A History of England Principally in the Seventeenth Century Part 4

NOTES:

[22] He says himself later, 'terror publicae potestatis me intrusit,'

in Gervasius, 497.

[23] Canones Concilii Turonensis, Article III, 'ut laici ecclesiastica non usurpent;' and Article I of those previously omitted in Mansi, XXI. 1178 seq.

[24] Concilium Clarendoniae, 8 Cal. Febr. MCLXIV, Article VIII, de appellationibus. 'Si archiepiscopus defuerit in just.i.tia exhibenda, ad dominum regem perveniendum est postremo; ita quod non debeat ultra procedi absque a.s.sensu domini regis.' Wilkins, i. 435.

[25] Rogeri de Hoveden Annales ed. Savile, 283. 6. 'Prohibeo vobis ex parte omnipotentis dei et sub anathemate, ne faciatis hodie de me judicium, quia appellavi ad praesentiam domini papae.' None, however, of the accounts we have can be looked on as quite accurate.

[26] 'Ambigua fata formidans.' Knyghton de eventibus Angliae, 2391.

[27] Gervasius 1414 'se ign.o.biles et ignavos homines nutrivisse, quorum nec unus tot sibi illatas injurias voluerit vindicare.'

[28] 'Episcopi comites et barones regni--juraverunt quod ipsi eam communiam et dignitatem civitatis Londinensis custodirent.'

[29] Hoveden, p. 450, 'quod redderet unicuique illorum ius suum, si ipsi illi fidem servaverint et pacem.'

[30] 'Quod ipsi audacter pro libertate ecclesiae ad mandatum suum se opposuerint,--honores quos ei (Papae) et romanae ecclesiae exhibuistis, id per eos coactus fecistis.'--Mauclerc, literae ad legem, in Rymer, Foedera, i.

[31] Mauclerc, literae de negotio Baronum, in Rymer, Foedera, i. 185: 'Magnates Angliae--instanter domino Papae supplicant, quod c.u.m ipse sit dominus Angliae vos--compellat, antiquas libertates suas--eis illaesas conservare.'

[32] Literae Johannis regis, quibus quae sit baronum contumacia narrat. Apud Odiham, 29 die Maii.

[33] In Matthew Paris: 'Quod non pertinet ad papam ordinatio rerum laicarum.'

[34] Articuli magnae cartae libertatum, -- 49. Magna carta regis Johannis. In Blackstone, the Great Charter, 9, 23.

[35] Matthew Paris. 'n.o.biles universi et castellani ei multo facilius adhaeserunt, quia propria patris iniquitas filio non debuit imputari.'

[36] Forma pacis inter Henric.u.m et Ludovic.u.m, in Rymer, i. 221.

'Coadiutores sui habeant terras suas--et rectas consuetudines et libertates regni Angliae.'

CHAPTER IV.

FOUNDATION OF THE PARLIAMENTARY CONSt.i.tUTION.

There is a very accurate correspondence in this epoch also between the general history of the Western world and events in England: these last form but a part of the great victory of the hierarchy and its advance in power, which marks the first half of the 13th century. By combining with the va.s.sals the Popes had overcome the monarchy, and had then in turn overcome the va.s.sals by combining with the monarchy and its endangered rights. It must not be regarded as a mere t.i.tle, an empty word, if the Pope was acknowledged to be feudal Lord of England: his legates, Gualo, Pandulph, Otho, and with them some native prelates, devoted to him (above all that Peter des Roches, who, by his conduct when Bishop of Winchester, through the mistrust awakened, incurred almost the chief responsibility of the earlier troubles), spoke the decisive word in the affairs of the kingdom and crushed their opponents. It was reported that Innocent IV was heard to say, 'Is not the King of England my va.s.sal, my servant? At my nod he will imprison and punish.'[37] Under this influence the best benefices in the kingdom were given away without regard to the freedom of election or the rights of patrons, and in fact mostly to foreigners. The Pope's exchequer drew its richest revenues from England; there was no end to the exactions of its subordinate agents, Master Martin, Master Marin, Peter Rubeo, and all the rest of them. Even the King surrounded himself with foreigners. To his own relations and to the relations of his Provencal wife fell the most profitable places, and the advantages arising from his paramount feudal rights; they too exercised much influence on public affairs, and that in the interests of the Papal power, with which they were allied. Riotous movements occasionally took place against this system, but they were suppressed: men suffered in silence as long as it was only the exercise of rights once acknowledged. But now it happened that the Popes in their war with the last of the Hohenstaufen, whom they had resolved to destroy, proposed to employ the resources of England and in a very different manner than before. They awoke Henry III's dynastic ambition by promoting the elevation of his brother to be King of the Romans, and destining his younger son Edmund for the crown of Naples and Sicily. King Henry pledged himself in return to the heaviest money-payments. It began to appear as if England were no longer a free kingdom, using its resources for its own objects: the land and all its riches was at the service of the Pope at Rome; the King was little more than a tool of the hierarchy.

It was at this crisis that the Parliaments of England, if they did not actually begin, yet first attained to a definite form and efficiency.

The opposition of the country to the ecclesiastico-temporal government became most conspicuous in the year 1257, when Henry, happy beyond measure in his son's being raised to royal rank by the Apostolic See, presented his son to the Great Council of the nation, already wearing the national costume of Naples, and named the sum, to the payment of which he had pledged himself in return. The Estates at once refused their consent to his accepting the crown, which they considered could not be maintained owing to the untrustworthiness of the Italians, and of the Romish See itself, and the distance of the country; the money-pledge excited loud displeasure. Since they were required to redeem it, they reasonably enough gave it to be understood that they ought to have been consulted first. It was precisely the alliance of the Pope and the King that they had long felt most bitterly; they said truly, England would by such a joint action be as it were ground to dust between two millstones. As, however, despite all remonstrances, the demands were persevered with,--for the King had taken on himself the debts incurred by Pope Alexander IV in the Neapolitan war, and the Pope had already referred to England the bankers entrusted with the payments,--a storm of opposition broke out, which led to what was equivalent to an overthrow of the government. The King had to consent to the appointment of a committee for reforming the realm, to be named in equal proportions by himself and by the barons; from this, however, was selected a council of fifteen members, in which the King's opponents had a decisive majority. They put forth Statutes, at Oxford, which virtually stripped the King of his power; he had to swear to them with a lighted taper in his hand. The Pope without hesitation at once condemned these ordinances; King Louis IX of France also, who was called in as arbiter, decided against them: and some moderate men drew back from them: but among the rest the zeal with which they held to them was thus only inflamed to greater violence. They had the King in their power, and felt themselves strong enough to impose their will on him as law.

Without doubt they had the opinion of the country on their side. For the first time since the Conquest the insular spirit of England, which was now shared even by the conquerors themselves, manifested itself in a natural opposition to all foreign influence. The King's half-brothers with their numerous dependents were driven out without mercy, their castles occupied, their places given to the foremost Englishmen. The Papal legate Guido, one of the most distinguished members of the Curia, who himself became Pope at a later time, was forbidden to enter England. Most foreigners, it mattered not of what station or nationality, were forced to quit the realm: it went hard with those who could not speak English. The leader of the barons, Simon de Montfort, was solemnly declared Protector of the kingdom and people; he had in particular the lower clergy, the natural leaders of the ma.s.ses, on his side. When he was put under the ban of the Church his followers retorted by a.s.suming the badge of the cross, since his cause appeared to them just and holy.[38]

At this very juncture it was that the attempt was made to form a Parliamentary a.s.sembly corresponding to the meaning of that word.

The Statutes or Provisions of Oxford contain the first attempt to effect this, by enacting that thrice every year the newly formed royal Council should meet together with twelve men elected by the Commonalty of England, and consult on the affairs of the kingdom.[39] There is no doubt that these twelve belonged to the n.o.bles and were to represent them: the decisive point lies in the fact that it was not a number of n.o.bles summoned by the King, but a committee of the Estates chosen by themselves that was placed by the side of the Council. The Council and the twelve persons elected formed for some years an a.s.sociation that united the executive and legislative powers.

But this continued only as long as the King acquiesced in it. When he had the courage to resist, it is true that in the first encounter which ensued, he was himself taken prisoner: but his partisans were not crushed by this; and soon after his wife, who had collected about her a considerable body of mercenaries, in concert with the Pope and the King of France, thought herself strong enough to invade England.

Simon felt that he needed a greater, in other words, a broader, basis of support. And the design he then conceived has secured him an imperishable memory. He summoned first of all representatives of the knights of the shires, and directly afterwards representatives of the towns and the Cinque Ports, to form a Parliament in conjunction with the n.o.bles of the realm. This was not an altogether new thing in the European world; we know that in the Cortes of Aragon, as early as the 12th century, by the side of the high n.o.bility and the ecclesiastics there appeared also the Hidalgos and the deputies of the Commons; and Simon de Montfort might well be aware of this, since his father had been in so many ways connected with Aragon. In England itself under King John men had come very near it without however carrying it through: not till afterwards did the innovation appear a real necessity. In opposition to the one-sided power exercised by the foreigners, nothing was so much insisted on in daily talk and in the popular ballads as the propriety of calling the natives of the land to counsel, since to them its laws were best known. This justifiable wish met with adequate satisfaction now that the Commons were summoned; the public feeling against the foreigners, on which Simon de Montfort necessarily relied, thus found expression. The a.s.sembly which he called together doubtless sympathised with his party views. As he invited only those n.o.bles to it who remained true to him (they were not more than twenty-three in number), so he appears to have summoned those only of the towns which adhered to him unconditionally. But the arrangement involved more than was contemplated from his point of view.

Amid the storms he had called forth Simon de Montfort perished: the King was freed, the royal authority re-established. A new Papal legate entered London in the full splendour of his office, Cardinal Ottoboni; Guido having meanwhile himself obtained the tiara, and using every means to subdue the unbending spirits, from which danger even to the Church was dreaded.[40] Yet the old state of things was not restored: neither the rule of foreigners, nor the absolute dependence on the Papal policy. The later government of Henry III has a different character from the earlier: the legate himself confirmed Magna Charta in the shape finally accepted. It is not merely at the great national festivals that we find representatives of the towns present, whom the King has summoned; it is beyond a doubt that one of the most important statutes of the time was pa.s.sed with their consent.[41] Yet regulations for the summons of representatives from the towns were as little fixed by law as those for voting the taxes. It would by no means harmonise with the const.i.tution of Romano-German states, that organic inst.i.tutions should come into full force in mere antagonism to the highest authority. They must coincide with the interests of that authority, as was the case in England under Henry's warlike son Edward I.

Without doubt Edward, who once more revived in the East the reputation of the Plantagenet Kings for personal valour, would have preferred to fight there for the interests of Christendom, he even speaks of it in his will; or else he would have wished to recover from the French crown the lands which his father had inherited, and which had pa.s.sed into French possession; but neither the one nor the other was possible; another object was a.s.signed to his energy and his ambition, one more befitting an English king: he undertook to unite the whole island under his sceptre.

In Wales, the conquest of which had been so often attempted and so often failed, there lived at this time Prince Llewellyn, whose personal beauty, cunning, and high spirit fitted him to be a brilliant representative of the old British nationality. The bards, reviving the old prophecies, promised him the ancient crown of Brutus; but when he ventured out of the mountains, he was overpowered and fell in a hand-to-hand conflict. The English crown was not to fall to his lot, but Edward transferred the t.i.tle of Prince of Wales to his own son.

The great cross of the Welsh, the crown of Arthur, fell into his hands: he no longer tolerated the bards: their age pa.s.sed away with the Crusades.

From Wales Edward turned his arms against Scotland. There Columban had in former days anointed as king a Scottish prince, who was also of Keltic descent; how the German element nevertheless got the upper hand not merely in the greatest part of the country, but also in the ruling family, is the great problem of early Scottish history: a thoroughly Germanic monarchy had arisen, but one which after it had once given a home to the Anglo-Saxons who fled before the Normans, thought its honour concerned in repelling all English influences. A disputed succession gave Edward I an opportunity of reviving the claims of his predecessors to the overlordship of Scotland: he gave the Scotch a king, whom the Scotch rejected simply because he was the English King's nominee. The war, which sometimes seemed ended--there were times at which Edward could regard himself as the Lord of all Albion,--ever blazed out again; above all, the support the Scotch received from the King of France brought about complications which filled all Western Europe with trouble and war; but it was in the home politics of England that their effect was destined to be greatest.

Compelled to make incessant efforts, which exhausted the resources of the crown, Edward appealed to the voluntary a.s.sistance of his subjects. He laid down to them the principle, that their common perils should be met with their united strength, that what concerns all must also be borne by all. In the war against Wales he had gathered together the representatives of the counties and the towns, to hear his demands and to act accordingly; chiefly to vote him subsidies.

After the victory he had called an a.s.sembly of n.o.bles, knights, and towns, to take counsel with them about the treatment of the captives and the country. Similarly he drew together the representatives of the towns in order to decide the affairs of Scotland. With especial emphasis did he call for their united help against Philip the Fair of France, who thought to destroy the English tongue from off the earth: knights and towns were pledged to help in carrying out the resolutions thus adopted by common consent.

In spite of all this appealing to free partic.i.p.ation in public matters, Edward I did not refrain from the arbitrary imposition of taxes, and those the most oppressive: the eighth, even the fifth part of men's income. For the campaign in Flanders he summoned the under-tenants as well as the tenants in chief. We find instances of arbitrary seizure of whatever was necessary for the war.

King Edward excused this by his maxim that the interests of the land must be defended with the resources of the land,[42] but we can conceive how, on the boundary line between two different systems, acts of violence, which combined the arbitrariness of the one with the principles of the other, caused a general agitation. In the year 1297 the spiritual lords under their archbishop, as well as the temporal ones (who denied the obligation to serve beyond the sea) under the Constable and Marshal, set themselves energetically to oppose the King. The people, which had the most to suffer from the arbitrary exactions, took their side with cordial approval. They set forth all the grievances of the country, and insisted on their immediate and final redress.

To avoid the pressure, the King had already quitted England, to carry on his campaign in Flanders: the demand was laid before the Councillors whom he had left behind as a.s.sessors to his son, who was named Regent. They however were in great perplexity, partly from the trouble of this agitation itself, but mainly from the revolt in Scotland which had broken out in a formidable manner. William Walays, like one of those Heyduck chiefs who rise in Turkey against the established order of things, the right of which they do not recognise, had come down from the hill country, at the head of the fugitives and exiles, a robber-patriot, of gigantic bodily strength and innate talent for war. His successes soon increased his band to the size of an army; he beat the English in a pitched battle, and then swept over the borders into the English territory. If the royal commissioners would oppose a strong resistance to this inroad, they must needs ratify a provisional concession of the demands brought forward. The King, who had meanwhile reached Flanders, which the French had entered from two sides, could not possibly yield to the Scottish movement--whether he wished to carry on the war or make a truce: nothing therefore remained to him but to confirm the concessions made by his councillors.

It is not absolutely certain how far these had gone; one word of discussion may be allowed on the matter.

The historians of the time have maintained that the right of voting the taxes was granted to the Estates, and in fact conjointly to the n.o.bles whether spiritual or temporal, and the representatives of the counties and towns: the copy of a statute is extant, in which this is very expressly stated.[43] But since the statute does not exist in an authentic shape, and is not to be found in the Rolls of the Realm, we cannot safely base any conclusion on it. As to the date too at which it may have been pa.s.sed, our statements waver between the twenty-eighth and the thirty-fourth year of Edward. On the other hand we find in the collection of charters an undoubted charter of confirmation given at Ghent and dated 5 November 1297, in which not merely are the Great Charter of Henry III and the Forest Charter confirmed, but also some new arrangements of much importance guaranteed, and confirmed by ecclesiastico-judicial regulations.[44]

According to it the grants of taxes and contributions which had been hitherto made to the King for his wars were not to be regarded as binding for the future. He reserves only the old customary taxes: to the higher clergy, the n.o.bility, and the commons of the land the a.s.surance is given, that under no circ.u.mstances, however pressing, should any tax or contribution or requisition--not even the export duty on wool--be levied except by their common consent and for the interests of all.[45] In the Latin text all sounds more open and less reserved: but even the words of the authentic doc.u.ment include a very essential limitation of the prerogative of the crown, which hitherto had alone exercised the right of estimating what the state needed and of fixing the payments by this standard. The King was averse at heart to the limitation even in this form. When he came back from Flanders after concluding a truce with France, and army and people were met together at York, to carry out a great campaign against Scotland, he was pressed to confirm on English soil the concessions which he had granted on foreign ground.[46] He held it advisable that the campaign should be first carried through; four of his confidential friends swore in his stead (since an oath in person was thought unbecoming to the King), that, the campaign ended, the confirmation should not be wanting. The enterprise was most successful, it led to a great victory over the Scots, and it was the leaders of the English aristocracy who did the best service there; nevertheless, when they met together next Lent (1299) in London, the King strove to avoid an absolute promise: he wished to expressly reserve the undefined 'rights of the crown.'

But this delay aroused a general storm: and as he was quite convinced that he could not, under this condition, reckon on further support in the war which still continued, he at last submitted to what was unavoidable, and allowed his clause to drop.[47]

I do not know whether I am mistaken in ascribing to these concessions a different character from that of the earlier ones. It was not a sovereign defeated and reduced to the deepest humiliation who made them, nor did the barons obtain articles which aimed at securing their own direct supremacy: the concessions were the result of the war, which could not be carried on with the existing means. When Edward I laid stress on the necessity of greater common efforts, the counter-demand which was made on him, and to which he yielded, merely implied that a common resolution should be previously come to. His concessions included a return for service already done, and a condition for future service. It did not abase the royal authority; it brought into clear view the unity of interests between the crown and the nation.

Another great crisis united them for the second time. As Edward led the forces of England year by year across the Tweed, to compel the Scots to acknowledge his overlordship by the edge of the sword, the Pope who a.s.sumed himself to be the Suzerain of the kingdoms of the world, Boniface VIII, met him with the a.s.sertion that Scotland belonged to the Church of Rome, the King therefore was violating the rights of that Church by his invasions. To confront the Pope, King Edward thought it best, as did Philip the Fair of France about the same time, to call in his Estates to his aid, since without them no answer to the claim was possible. The Estates then in a long letter not merely maintain the right of the English crown, but also reject the Pope's claim to decide respecting it as arbiter, as incompatible with the royal dignity: even if the King wished it, yet they would never lend a hand to anything so unseemly and so unheard of.[48] The King, without regard to the Pope, continued his campaigns against Scotland with unabated energy.

It marks the character of Edward I that he nevertheless did not break with the Papacy on this account; so too he still raised taxes that had not been voted, and held Parliaments in the old form: when representatives of the counties and towns were summoned it is not always clear whether they were elected or named.[49] Edward I could not free himself from the habits of arbitrary rule and the old ideas connected with them. But with all this it is still undeniable that under him the monarchy took a far more national position than before; it no longer stood in a hostile att.i.tude as against the community of the land, but belonged to it.

And his successors soon saw themselves forced to complete still further the foundations of a new state of things, which had been thus laid.

Under Edward II the old ambition of the barons to take a preponderant part in the government reappeared once more with the greatest violence. The occasion was afforded by the weakness of this sovereign, who allowed his favourite, the Gascon Gaveston, a disastrous influence on affairs. Discontented with this, the King's nearest cousin, Thomas of Lancaster, placed himself at the head of the great n.o.bles, as indeed he was believed to have sworn to his father in law (whose rich possessions pa.s.sed to him, and who feared a return of the foreign influences), that he would adhere to the interest of the barons, which was also that of the country. In the fourth year of his government Edward was obliged to accept all the regulations made by a Committee of the n.o.bles called the 'Ordainers.'

Without advice of the n.o.bles he was forbidden either to begin a war, or to fill up high offices of State, or even to leave the country: the officers of the crown were to be responsible to them. Gaveston had to pay for his short possession of influence by death without mercy.

It was long before the King found men who had the courage to defend the lawful authority of the crown. At last the two Hugh Despencers undertook it: under their leadership the barons were defeated, and Thomas of Lancaster in his turn paid for his enterprises with his life. For in England, if anywhere, the a.s.sumption of power led inevitably to the scaffold.

It is hardly needful to say that the regulations of the Ordainers were now revoked. But must not some means be also thought of, to prevent similar acts of violence for the future? It was deemed necessary to declare even the form, under cover of which they had been ratified, invalid for all time. And so an enactment was now made, in which the first definite idea of the Parliamentary Monarchy becomes visible. It was declared that never for the future should any ordinance affecting the King's power and proceeding from his subjects be valid, but only that should be law which was discussed, agreed on, and enacted in Parliament by the King with the consent of the prelates, the earls and barons, and the commonalty of the realm.[50] For it was above all things necessary to withdraw the legislative authority for ever from the turbulent grandees. The monarchy opposed to them its alliance with the commonalty of the realm, as it was expressed by the representatives of the knights and the commons. Among the founders of the English const.i.tution these Hugh Despencers, through whom the legislative power was first transferred to the united body of King Lords and Commons, take a very important position.

This thought was however rather one left for the future to carry out, than one which swayed or contented the English world at the time.

Edward II fell before a new attack of the revolted barons, with whom even his wife was allied: he had to think it a piece of good fortune that, on the ground of his own abdication, his son was acknowledged as his successor. The latter however could only obtain real possession of the royal power by overthrowing the faction to which his father had succ.u.mbed. While he restored the memory of the two Despencers, who had been condemned and executed by the barons, he also decided to carry on a Parliamentary government; it is the first that existed in England.