainers. The invasion of the Welsh was the plea; but the real danger was nearer home. They seized on the Cinque Ports; the unrenewed truce with France was the excuse; they remembered too vividly King John and his foreign mercenaries. They then presented their petition. This was directed to the redress of various abuses. … To each and every clause the King gave his inevitable assent. One more remarkable encroachment was made upon the royal prerogative; the election in Parliament of a chief justiciar. … The chief justiciar was the first officer of the Crown. He was not a mere chief justice, after the fashion of the present day, but the representative of the Crown in its high character of the fountain of justice. … But the point upon which the barons laid the greatest stress, from the beginning to the end of their struggle, was the question of the employment of aliens. That the strongest castles and the fairest lands of England should be in the hands of foreigners, was an insult to the national spirit which no free people could fail to resent. … England for the English, the great war cry of the barons, went home to the heart of the humblest. … The great question of the constitution of Parliament was not heard at Oxford; it emerged into importance when the struggle grew fiercer, and the barons found it necessary to gather allies round them. … One other measure completed the programme of the barons; namely, the appointment, already referred to, of a committee of twenty-four. … It amounted to placing the crown under the control of a temporary Council of Regency [see OXFORD, PROVISIONS OF]. … Part of the barons' work was simple enough. The justiciar was named, and the committee of twenty-four. To expel the foreigners was less easy. Simon de Montfort, himself an alien by birth, resigned the two castles which he held, and called upon the rest to follow. They simply refused. … But the barons were in arms, and prepared to use them. The aliens, with their few English supporters, fled to Winchester, where the castle was in the hands of the foreign bishop Aymer. They were besieged, brought to terms, and exiled. The barons were now masters of the situation. … Among the prerogatives of the crown which passed to the Oxford Commission not the least valuable, for the hold which it gave on the general government of the country, was the right to nominate the sheriffs. In 1261 the King, who had procured a Papal bull to abrogate the Provisions of Oxford, and an army of mercenaries to give the bull effect, proceeded to expel the sheriffs who had been placed in office by the barons. The reply of the barons was most memorable; it was a direct appeal to the order below their own. They summoned three knights elected from each county in England to meet them at St. Albans to discuss the state of the realm. It was clear that the day of the House of Commons could not be far distant, when at such a crisis an appeal to the knights of the shire could be made, and evidently made with success. For a moment, in this great move, the whole strength of the barons was united; but differences soon returned, and against divided counsels the crown steadily prevailed. In June, 1262, we find peace restored. The more moderate of the barons had acquiesced in the terms offered by Henry; Montfort, who refused them, was abroad in voluntary exile. … Suddenly, in July, the Earl of Gloucester died, and the sole leadership of the barons passed into the hands of Montfort. With this critical event opens the last act in the career of the great Earl. In October he returns privately to England. The whole winter is passed in the patient reorganising of the party, and the preparation for a decisive struggle. Montfort, fervent, eloquent, and devoted, swayed with despotic influence the hearts of the younger nobles (and few in those days lived to be grey), and taught them to feel that the Provisions of Oxford were to them what the Great Charter had been to their fathers. They were drawn together with an unanimity unknown before. … They demanded the restoration of the Great Provisions. The King refused, and in May, 1263, the barons appealed to arms. … Henry, with a reluctant hand, subscribed once more to the Provisions of Oxford, with a saving clause, however, that they should be revised in the coming Parliament. On the 9th of September, accordingly, Parliament was assembled. … The King and the barons agreed to submit their differences to the arbitration of Louis of France. … Louis IX. had done more than any one king of France to enlarge the royal prerogative; and Louis was the brother-in-law of Henry. His award, given at Amiens on the 23d of January, 1264. was, as we should have expected, absolutely in favour of the King. The whole Provisions of Oxford were, in his view, an invasion of the royal power. … The barons were astounded. … They at once said that the question of the employment of aliens was never meant to be included. … The appeal was made once again to the sword. Success for a moment inclined to the royal side, but it was only for a moment; and on the memorable field of Lewes the genius of Leicester prevailed. … With the two kings of England and of the Romans prisoners in his hands, Montfort dictated the terms of the so-called Mise of Lewes. … Subject to the approval of Parliament, all differences were to be submitted once more to French arbitration. … On the 23d of June the Parliament met. It was no longer a Great Council, after the fashion of previous assemblies; it included four knights, elected by each English county. This Parliament gave such sanction as it was able to the exceptional authority of Montfort, and ordered that until the proposed arbitration could be carried out, the King's council should consist of nine persons, to be named by the Bishop of Chichester, and the Earls of Gloucester and Leicester. The effect was to give Simon for the time despotic power. … It was at length agreed that all questions whatever, the employment of aliens alone excepted, should be referred to the Bishop of London, the justiciar Hugh le Despenser, Charles of Anjou, and the Abbot of Bec. If on any point they could not agree, the Archbishop of Rouen was to act as referee. … It was … not simply the expedient of a revolutionary chief in difficulties, but the expression of a settled and matured policy, when, in December 1264, [Montfort] issued in the King's name the ever-memorable writs which summoned the first complete Parliament which ever met in England. {809} The earls, barons, and bishops received their summons as of course; and with them the deans of cathedral churches, an unprecedented number of abbots and priors, two knights from every shire, and two citizens or burgesses from every city or borough in England. Of their proceedings we know but little; but they appear to have appointed Simon de Montfort to the office of Justiciar of England, and to have thus made him in rank, what he had before been in power, the first subject in the realm. … Montfort … had now gone so far, he had exercised such extraordinary powers, he had done so many things which could never really be pardoned, that perhaps his only chance of safety lay in the possession of some such office as this. It is certain, moreover, that something which passed in this Parliament, or almost exactly at the time of its meeting, did cause deep offence to a considerable section of the barons. … Difficulties were visibly gathering thicker around him, and he was evidently conscious that disaffection was spreading fast. … Negotiations went forward, not very smoothly, for the release of Prince Edward. They were terminated in May by his escape. It was the signal for a royalist rising. Edward took the command of the Welsh border; before the middle of June he had made the border his own. On the 29th Gloucester opened its gates to him. He had many secret friends. He pushed fearlessly eastward, and surprised the garrison of Kenilworth, commanded by Simon, the Earl's second son. The Earl himself lay at Evesham, awaiting the troops which his son was to bring up from Kenilworth. … On the fatal field of Evesham, fighting side by side to the last, fell the Earl himself, his eldest son Henry, Despenser the late Justiciar, Lord Basset of Drayton, one of his firmest friends, and a host of minor name. With them, to all appearance, fell the cause for which they had fought."

Simon de Montfort (Quarterly Review, January, 1866).

See PARLIAMENT, THE ENGLISH: EARLY STAGES OF ITS EVOLUTION.

"Important as this assembly [the Parliament of 1264] is in the history of the constitution, it was not primarily and essentially a constitutional assembly. It was not a general convention of the tenants in chief or of the three estates, but a parliamentary assembly of the supporters of the existing government."

W. Stubbs, Constitutional History of England, chapter 14, section 177 (volume 2).

ALSO IN: W. Stubbs, The Early Plantagenets.

G. W. Prothero, Life of Simon de Montfort, chapter 11-12.

H. Blaauw, The Barons' War.

C. H. Pearson, England, Early and Middle Ages, volume 2.

ENGLAND: A. D. 1271. Crusade of Prince Edward:

See CRUSADES: A. D. 1270-1271.

ENGLAND: A. D. 1272. Accession of King Edward I.

ENGLAND: A. D. 1275-1295. Development of Parliamentary representation under Edward 1.

"Happily, Earl Simon [de Montfort] found a successor, and more than a successor, in the king's [Henry III.'s] son. … Edward I. stood on the vantage ground of the throne. … He could do that easily and without effort which Simon could only do laboriously, and with the certainty of rousing opposition. Especially was this the case with the encouragement given by the two men to the growing aspirations after parliamentary representation. Earl Simon's assemblies were instruments of warfare. Edward's assemblies were invitations to peace. … Barons and prelates, knights and townsmen, came together only to support a king who took the initiative so wisely, and who, knowing what was best for all, sought the good of his kingdom without thought of his own ease. Yet even so, Edward was too prudent at once to gather together such a body as that which Earl Simon had planned. He summoned, indeed, all the constituent parts of Simon's parliament, but he seldom summoned them to meet in one place or at one time. Sometimes the barons and prelates met apart from the townsmen or the knights, sometimes one or the other class met entirely alone. … In this way, during the first twenty years of Edward's reign, the nation rapidly grew in that consciousness of national unity which would one day transfer the function of regulation from the crown to the representatives of the people."

S. R. Gardiner and J. B. Mullinger, Introduction to the Study of English History, chapter 4, section 17.

"In 1264 Simon de Montfort had called up from both shires and boroughs representatives to aid him in the new work of government. That part of Earl Simon's work had not been lasting. The task was left for Edward I. to be advanced by gradual safe steps, but to be thoroughly completed, as a part of a definite and orderly arrangement, according to which the English parliament was to be the perfect representation of the Three Estates of the Realm, assembled for purposes of taxation, legislation and united political action. … Edward's first parliament, in 1275, enabled him to pass a great statute of legal reform, called the Statute of Westminster the First, and to exact the new custom on wool; another assembly, the same year, granted him a fifteenth. … There is no evidence that the commons of either town or county were represented. … In 1282, when the expenses of the Welsh war were becoming heavy, Edward again tried the plan of obtaining money from the towns and counties by separate negotiation; but as that did not provide him with funds sufficient for his purpose, he called together, early in 1283, two great assemblies, one at York and another at Northampton, in which four knights from each shire and four members from each city and borough were ordered to attend; the cathedral and conventual clergy also of the two provinces were represented at the same places by their elected proctors. At these assemblies there was no attendance of the barons; they were with the king in Wales; but the commons made a grant of one-thirtieth on the understanding that the lords should do the same. Another assembly was held at Shrewsbury the same year, 1283, to witness the trial of David of Wales; to this the bishops and clergy were not called, but twenty towns and all the counties were ordered to send representatives. Another step was taken in 1290: knights of the shire were again summoned; but still much remained to be done before a perfect parliament was constituted. Counsel was wanted for legislation, consent was wanted for taxation. The lords were summoned in May, and did their work in June and July, granting a feudal aid and passing the statute 'Quia Emptores,' but the knights only came to vote or to promise a tax, after a law had been passed; and the towns were again taxed by special commissions. In 1294, … under the alarm of war with France, an alarm which led Edward into several breaches of constitutional law, he went still further, assembling the clergy by their representatives in August, and the shires by their representative knights in October. {810} The next year, 1295, witnessed the first summons of a perfect and model parliament; the clergy represented by their bishops, deans, archdeacons, and elected proctors; the barons summoned severally in person by the king's special writ, and the commons summoned by writs addressed to the sheriffs, directing them to send up two elected knights from each shire, two elected citizens from each city, and two elected burghers from each borough. The writ by which the prelates were called to this parliament contained a famous sentence taken from the Roman law, 'That which touches all should be approved by all,' a maxim which might serve as a motto for Edward's constitutional scheme, however slowly it grew upon him, now permanently and consistently completed."

W. Stubbs, The Early Plantagenets, chapter 10.

"Comparing the history of the following ages with that of the past, we can scarcely doubt that Edward had a definite idea of government before his eyes, or that that idea was successful because it approved itself to the genius and grew out of the habits of the people. Edward saw, in fact, what the nation was capable of, and adapted his constitutional reforms to that capacity. But although we may not refuse him the credit of design, it may still be questioned whether the design was altogether voluntary, whether it was not forced upon him by circumstances and developed by a series of careful experiments. … The design, as interpreted by the result, was the creation of a national parliament, composed of the three estates. … This design was perfected in 1295. It was not the result of compulsion, but the consummation of a growing policy. … But the close union of 1295 was followed by the compulsion of 1297: out of the organic completeness of the constitution sprang the power of resistance, and out of the resistance the victory of the principles, which Edward might guide, but which he failed to coerce."

W. Stubbs, Constitutional History of England, chapter 15, section 244 and chapter 14, section 180-182.

W. Stubbs, Select Charters, part 7.

"The 13th century was above all things the age of the lawyer and the legislator. The revived study of Roman law had been one of the greatest results of the intellectual renaissance of the twelfth century. The enormous growth of the universities in the early part of the thirteenth century was in no small measure due to the zeal, ardour and success of their legal faculties. From Bologna there flowed all over Europe a great impulse towards the systematic and scientific study of the Civil Law of Rome. … The northern lawyers were inspired by their emulation of the civilians and canonists to look at the rude chaos of feudal custom with more critical eyes. They sought to give it more system and method, to elicit its leading principles, and to coordinate its clashing rules into a harmonious body of doctrine worthy to be put side by side with the more pretentious edifices of the Civil and Canon Law. In this spirit Henry de Bracton wrote the first systematic exposition of English law in the reign of Henry III. The judges and lawyers of the reign of Edward sought to put the principles of Bracton into practice. Edward himself strove with no small success to carry on the same great work by new legislation. … His well-known title of the 'English Justinian' is not so absurd as it appears at first sight. He did not merely resemble Justinian in being a great legislator. Like the famous codifier of the Roman law, Edward stood at the end of a long period of legal development, and sought to arrange and systematise what had gone before him. Some of his great laws are almost in form attempts at the systematic codification of various branches of feudal custom. … Edward was greedy for power, and a constant object of his legislation was the exaltation of the royal prerogative. But he nearly always took a broad and comprehensive view of his authority, and thoroughly grasped the truth that the best interests of king and kingdom were identical. He wished to rule the state, but was willing to take his subjects into partnership with him, if they in return recognised his royal rights. … The same principles which influenced Edward as a lawgiver stand out clearly in his relations to every class of his subjects. … It was the greatest work of Edward's life to make a permanent and ordinary part of the machinery of English government, what in his father's time had been but the temporary expedient of a needy taxgatherer or the last despairing effort of a revolutionary partisan. Edward I. is—so much as one man can be—the creator of the historical English constitution. It is true that the materials were ready to his hand. But before he came to the throne the parts of the constitution, though already roughly worked out, were ill-defined and ill-understood. Before his death the national council was no longer regarded as complete unless it contained a systematic representation of the three estates. All over Europe the thirteenth century saw the establishment of a system of estates. The various classes of the community, which had a separate social status and a common political interest, became organised communities, and sent their representatives to swell the council of the nation. By Edward's time there had already grown up in England some rough anticipation of the three estates of later history. … It was with no intention of diminishing his power, but rather with the object of enlarging it, that Edward called the nation into some sort of partnership with him. The special clue to this aspect of his policy is his constant financial embarrassment. He found that he could get larger and more cheerful subsidies if he laid his financial condition before the representatives of his people. … The really important thing was that Edward, like Montfort, brought shire and borough representatives together in a single estate, and so taught the country gentry, the lesser landowners, who, in a time when direct participation in politics was impossible for a lower class, were the real constituencies of the shire members, to look upon their interests as more in common with the traders of lower social status than with the greater landlords with whom in most continental countries the lesser gentry were forced to associate their lot. The result strengthened the union of classes, prevented the growth of the abnormally numerous privileged nobility of most foreign countries, and broadened and deepened the main current of the national life."

T. F. Tout, Edward the First, chapter 7-8.

{811}

"There was nothing in England which answered to the 'third estate' in France—a class, that is to say, both isolated and close, composed exclusively of townspeople, enjoying no commerce with the rural population (except such as consisted in the reception of fugitives), and at once detesting and dreading the nobility by whom it was surrounded. In England the contrary was the case. The townsfolk and the other classes in each county were thrown together upon numberless occasions; a long period of common activity created a cordial understanding between the burghers on the one hand and their neighbours the knights and landowners on the other, and finally prepared the way for the fusion of the two classes."

E. Boutmy, The English Constitution, chapter 3.

ENGLAND: A. D. 1279. The Statute of Mortmain.

"For many years past, the great danger to the balance of power appeared to come from the regular clergy, who, favoured by the success of the mendicant orders, were adding house to house and field to field. Never dying out like families, and rarely losing by forfeitures, the monasteries might well nigh calculate the time, when all the soil of England should be their own. … Accordingly, one of the first acts of the barons under Henry III. had been to enact, that no fees should be aliened to religious persons or corporations. Edward re-enacted and strengthened this by various provisions in the famous Statute of Mortmain. The fee illegally aliened was now to be forfeited to the chief lord under the King; and if, by collusion or neglect, the lord omitted to claim his right, the crown might enter upon it. Never was statute more unpopular with the class at whom it was aimed, more ceaselessly eluded, or more effectual. … Once the clergy seem to have meditated open resistance, for, in 1281, we find the king warning the bishops, who were then in convocation at Lambeth, as they loved their baronies, to discuss nothing that appertained to the crown, or the king's person, or his council. The warning appears to have proved effectual, and the clergy found less dangerous employment in elaborating subtle evasions of the obnoxious law. At first fictitious recoveries were practised; an abbey bringing a suit against a would-be donor, who permitted judgment against him to go by default. When this was prohibited, special charters of exemption were procured. Once an attempt was made to smuggle a dispensing bill through parliament. One politic abbot in the 15th century encouraged his friends to make bequests of land, suffered them to escheat, and then begged them back of the crown, playing on the religious feelings of Henry VI. Yet it is strong proof of the salutary terror which the Statute of Mortmain inspired that even then the abbot was not quieted, and procured an Act of Parliament to purge him from any consequences of his illegal practices. In fact, the fear, lest astute crown lawyers should involve a rich foundation in wholesale forfeitures, seems sometimes to have hampered its members in the exercise of their undoubted rights as citizens."

C. H. Pearson, History of England during the Early and Middle Ages, volume 2, chapter 9.

ALSO IN: E. F. Henderson, Select Historical Documents.

K. E. Digby, Law of Real Property (4th edition).

ENGLAND: A. D. 1282-1284. Subjugation of Wales.

See WALES: A. D. 1282-1284.

ENGLAND: A. D. 1290-1305. Conquest of Scotland by Edward I.

See SCOTLAND: A. D. 1290-1305.

ENGLAND: 14th Century. Immigration of Flemish artisans. The founding of English manufactures.

See FLANDERS: A. D. 1335-1337.

ENGLAND: A. D. 1306-1393. Resistance to the Pope.

"For one hundred and fifty years succeeding the Conquest, the right of nominating the archbishops, bishops, and mitred abbots had been claimed and exercised by the king. This right had been specially confirmed by the Constitutions of Clarendon, which also provided that the revenues of vacant sees should belong to the Crown. But John admitted all the Papal claims, surrendering even his kingdom to the Pope, and receiving it back as a fief of the Holy See. By the Great Charter the Church recovered its liberties; the right of free election being specially conceded to the cathedral chapters and the religious houses. Every election was, however, subject to the approval of the Pope, who also claimed a right of veto on institutions to the smaller church benefices. … Under Henry III. the power thus vested in the Pope and foreign superiors of the monastic orders was greatly abused, and soon degenerated into a mere channel for draining money into the Roman exchequer. Edward I. firmly withstood the exactions of the Pope, and reasserted the independence of both Church and Crown. … In the reign of the great Edward began a series of statutes passed to check the aggressions of the Pope and restore the independence of the national church. The first of the series was passed in 1306-7. … This statute was confirmed under Edward III. in the 4th, and again in the 5th year of his reign; and in the 25th of his reign [A. D. 1351], roused 'by the grievous complaints of all the commons of his realm,' the King and Parliament passed the famous Statute of Provisors, aimed directly at the Pope, and emphatically forbidding his nominations to English benefices. … Three years afterwards it was found necessary to pass a statute forbidding citations to the court of Rome—[the prelude to the Statute of Præmunire, described below]. … In 1389, there was an expectation that the Pope was about to attempt to enforce his claims, by excommunicating those who rejected them. … The Parliament at once passed a highly penal statute. … Matters were shortly afterwards brought to a crisis by Boniface IX., who after declaring the statutes enacted by the English Parliament null and void, granted to an Italian cardinal a prebendal stall at Wells, to which the king had already presented. Cross suits were at once instituted by the two claimants in the Papal and English courts. A decision was given by the latter, in favour of the king's nominee, and the bishops, having agreed to support the Crown, were forthwith excommunicated by the Pope. The Commons were now roused to the highest pitch of indignation,"—and the final great Statute of Præmunire was passed, A. D. 1393. "The firm and resolute attitude assumed by the country caused Boniface to yield; 'and for the moment,' observes Mr. Froude, 'and indeed for ever under this especial form, the wave of papal encroachment was rolled back.'"

T. P. Taswell-Langmead, English Constitutional History, chapter 11.

"The great Statute of Provisors, passed in 1351, was a very solemn expression of the National determination not to give way to the pope's usurpation of patronage. … All persons procuring or accepting papal promotions were to be arrested. … In 1352 the purchasers of Provisions were declared outlaws; in 1365 another act repeated the prohibitions and penalties; and in 1390 the parliament of Richard II. rehearsed and confirmed the statute. By this act, forfeiture and banishment were decreed against future transgressors." {812} The Statute of Præmunire as enacted finally in 1393, provided that "all persons procuring in the court of Rome or elsewhere such translations, processes, sentences of excommunication, bulls, instruments or other things which touch the king, his crown, regality or realm, should suffer the penalties of præmunire"—which included imprisonment and forfeiture of goods. "The name præmunire which marks this form of legislation is taken from the opening word of the writ by which the sheriff is charged to summon the delinquent."

W. Stubbs, Constitutional History of England, chapter 19, section 715-716.

ENGLAND: A. D. 1307. Accession of King Edward II.

ENGLAND: A. D. 1310-1311. The Ordainers.

"At the parliament which met in March 1310 [reign of Edward II.] a new scheme of reform was promulgated, which was framed on the model of that of 1258 and the Provisions of Oxford. It was determined that the task of regulating the affairs of the realm and of the king's household should be committed to an elected body of twenty-one members, or Ordainers, the chief of whom was Archbishop Winchelsey. … The Ordainers were empowered to remain in office until Michaelmas 1311, and to make ordinances for the good of the realm, agreeable to the tenour of the king's coronation oath. The whole administration of the kingdom thus passed into their hands. … The Ordainers immediately on their appointment issued six articles directing the observance of the charters, the careful collection of the customs, and the arrest of the foreign merchants; but the great body of the ordinances was reserved for the parliament which met in August 1311. The famous document or statute known as the Ordinances of 1311 contained forty-one clauses, all aimed at existing abuses."

W. Stubbs, The Early Plantagenets, chapter 12.

ENGLAND: A. D. 1314-1328. Bannockburn and the recovery of Scottish independence.

See SCOTLAND: A. D. 1314; 1314-1328.

ENGLAND: A. D. 1327. Accession of King Edward III.

ENGLAND: A. D. 1328. The Peace of Northampton with Scotland.

See SCOTLAND: A. D. 1328.

ENGLAND: A. D. 1328-1360. The pretensions and wars of Edward III. in France.

See FRANCE: A. D. 1328-1339; and 1337-1360.

ENGLAND: A. D. 1332-1370. The wars of Edward III. with Scotland.

See SCOTLAND: A. D. 1332-1333, and 1333-1370.

ENGLAND: A. D. 1333-1380. The effects of the war in France.

"A period of great wars is generally favourable to the growth of a nobility. Men who equipped large bodies of troops for the Scotch or French wars, or who had served with distinction in them, naturally had a claim for reward at the hands of their sovereign. … The 13th century had broken up estates all over England and multiplied families of the upper class; the 14th century was consolidating properties again, and establishing a broad division between a few powerful nobles and the mass of the community. But if the gentry, as an order, lost a little in relative importance by the formation of a class of great nobles, more distinct than had existed before, the middle classes of England, its merchants and yeomen, gained very much in importance by the war. Under the firm rule of the 'King of the Sea,' as his subjects lovingly called Edward III., our commerce expanded. Englishmen rose to an equality with the merchants of the Hanse Towns, the Genoese, or the Lombards, and England for a time overflowed with treasure. The first period of war, ending with the capture of Calais, secured our coasts; the second, terminated by the peace of Brétigny, brought the plunder of half [of] France into the English markets; and even when Edward's reign had closed on defeat and bankruptcy, and our own shores were ravaged by hostile fleets, it was still possible for private adventurers to retaliate invasion upon the enemy. … The romance of foreign conquest, of fortunes lightly gained and lightly lost, influenced English enterprise for many years to come. … The change to the lower orders during the reign arose rather from the frequent pestilences, which reduced the number of working men and made labour valuable, than from any immediate participation in the war. In fact, English serfs, as a rule, did not serve in Edward's armies. They could not be men-at-arms or archers for want of training and equipment; and for the work of light-armed troops and foragers, the Irish and Welsh seem to have been preferred. The opportunity of the serfs came with the Black Death, while districts were depopulated, and everywhere there was a want of hands to till the fields and get in the crops. The immediate effect was unfortunate. … The indifference of late years, when men were careless if their villans stayed on the property or emigrated, was succeeded by a sharp inquisition after fugitive serfs, and constant legislation to bring them back to their masters. … The leading idea of the legislator was that the labourer, whose work had doubled or trebled in value, was to receive the same wages as in years past; and it was enacted that he might be paid in kind, and, at last, that in all cases of contumacy he should be imprisoned without the option of a fine. … The French war contributed in many ways to heighten the feeling of English nationality. Our trade, our language and our Church received a new and powerful influence. In the early years of Edward III.'s reign, Italian merchants were the great financiers of England, farming the taxes and advancing loans to the Crown. Gradually the instinct of race, the influence of the Pope, and geographical position, contributed, with the mistakes of Edward's policy, to make France the head, as it were, of a confederation of Latin nations. Genoese ships served in the French fleet, Genoese bowmen fought at Crécy, and English privateers retorted on Genoese commerce throughout the course of the reign. In 1376 the Commons petitioned that all Lombards might be expelled [from] the kingdom, bringing amongst other charges against them that they were French spies. The Florentines do not seem to have been equally odious, but the failure of the great firm of the Bardi in 1345, chiefly through its English engagements, obliged Edward to seek assistance elsewhere; and he transferred the privilege of lending to the crown to the merchants of the rising Hanse Towns."

C. H. Pearson, English History in the Fourteenth Century, chapter 9.

"We may trace the destructive nature of the war with France in the notices of adjoining parishes thrown into one for want of sufficient inhabitants, 'of people impoverished by frequent taxation of our lord the king,' until they had fled, of churches allowed to fall into ruin because there were none to worship within their walls, and of religious houses extinguished because the monks and nuns had died, and none bad been found to supply their places. … {813} To the poverty of the country and the consequent inability of the nation to maintain the costly wars of Edward III., are attributed the enactments of sumptuary laws, which were passed because men who spent much on their table and dress were unable 'to help their liege lord' in the battle field."

W. Denton, England in the 15th Century, introduction, part 2.

ENGLAND: A. D. 1318-1349. The Black Death and its effects.

"The plague of 1349 … produced in every country some marked social changes. … In England the effects of the plague are historically prominent chiefly among the lower classes of society. The population was diminished to an extent to which it is impossible now even to approximate, but which bewildered and appalled the writers of the time; whole districts were thrown out of cultivation, whole parishes depopulated, the number of labourers was so much diminished that on the one hand the survivors demanded an extravagant rate of wages, and even combined to enforce it, whilst on the other hand the landowners had to resort to every antiquated claim of service to get their estates cultivated at all; the whole system of farming was changed in consequence, the great landlords and the monastic corporations ceased to manage their estates by farming stewards, and after a short interval, during which the lands with the stock on them were let to the cultivator on short leases, the modern system of letting was introduced, and the permanent distinction between the farmer and the labourer established."

W. Stubbs, Constitutional History of England, chapter 16, section 259.

"On the first of August 1348 the disease appeared in the seaport towns of Dorsetshire, and travelled slowly westwards and northwards, through Devonshire and Somersetshire to Bristol. In order, if possible, to arrest its progress, all intercourse with the citizens of Bristol was prohibited by the authorities of the county of Gloucester. These precautions were however taken in vain; the Plague continued to Oxford, and, travelling slowly in the same measured way, reached London by the first of November. It appeared in Norwich on the first of January, and thence spread northwards. … The mortality was enormous. Perhaps from one-third to one-half the population fell victims to the disease. Adam of Monmouth says that only a tenth of the population survived. Similar amplifications are found in all the chroniclers. We are told that 60,000 persons perished in Norwich between January and July 1349. No doubt Norwich was at that time the second city in the kingdom, but the number is impossible. … It is stated that in England the weight of the calamity fell on the poor, and that the higher classes were less severely affected. But Edward's daughter Joan fell a victim to it and three archbishops of Canterbury perished in the same year. … All contemporary writers inform us that the immediate consequence of the Plague was a dearth of labour, and excessive enhancement of wages, and thereupon a serious loss to the landowners. To meet this scarcity the king issued a proclamation directed to the sheriffs of the several counties, which forbad the payment of higher than the customary wages, under the penalties of amercement. But the king's mandate was every where disobeyed. … Many of the labourers were thrown into prison; many to avoid punishment fled to the forests, but were occasionally captured and fined; and all were constrained to disavow under oath that they would take higher than customary wages for the future."

J. E. T. Rogers, History of Agriculture and Prices in England, volume 1, chapter 15.

ALSO IN: F. A. Gasquet, The Great Pestilence.

W. Longman, Edward III., volume 1; chapter 10.

A. Jessop, The Coming of the Friars, &c., chapter 4-5.

ENGLAND: A. D. 1350-1400. Chaucer and his relations to English language and literature.

"At the time when the conflict between church and state was most violent, and when Wyclif was beginning to draw upon himself the eyes of patriots, there was considerable talk at the English court about a young man named Geoffrey Chaucer, who belonged to the king's household, and who both by his personality and his connections enjoyed the favor of the royal family. … On many occasions, even thus early, he had appeared as a miracle of learning to those about him—he read Latin as easily as French; he spoke a more select English than others; and it was known that he had composed, or, as the expression then was, 'made,' many beautiful English verses. The young poet belonged to a well-to-do middle-class family who had many far-reaching connections, and even some influence with the court. … Even as a boy he may have heard his father, John Chaucer, the vintner of Thames Street, London, telling of the marvelous voyage he had made to Antwerp and Cologne in the brilliant suite of Edward III. in 1338. When a youth of sixteen or seventeen, Geoffrey served as a page or squire to Elizabeth, duchess of Ulster, first wife of Lionel, duke of Clarence, and daughter-in-law of the king. He bore arms when about nineteen years of age, and went to France in 1359, in the army commanded by Edward III. … This epoch formed a sort of 'Indian summer' to the age of chivalry, and its spirit found expression in great deeds of war as well as in the festivals and manners of the court. The ideal which men strove to realize did not quite correspond to the spirit of the former age. On the whole, people had become more worldly and practical, and were generally anxious to protect the real interests of life from the unwarranted interference of romantic aspirations. The spirit of chivalry no longer formed a fundamental element, but only an ornament of life—an ornament, indeed, which was made much of, and which was looked upon with a sentiment partaking of enthusiasm. … In the midst of this outside world of motley pomp and throbbing life Geoffrey could observe the doings of high and low in various situations. He was early initiated into court intrigues, and even into many political secrets, and found opportunities of studying the human type in numerous individuals and according to the varieties developed by rank in life, education, age, and sex. … Nothing has been preserved from his early writings. … The fact is very remarkable that from the first, or at least from a very early period, Chaucer wrote in the English language—however natural this may seem to succeeding ages in 'The Father of English Poetry.' The court of Edward III. favored the language as well as the literature of France; a considerable number of French poets and 'menestrels' were in the service and pay of the English king. {814} Queen Philippa, in particular, showing herself in this a true daughter of her native Hainault, formed the centre of a society cultivating the French language and poetry. She had in her personal service Jean Froissart, one of the most eminent representatives of that language and poetry; like herself he belonged to one of the most northern districts of the French-speaking territory; he had made himself a great name, as a prolific and clever writer of erotic and allegoric trifles, before he sketched out in his famous chronicle the motley-colored, vivid picture of that eventful age. We also see in this period young Englishmen of rank and education trying their flight on the French Parnassus. … To these Anglo-French poets there belonged also a Kentishman of noble family, named John Gower. Though some ten years the senior of Chaucer, he had probably met him about this time. They were certainly afterwards very intimately acquainted. Gower … had received a very careful education, and loved to devote the time he could spare from the management of his estates to study and poetry. His learning was in many respects greater than Chaucer's. He had studied the Latin poets so diligently that he could easily express himself in their language, and he was equally good at writing French verses, which were able to pass muster, at least in England. … But, Chaucer did not let himself be led astray by examples such as these. It is possible that he would have found writing in French no easy task, even if he had attempted it. At any rate his bourgeois origin, and the seriousness of his vocation as poet, threw a determining weight into the scale and secured his fidelity to the English language with a commendable consistency."