For 200 years of ruling of Norman kings the country was ruled over on such principles: King took money from barons, especially for wars. Those who refused to pay were arrested and kept in prison and they could not defend themselves. Their children or their relatives had to pay for them. The end of such situation came at reign of John Lackland. He was very unpopular with his barons. In 1215 John called on for his barons to fight for him in the war against Normandy and pay money for it. The barons, no longer trusting John refused to pay and there began a revolt. Barons gazed much to London and were joined by London merchants.
“On June 15, 1215 the rebellion barons met John at Rennemede on the Themes. The King was presented with a document known as the Articles of the Barons, on the basis of which Magna Carta was drawn up. Magna Carta became the symbol of political freedom. It promised two main things:
1. All “free man” protection of his officials
2. The right to afair and legal trial
It was the first official document when this principle was written down. It was very important for England. Magna Carta was always used by barons to protect themselves from a powerful king.” (11)
But we should say that Magna Carta gave no real freedom to the majority of people in England (only 1/3 of population were free men). Nobles did not allow John and his successors to forget this charter. Every king had to recognize the Magna Carta. This document was the beginning of limiting the prerogatives of crown and on the other hand by limiting king’s power Magna Carta restricted arbitrary action of barons towards the knights. Magna Carta marked a clear stage in the collapse of the English feudalism.
“After king’s signing the document barons established a committee of 24 barons to make sure that John kept his promise. This committee was a beginning of English Parliament.”(12)
From the very beginning Magna Carta was a failure, for it was no more than a stage in ineffective negotiations to prevent civil war. John was released by the pope from his obligations under it. The document was, however, reissued with some changes under John’s son, with papal approval. John himself died in October 1216, with the civil war still at an inconclusive stage.
“Summing up the events of the late 12th century and the early 13th century historians describe as “Plantagenet spring after a grim Norman winter”. The symbol of this spring is the century of new Gothic Style. One of the best example of Gothic architecture is Salisbury Cathedral. Also it is a century of forming Parliament. The century of growing literacy which is closely connected with 12th century cultural movement, which is called Renaissance. In England Renaissance was a revolution in thoughts, ideas and learning. In England there began grammar schools. But all of them taught Latin. In the end of the 12th century in England appeared two schools of higher learning – Oxford and Cambridge. By 1220 this universities became the intellectual leaders of the century.”(13)
Part II. The last Plantagenets
HENRY III (1216-1272 AD)
“Henry III was the first son of John and Isabella of Angouleme. Was born in 1207. At the age of nine when he was crowned, Henry’s early reign featured two regents: William the Marshall governed until his death in 1219, and Hugh de Burgh until Henry came to the throne in 1232. His education was provided by Peter des Roche, Bishop of Winchester. Henry III married Eleanor of Province in 1236, who bore him four sons and two daughters.” (14)
“Henry inherited a troubled kingdom: London and most of the southeast was in the hands of the French Dauphin Louis and the northern regions were under control of rebellious barons – only the midland and southwest were loyal to the boy king. The barons, however, soon sided with Henry (their quarrel was with his father, not him), and the old Marshall expelled the French Dauphin from English soil by 1217.” (15)
“Henry was a cultivated man, but a lousy politician. His court was inundated by Frenchmen and Italians who came at the behest of Eleanor, whose relations were handed important Church and state position. His father and uncle left him an impoverished kingdom. Henry financed costly fruitless wars with extortionate taxation. Inept diplomacy and failed war led Henry to sell his hereditary claims to all the Angevin possessions in France, but to save Gascony (which was held as a fief of the French crown) and Calais.”(16) “Henry’s failures incited hostilities among a group of barons led by his brother in law, Simon de Montfort. Henry was forced to agree to a wide ranging plan of reforms, the so called “Provisions of Oxford”. His later papal absolution from adhering to the Provisions prompted a baronial revolt in 1263, and Henry was summoned to the first Parliament, in 1265 – Parliament (from the French word “parleman” – meeting for discussion) was summoned with “Commons” represented in it – two knights from a shire and two merchants of a town and it turned out to have been a real beginning of the English parlamentarism.”(17) Here we should note, the main peculiarity of English Parliament, distinguishing it from most others:it was created as a means of opposition. Not to help the king, but to limit his power and control him.
Parliament insisted that a council be imposed on the king to advise on policy decisions. He was prone to the infamous Plantagenet temper, but could also be sensitive and quite pious – ecclesiastical architecture reached its apex in Henry’s reign.
The old king, after an extremely long reign of fifty-six years, died in 1272. He found no success in war, but opened up English culture to the cosmopolitanism of the continent. Although viewed as a failure as a politician, his reign defined the English monarchical position until the end of the fifteenth century: kingship limited by law – the repercussions of which influenced the English Civil War in the reign of Charles I, and extended into the nineteenth century queenship of Victoria.
Edward I, Longshanks (1272-1307)
Edward I, the oldest surviving son of Henry II and Eleanor of Provence, was born in 1239. He was nicknamed Longshanks due to his great height and stature. Edward married Eleanor of Castille in 1254, who bore him sixteen children (seven of whom survived into adulthood) before her death in 1290. Edward reached a peace settlement with Philip IV of France that resulted in his marriage to the French king’s daughter Margaret, who bore him three more children.
“Edward I was a capable statesman, adding much to the institution initiated by Henry II. It 1295, his “Model Parliament” brought together representatives from the nobility, clergy, knights of the shires, and burgesses of the cities – the first gathering of Lords and Commons. Feudal revenues proved inadequate in financing the burgeoning royal courts and administrative institutions. Summoning national Parliament became the accepted forum of gaining revenue and conducting public business. Judicial reform included the expansion of such courts as the King’s Bench, Common Pleas, Exchequer and the Chancery Court was established to give redress in circumstances where other courts provided on solution. Edward was pious, but resisted any increase of papal authority in England. Conservators of the Peace, the forerunners of Justices of the Peace, were also established as an institution.”(18)
Foreign policy, namely the unification of the island’s other nations, occupied much of Edward’s time. A major campaign to control Llywelyn ap Gruffydd of Wales began in 1277, and lasted until Liywelyn’s death in 1282. In 1301, the king’s eldest son was created Prince of Wales, a title still held by all mail heirs to the crown. Margaret, Maid of Norway and legitimate heir to the Scottish crown, died in 1290, leaving a disputed succession in Scotland. Edward was asked to arbitrate between thirteen different claimants. John Baliol, Edward’s first choice, was unpopular, his next choice, William Wallace, rebelled against England until his capture and execution in 1305. Robert Bruce seized the Scottish throne in 1306, later to become a source of consternation to Edward II.
Edward died en rout to yet another Scottish campaign in 1307. His character found accurate evaluation by Sir Richard Baker, in A Chronicle of the kings of England: “He had in him the two wisdoms, not often found in any, single. Both together, seldom or never: an ability of judgement in himself, and a readiness to hear the judgment of others. He was not easily provoked into passion, but once in passion, not easily appeared, as was seen by his dealing with the Scots; towards whom he showed at first patience, and at last severity. If he was censured for his many taxations, he may be justified by his well bestowing them; for never prince laid out his money to more honour of himself, or good of his kingdom.” (19)
Edward II (1307-1327 AD)
Edward II the son of Eleanor of Castille and Edward I, was born in 1284. He married Isabella, daughter of Philip IV of France, in 1308. Eleanor bore him two sons and two daughters.
“Edward was as much of a failure as a king as his father was a success. He loved money and other rewards upon his mail favourites, raising the ire of the nobility. The most notable was Piers Gaveston, his homosexual lover. On the day of Edward’s marriageу to Isabella, Edward preferred the couch of Gaveston to that of his new wife. Gaveston was exiled and eventually murdered by Edward’s father for his licentious conduct with the king. Edward’s means of maintaining power was based on the noose and the block – 28 knights and barons were executed for rebelling against the decadent king.” (20)
Edward faired no better as a solder. The rebellions of the barons opened the way for Robert Bruce to grasp much of Scotland. Bruce’s victory over English forces at the battle of Bannockburn, in 1314, ensured Scottish independence until the union of England and Scotland in 1707.
In 1324 the war broke out with France, prompting Edward to sent Isabella and their son Edward (later became Edward III) to negotiate with her brother and French king, Charles IV. “Isabella fell into an open romance with Roger Mortimer, one of the Edward’s disaffected barons. The rebellious couple invaded England in 1327, capturing and imprisoning Edward. The king was deposed, replaced by his son, Edward III.”(21)
Edward II was murdered in September 1327 at Berkley castle, by a red-hot iron inserted through his sphincter into his bowels. Comparison of Edward I and Edward II was beautifully described by Sir Richard Baker, in reference to Edward I in A Chronicle of the Kings of England “His great unfortunate was in his greatest blessing, for four of his sons which he had by his Queen Eleanor, three of them died in his own lifetime, who were worthy to have outlived him, and the fourth outlived him, who was worthy never to have been born.” (22) A strong indictment of a weak king.” (23)
Edward III (1327-1377)
Edward III, the eldest son of Edward II and Isabella of France, was born in 1312. His youth was spent in his mother’s court, until he was crowned at the age of 14, in 1327. Edward was dominated by his mother and her lover, Roger Mortimer, until 1330, wen Mortimer was executed and Isabella was exiled from court. Philippa of Hainault married Edward in 1328 and bore him many children.
The Hundred Years’ War occupied the largest part of Edward’s reign. It began in 1338-1453. The war was carried during the reign of 5 English kings. Edward III and Edward Baliol defeated David II of Scotland, and drove him into exile in 1333. The French cooperation with the Scots, French aggression in Gascony, and Edward’s claim to the throne of France (through his mother Isabella, who was the sister of the king; the Capetiance failed to produce a mail heir) led to the outbreak of War. “The sea battle of Sluys (1340) gave England control of the Channel, and battle at Crecy (1346), Calais (1347), and Poitiers (1356) demonstrated English supremacy on the land. Edward, the Black Prince and eldest son of Edward III, excelled during this first phase of the war.”(24)
Throughout 1348-1350 the epidemic of a plague so called “The Black Death” swept across England and northern Europe, removing as much as half the population. This plague reached every part of England. Few than one of ten who caught the plague could survive it. If in Europe 1/3 of population died within a century, in England 1/3 of population died during two years. The whole villages disappeared. This plague continued till it died out itself. English military strength weakened considerably after the plague, gradually lost so much ground that by 1375, Edward agreed to the Treaty of Bruges, which only left England Calais, Bordeaux, and Bayonne.
Domestically, England saw many changes during Edward’s reign. Parliament was divided into two Houses – Lords and Commons – and met regularly to finance the war. Treason was defined by statute for the first time (1352). In 1361 the office of Justice of the Peace was created. Philippa died in 1369 and the last years of Edward’s reign mirrored the first; he was once again dominated by a woman, his mistress, Alice Perrers. Alice preferred one of Edward’s other sons, John of Gaunt, over the Black Prince, which caused political conflict in Edward’s last years.
Edward the Black Prince died one year before his father. Rafael Holinshed intimated that Edward spent his last year in grief and remorse, believing the death of his son was a punishment for usurping his father’s crown. In Chronicles of England, Holinshed wrote: “But finally the thing that most grieved him, was the loss of that most noble gentleman, his dear son Prince Edward…. But this and other mishaps that chanced to him now in his old years, might seem to come to pass for a revenge of his disobedience showed to his in usurping against him….” (25)
There is one more point about Edward’s reign, concerning the English language. Edward had forbidden speaking French in his army, and by the end of the 14th century English once again began being used instead of French by ruling literate class.
Richard II (1377-99)
Richard II’s reign was fraught with crisis – economic, social, political, and constitutional. He was 10 years old when his grandfather died, and the first problem the country faced was having to deal with his monitoring. A “constitutional council” was set up to “govern the king and his kingdom”. Although John of Gaunt was still the dominant figure in the royal family, neither he no his brothers were included.
The peasant’s revolt.
“(1381) Financing the increasingly expensive and unsuccessful war with France was a major preoccupation. At the end of Edward III’s reign a new device, a poll tax of four pence a head, had been introduced. A similar but graduated tax followed in 1379, and in 1380 another set at one shilling a head was granted. It proved inequitable and impractical, and when the government tried to speed up collection in the spring of 1381 a popular rebellion – the Peasants’ Revolt – ensued. Although the pool tax was the spark that set it off, there were also deeper causes related to changes in the economy and to political developments.”(26) The government in practical, engendered hostility to the legal system by its policies of expanding the power of the justices of the peace at the expense of local and monorail courts. In addition, popular poor preachers spread subversive ideas with slogans such as: “When Adam delved and Eve span/ Who was then the gentleman?” (27) The Peasants’ revolt began in Essex and Kent. Widespread outbreaks occurred the southeast of England, taking the form of assault on tax collectors, attacks on landlords and their manor houses, destruction of documentary evidence of villein status, and attacks on lawyers. Attacks on religious houses, such as that at St. Albans, were particularly severe, perhaps because they had been among the most conservative of landlords in commuting labour services.
The men of Essex and Kent moved to London to attack the king’s councilors. Admitted to the city by sympathizers, they attacked John of Gaunt’s place of the Savoy as well as the Fleet prison. On June 14 the young king made them various promises at Mile End; on the same day they broke into the Tower and killed Sudbury, the chancellor, Hales, the treasure and other officials. On the next day Richard met the rebels again at Smithfield, and their main leader, Wat Tyler, presented their demands. But during the negotiations Tyler was attacked and slain by the mayor of London. The young king rode forward and reassured the rebels, asking them to follow him to Clerkenwell. This proved to be a turning point, and the rebels, their suppliers exhausted, began to make their way home. “Richard went back on his promises he had made saying, “Villeins you are and villeins you shall remain.”(28) In October Parliament confirmed the king’s revocation of charters but demanded amnesty save for a few special offenders.
“The events of the Peasants’ Revolt may have given Richard an exalted idea of his own powers and prerogative as a result of his success at Smithfield, but for the rebels the gains of the rising amounted to no more than the abolition of the poll taxes.”(29) Improvement in the social position of the peasantry did occur, but not so mach as a consequence of the revolt as of changes in the economy that would have occurred anyhow.
John Wycliffe.
“Religious unrest was another subversive factor under Richard II. England had been virtually free from heresy until John Wycliffe, a priest and an Oxford scholar, began his career as a religious reformer with two treaties in 1375 – 76. He argued that the exercise of lordship depended on grace and that therefore, a sinful man had no right to authority. Priest had even the pope himself, Wycliffe went on to argue, might not necessarily be in state of grace and thus would lack authority. Such doctrines appealed to anticlerical sentiments and brought Wycliffe into direct conflict with the church hierarchy, although he received protection from John of Gaunt. The beginning of the Great Schism in 1378 gave Wycliffe fresh opportunities to attack the papacy, and in a treaties of 1379 on the Eucharist he openly denied the doctrine of transubstantiation. He was ordered before the church court at Lambeth in 1378. In 1380 his views were condemned by a commission of theologians at Oxford, and he was forced to leave the university. At Lutterworth he continued to write voluminously until his death.”(30)