Cameos from English History, from Rollo to Edward II

CAMEO XXXV. THE EVIL TOLL. (1294-1305.)

_King of England_.

1272. Edward I.

_King of Scotland_.

1296. Edward I.

_King of France_.

1285. Philippe IV.

_Emperors of Germany_.

1292. Adolf.

1298. Albert I.

_Popes_.

1294. Boniface VIII.

1303. Benedict XI.

Unlike the former Plantagenets, Edward I. was a thorough Englishman; his schemes, both for good and evil, were entirely insular; and as he became more engrossed in the Scottish war, he almost neglected his relations with the Continent.

One of the most wily and unscrupulous men who ever wore a crown was seated on the throne of France-the fair-faced and false-hearted Philippe IV., the "pest of France," the oppressor of the Church, and the murderer of the Templars; and eagerly did he watch to take any advantage of the needs of his mighty vassal in Aquitaine.

Edward had made alliances to strengthen himself. He had married his daughter Eleanor to the Count of Bar, and Margaret to the heir of Brabant, and betrothed his son Edward to the only daughter of Guy Dampierre, Count of Flanders, thus hoping to restrain Philippe without breaking the peace.

Unluckily, in 1294, a sailors' quarrel took place between the crews of an English and a Norman ship upon the French coast. They had both landed to replenish their stock of water, and disputed which had the right first to fill their casks. In the fray, a Norman was killed, and his shipmates, escaping, took their revenge by boarding another English vessel, and hanging a poor, innocent Bayonne merchant from the masthead, with a dog fastened to his feet. Retaliation followed upon revenge; and while the two kings professed to be at peace, every ship from their ports went armed, and fierce struggles took place wherever there was an encounter. Slaughter and plunder fell upon the defeated, for the sailors were little better than savage pirates, and were unrestrained by authority. Edward, who had a right to a share in all captures made by his subjects, refused to accept of any portion of these, though he did not put a stop to them. The Irish and Dutch vessels took part with the English, the Genoese with the French. At last, upward of two hundred French ships met at St. Mahe in Brittany, and their crews rejoiced over the captures which they had obtained, and held a great carousal. Eighty well-manned English vessels had, however, sailed from the Cinque Ports, and, surrounding St. Mahe, sent a challenge to their enemies. It was accepted; a ship was moored in the midst, as a point round which the two fleets might assemble, and a hot contest took place, fiercely fought upon either side; but English seamanship prevailed over superior numbers, every French ship was sunk or taken, and, horrible to relate, not one of their crews was spared.

Such destruction provoked Philippe, and he summoned Edward, as Duke of Aquitaine, to deliver up to him such Gascons as had taken part in the battle. This Edward neglected, whereupon Philippe sent to seize the lands of Perigord, and, on being repulsed by the seneschal, called on Edward to appear at his court within twenty days, to answer for his misdeeds, on pain of forfeiting the province of Gascony. Edward sent first the Bishop of London, and afterward his brother Edmund Crouchback, to represent him. Edmund's second wife was the mother of Philippe's queen, and it was therefore expected that he would the more easily come to terms, especially as he was commissioned to offer the hand of his royal brother to Blanche, the sister of Philippe, a maiden who inherited the unusual beauty of her family. Apparently all was easily arranged: Philippe promised Edmund that if, as a matter of form, Gascony were put into his hands by way of forfeit, it should be restored at the end of forty days on the intercession of the two ladies, and Blanche should be betrothed to the King.

All was thus arranged. But at the end of the forty days it proved that what Philippe had once grasped he had no notion of releasing; and, moreover, that Blanche la Belle was promised to Albert of Hapsburg! If Edward chose to marry any French princess at all, he was welcome to her little sister Marguerite, a child of eleven, while Edward was fifty-five. The excuse offered was, that Edward, had not obeyed the summons in person, and that another outrage had been perpetrated on the coast. After another summons, he was adjudged to lose not only Gascony, but all Aquitaine.

On discovering how he had been duped, Edward's first impulse was to send out his writs to collect his vassals to recover Gascony, chastise the insolent ill faith of Philippe, and to stir up his foreign connections to support him. He collected his troops at Portsmouth, hoping to augment his army by a general release of prisoners, Scottish, Welsh, and malefactors alike; but while he was detained seven weeks by contrary winds, all these men, after taking his pay, made their escape, and either returned to their countries, or marauded in the woods. A great insurrection broke out in Wales, and he was forced to hasten thither, and from thence was called away to quell the rising of the Scottish barons against Balliol.

Meanwhile, it fared ill with his foreign allies. The Duke of Brabant, father-in-law to his daughter Margaret, was killed in a tournament at the court of her sister Eleanor; and when Eleanor's husband, Henri of Bar, took up arms in the English cause, and marched into Champagne, he was defeated, and made prisoner by the Queen of France. The poor old Count of Flanders and his Countess were invited to Paris by Philippe, who insisted that they should bring his godchild and namesake, the betrothed of young Edward, to visit him. When they arrived, they were all thrown into the prison of the Louvre, on the plea that Guy had no right to bestow his daughter in marriage without permission from his suzerain.

Edward's head was so full of Scotland, that he was shamefully indifferent to the sufferings of his friends in his behalf. Poor Eleanor of Bar, after striving hard to gain her husband's freedom, died of grief, after a few months; and Guy of Flanders contrived to obtain his own release by promising to renounce the English alliance; but Philippe would not set free the poor young Philippa, whom he kept in his hands as a hostage.

One cause of the King's neglect was his great distress for money. He had learnt to have recourse to his father's disgraceful plea of a sham Crusade, and thus, for six years, gained a tenth of the Church revenues; but in 1294, requiring a further supply, he made a demand of half the year's income of the clergy. The new Archbishop, Robert Winchelsea, was gone to Rome to receive his pall; the Dean of St. Paul's, who was sent to remonstrate with the King, died suddenly in his presence; but Edward was not touched, and sent a knight to address the assembled clergy, telling them that any reverend father who dared to oppose the royal will would be considered to have broken the King's peace. In terror they yielded for that time; but they sent a petition to the Pope, who, in return, granted a bull forbidding any subsidies to be paid by church lands to the King without his permission.

Little did Edward reck of this decree. He knew that Boniface VIII. had his hands full of his quarrels with the Romans and with Philippe le Bel, and his own ambition was fast searing the conscience once so generous and tender. Again he convened the clergy to grant his exactions, but Archbishop Winchelsea replied that they had two lords, spiritual and temporal; they owed the superior obedience to the spiritual lord, and would therefore grant nothing till the Pope should have ratified the demand; for which purpose they would send messengers to Rome.

The lay barons backed Edward in making a declaration of outlawry against the clergy, and seizing all the ecclesiastical property, both lands and treasures, except what was within churches or burying-grounds, declaring that, if not redeemed by submission before Easter, all should be forfeited forever. The Archbishop of York came to terms; but the Archbishop of Canterbury held out, and was deprived of everything, retiring to a country village, where he acted as parish priest, and lived upon the alms of the parishioners. He held a synod, where excommunication was denounced on those who seized church property; but the censures of the Church had lost their terrors, and the clergy gradually made their peace with the King, Winchelsea himself among the last.

The laity had looked on quietly at the oppression of the clergy, and indeed had borne their share of exactions; but these came at last to a point beyond endurance, and Edward's need, and their obstinate resistance, led to another step in the formation of our constitution.

In 1297 he made a new alliance with Guy of Flanders, and was fitting out three armies, against Scotland, Guienne, and Flanders. To raise the means, he exacted five marks as a duty on each sack of wool exported to Flanders, and made ruinous requisitions for wheat on the landowners. Merchants and burghers, barons and clergy, took counsel together, and finding each other all of one mind, resolved to make a stand against this tax on wool, which was called the "Evil Toll," and to establish what Magna Carta had already declared, that the nation would not be taxed against its own consent.

The King's brother, Edmund of Lancaster, had lately died while commanding in Guienne, and Edward, meeting his vassals at Salisbury, gave the command of the army, thus left without a head, to Humphrey Bohun, Earl of Hereford, and Roger Bigod, Earl of Norfolk-the one Constable, the other Marshal of England. To his great wrath, they answered that their offices only bound them to attend the King's person in war, and that they would not go. Edward swore a fierce oath that they should either go, or hang. Bigod coolly repeated the same oath, that he would neither go nor hang, and back to their own estates they went, and after them thirty bannerets, and 1,500 knights, who, by main force, hindered the King's officers from making any further levies on their barns and storehouses.

Nothing was left Edward, but to speak them fair. He summoned his vassals to meet him in London, reconciled himself to Archbishop Winchelsea, and on the 14th of July, 1297, when all were assembled at Westminster, he stood forth on a platform, attended by his son, the Primate, and the Earl of Warwick, and harangued the people. He told them that he grieved at the burthens which he was forced to impose on them, but it was for their defence; for that the Scots, Welsh, and French thirsted for their blood, and it was better to lose a part, than the whole. "I am going to risk my life for your sake," he said. "If I return, receive me; and I will make you amends. If I fall, here is my son: he will reward you, if faithful."

His voice was broken by tears; and his people, remembering what he once had been rather than what he was now, broke into loud shouts of loyal affection. He appointed his son as regent, and set out for Flanders, but not in time to prevent poor Guy from again falling into captivity, and pursued by requisitions, to which he promised to attend on his return. All the nobles who held with him accompanied him, and Bohun and Bigod were left to act in their own way.

They rode to London with a large train, lodged complaints of the illegal exaction before the Exchequer, and then, going to the Guildhall, worked up the citizens to be ready to assert their rights, and compel the King to revoke the evil toll, and to observe the charter. They had scrupulously kept within the law, and, though accompanied by so many armed followers, neither murder nor pillage was permitted; and thus they obtained the sympathies of the whole country.

Young Edward of Caernarvon was but thirteen, and could only submit; and a Parliament was convoked by his authority, when the present taxes were repealed, the important clause was added to the Great Charter which declared that no talliage or aid should thenceforth be levied without the consent of the bishops, peers, burgesses, and freemen of the realm, nor should any goods be taken for the King without consent of the owners.

Further, it was enacted that Magna Charta should be rehearsed twice a year in all the cathedrals, with a sentence of excommunication on all who should infringe it. The Archbishop enforced this order strictly, adding another sentence of excommunication to be rehearsed in each church on every Sunday against any who should beat or imprison clergymen, desiring it to be done with tolling of bell and putting out of candle, because these solemnities had the greater effect on the laity. This statute is a sad proof how much too cheaply sacred things were held, and how habit was leading even the clergy to debase them by over-frequent and frivolous use of the most awful emblems.

Young Edward and his council signed the acts, and they were sent to the King for ratification, with a promise that his barons would thereupon join him in Flanders, or march to Scotland, at his pleasure. He was three days in coming to his resolution, but finally agreed, though it was suspected that he might set aside his signature as invalid, because made in a foreign country.

Wallace's proceedings in Scotland made Edward anxious to hasten thither and rid himself of the French war. He therefore accepted the mediation of Boniface VIII., and consented to sacrifice his unfortunate ally, Guy of Flanders, whom he left in his captivity, as well as his poor young daughter. Both died in the prison to which the daughter had been consigned at twelve years old. The Prince of Wales, for whose sake her bloom wasted in prison, was contracted to Isabelle, the daughter of her persecutor, Philippe le Bel; and old King Edward himself received the hand of the Princess Marguerite, now about seventeen, fair and good. Aquitaine was restored, though not Gascony; but Edward only wanted to be free, that he might hasten to Scotland. And, curiously enough, the outlaw Wallace, whatever he did for his own land, unconsciously fought the battles of his foes, the English nation; for it was his resistance that weakened Edward's power, and made necessity extort compliance with the demands of the Barons.

At York, Bigod and Bohun claimed a formal ratification of the charter of Westminster. He put them off by pleading the urgency of affairs in Scotland, and hastened on; but when he returned, in 1299, the staunch Barons again beset him, and he confirmed the charter, but added the phrase, "Saving the rights of the Crown," which annulled the whole force of the decree. The two barons instantly went off in high displeasure, with a large number of their friends; and Edward, to try the temper of the people, ordered the charter to be rehearsed at St. Paul's Cross; but when the rights of the Crown were mentioned, such a storm of hootings and curses arose, that Edward, taught by the storms of his youth not to push matters to extremity, summoned a new parliament, and granted the right of his subjects to tax themselves.

This right has often since been proved to be the main strength of the Parliament, by preventing the King from acting against their opinion, and by rendering it the interest of all classes of men to attend to the proceedings of the sovereign: it has not only kept kings in check, but it has saved the nobles and commonalty from sinking into that indifference to public affairs which has been the bane of foreign nations. For, unfortunately, the mass of men are more easily kept on the alert when wealth is affected, than by any deeper or higher consideration.

When we yearly hear of Parliament granting the supplies ere the close of the session, they are exercising the right first claimed at Runnymede, striven for by Simon de Montfort, and won by Humphrey Bohun, who succeeded through the careful self-command and forbearance which hindered him from ever putting his party in the wrong by violence or transgression of the laws. He should be honored as a steadfast bulwark to the freedom of his country, teaching the might of steady resolution, even against the boldest and ablest of all our kings. In spite of rough words, Edward and Bohun respected each other, and the heir of Hereford, likewise named Humphrey, married Elizabeth, the youngest surviving daughter left by good Queen Eleanor. Another of Edward's daughters had been married to an English earl. Joan of Acre, the high-spirited, wilful girl, who was born in the last Crusade, had been given as a wife to her father's stout old comrade, Gilbert de Clare, Earl of Gloucester. He died when she was only twenty-three, and before the end of a year she secretly married her squire, Ralph de Monthermer, and her father only discovered the union when he had promised her to the Count of Savoy. Monthermer was imprisoned; but Edward, always a fond father, listened to Joan's pleading, that, as an Earl could ennoble a woman of mean birth, it was hard that she might not raise a gallant youth to rank. Ralph was released, and bore for the rest of his life the title of Earl of Gloucester, which properly belonged only to Joan's young son, Gilbert. Joan was a pleasure-loving lady, expensive in her habits, and neglectful of her children; but her father's indulgence for her never failed: he lent her money, pardoned her faults, and took on himself the education of her son Gilbert, who was the companion of his own two young sons by his second marriage, Thomas of Brotherton and Edmund of Woodstock.

Their mother, Margaret of France, was a fair and gentle lady, who lived on the best terms with her stepdaughters, many of whom were her elders; and she followed the King on his campaigns, as her predecessor Eleanor had done. Mary, the princess who had taken the veil, was almost always with her, and contrived to spend a far larger income than any of her sisters, though without the same excuse of royal apparel; but she was luxurious in diet, fond of pomp and display; never moving without twenty-four horses, and so devoted to amusement that she lost large sums at dice. She must have been an unedifying abbess at Ambresbury, though not devoid of kindness of heart.

Archbishop Winchelsea held a synod at Mertoun in 1305, where various decrees were made respecting the books and furniture which each parish was bound to provide for the Divine service. The books were to be "a legend" containing the lessons for reading, with others containing the Psalms and Services. The vestments were "two copes, a chasuble, a dalmatic, three surplices, and a frontal for the altar." And, besides these, a chalice of silver, a pyx of ivory or silver, a censer, two crosses, a font with lock and key, a vessel for holy water, a great candlestick, and a lantern and bell, which were carried before the Host when taken to the dying, a board with a picture to receive the kiss of peace, and all the images of the Church. The nave, then as now, was the charge of the parish; the chancel, of the rector.

This synod was Archbishop Winchelsea's last act before the King took vengeance on him for his past resistance. His friend and supporter, Boniface VIII., was dead, harassed to death by the persecutions of Philippe IV.; and Clement V., the new Pope, was a miserable time-server, raised to the papal chair by the machinations of the French King, and ready to serve as the tool of any injustice.

Edward disliked the Archbishop for having withstood him in the matter of the tithe, as well as for having cited him in the name of the Pope to leave Scotland in peace. The King now induced Clement to summon him to answer for insubordination. Winchelsea was very unwilling to go to Rome; but Edward seized his temporalities, banished eighty monks for giving him support, and finally exiled him. He died in indigence at Rome.

He was a prelate of the same busy class as Langton, not fulfilling the highest standard of his sacred office, but spirited, uncompromising, and an ardent though unsuccessful champion of the rights of the nation.

If Langton be honored for his part in Magna Charta, Winchelsea merits a place by his side, for it was the resistance of his party to the "Evil Toll" that placed taxation in the power of the English nation, and in the wondrous ways of Providence caused the Scottish and French wars to work for the good of our constitution.