Early European History Part 91

The early English Parliament was not a law-making but a tax-voting body.

The king would call the two houses in session only when he needed their sanction for raising money. Parliament in its turn would refuse to grant supplies until the king had corrected abuses in the administration or had removed unpopular officials. This control of the public purse in time enabled Parliament to grasp other powers. It became an accepted principle that royal officials were responsible to Parliament for their actions, that the king himself might be deposed for good cause, and that bills, when pa.s.sed by Parliament and signed by the king, were the law of the land. England thus worked out in the Middle Ages a system of parliamentary government which nearly all civilized nations have held worthy of imitation.

186. EXPANSION OF ENGLAND UNDER EDWARD I, 1272-1307 A.D.

THE BRITISH ISLES

Our narrative has been confined until now to England, which forms, together with Wales and Scotland, the island known as Great Britain.

Ireland is the only other important division of the United Kingdom. It was almost inevitable that in process of time the British Isles should have come under a single government, but political unity has not yet fused English, Scotch, Welsh, and Irish into a single people.

WALES

The conquest of Britain by the Anglo-Saxons drove many of the Welsh, [14]

as the invaders called the Britons, into the western part of the island.

This district, henceforth known as Wales, was one of the last strongholds of the Celts. Even to-day a variety of the old Celtic language, called Cymric, is still spoken by the Welsh people.

CONQUEST OF WALES

In their wild and mountainous country the Welsh long resisted all attempts to subjugate them. Harold exerted some authority over Wales, William the Conqueror entered part of it, and Henry II induced the local rulers to acknowledge him as overlord, but it was Edward I who first brought all Wales under English sway. Edward fostered the building of towns in his new possession, divided it into counties or shires, after the system that prevailed in England, and introduced the Common law. He called his son, Edward II, who was born in the country, the "Prince of Wales," and this t.i.tle has ever since been borne by the heir apparent to the English throne. The work of uniting Wales to England went on slowly, and two centuries elapsed before Wales was granted representation in the House of Commons.

[Ill.u.s.tration: CORONATION CHAIR, WESTMINSTER ABBEY Every English ruler since Edward I has been crowned in this oak chair.

Under the seat is the "Stone of Scone," said to have been once used by the patriarch Jacob. Edward I brought it to London in 1291 A.D., as a token of the subjection of Scotland.]

SCOTLAND

Scotland derives its name from the Scots, who came over from Ireland early in the fifth century. [15] The northern Highlands, a nest of rugged mountains washed by cold and stormy seas, have always been occupied in historic times by a Celtic-speaking people, whose language, called Gaelic, is not yet extinct there. This part of Scotland, like Wales, was a home of freedom. The Romans did not attempt to annex the Highlands, and the Anglo- Saxons and Danes never penetrated their fastnesses. On the other hand the southern Lowlands, which include only about one-third of Scotland, were subdued by the Teutonic invaders, and so this district became thoroughly English in language and culture. [16]

[Ill.u.s.tration: Map, SCOTLAND in the 13th Century]

THE SCOTTOSH KINGDOM

One might suppose that the Lowlands, geographically only an extension of northern England and inhabited by an English-speaking people, would have early united with the southern kingdom. But matters turned out otherwise.

The Lowlands and the Highlands came together under a line of Celtic kings, who fixed their residence at Edinburgh and long maintained their independence.

SCOTLAND ANNEXED BY EDWARD I

Edward I, having conquered Wales, took advantage of the disturbed conditions which prevailed in Scotland to interfere in the affairs of that country. The Scotch offered a brave but futile resistance under William Wallace. This heroic leader, who held out after most of his countrymen submitted, was finally captured and executed. His head, according to the barbarous practice of the time, was set upon a pole on London Bridge. The English king now annexed Scotland without further opposition.

[Ill.u.s.tration: A QUEEN ELEANOR CROSS After the death of his wife Eleanor, Edward I caused a memorial cross to be set up at each place where her funeral procession had stopped on its way to London. There were originally seven crosses. Of the three that still exist, the Geddington cross is the best preserved. It consists of three stories and stands on a platform of eight steps.]

ROBERT BRUCE AND BANNOCKBURN, 1314 A.D.

But William Wallace by his life and still more by his death had lit a fire which might never be quenched. Soon the Scotch found another champion in the person of Robert Bruce. Edward I, now old and broken, marched against him, but died before reaching the border. The weakness of his son, Edward II, permitted the Scotch, ably led by Bruce, to win the signal victory of Bannockburn, near Stirling Castle. Here the Scottish spearmen drove the English knighthood into ignominious flight and freed their country from its foreign overlords.

SCOTTISH INDEPENDENCE

The battle of Bannockburn made a nation. A few years afterwards the English formally recognized the independence of the northern kingdom. So the great design of Edward I to unite all the peoples of Britain under one government had to be postponed for centuries. [17]

IRELAND

No one kingdom ever arose in Ireland out of the numerous tribes into which the Celtic-speaking inhabitants were divided. The island was not troubled, however, by foreign invaders till the coming of the Northmen in the ninth century. [18] The English, who first entered Ireland during the reign of Henry II, did not complete its conquest till the seventeenth century.

Ireland by its situation could scarcely fail to become an appanage of Great Britain, but the dividing sea has combined with differences in race, language, and religion, and with English misgovernment, to prevent anything like a genuine union of the conquerors and the conquered.

187. UNIFICATION OF FRANCE, 987-1328 A.D.

PHYSICAL FRANCE

Nature seems to have intended that France should play a leading part in European affairs. The geographical unity of the country is obvious.

Mountains and seas form its permanent boundaries, except on the north-east where the frontier is not well defined. The western coast of France opens on the Atlantic, now the greatest highway of the world's commerce, while on the southeast France touches the Mediterranean, the home of cla.s.sical civilization. This intermediate position between two seas helps us to understand why French history should form, as it were, a connecting link between ancient and modern times.

RACIAL FRANCE

But the greatness of France has been due, also, to the qualities of the French people. Many racial elements have contributed to the population.

The blood of prehistoric tribes, whose monuments and grave mounds are scattered over the land, still flows in the veins of Frenchmen. At the opening of historic times France was chiefly occupied by the Celts, whom Julius Caesar found there and subdued. The Celts, or Gauls, have formed in later ages the main stock of the French nation, but their language gave place to Latin after the Roman conquest. In the course of five hundred years the Gauls were so thoroughly Romanized that they may best be described as Gallo-Romans. The Burgundians, Franks, and Northmen afterwards added a Teutonic element to the population, as well as some infusion of Teutonic laws and customs.

THE CAPETIAN DYNASTY

France, again, became a great nation because of the greatness of its rulers. Hugh Capet, who became the French king in 987 A.D., [19] was fortunate in his descendants. The Capetian dynasty was long lived, and for more than three centuries son followed father on the throne without a break in the succession. [20] During this time the French sovereigns worked steadily to exalt the royal power and to unite the feudal states of medieval France into a real nation under a common government. Their success in this task made them, at the close of the Middle Ages, the strongest monarchs in Europe.

FRANCE AND ITS FIEFS

Hugh Capet's duchy--the original France--included only a small stretch of inland country centering about Paris on the Seine and Orleans on the Loire. His election to the kingship did not increase his power over the great lords who ruled in Normandy, Brittany, Aquitaine, Burgundy, and other parts of the country. They did homage to the king for their fiefs and performed the usual feudal services, but otherwise regarded themselves as independent in their own territories.

[Ill.u.s.tration: Map, UNIFICATION OF FRANCE DURING THE MIDDLE AGES]

PHILIP II, AUGUSTUS, 1180-1223 A.D.

The most considerable additions to the royal domains were made by Philip II, called Augustus. We have already referred to his contest with Pope Innocent III and to his partic.i.p.ation in the Third Crusade. [21] The English king, John, was Philip's va.s.sal for Normandy and other provinces in France. A quarrel between the two rulers gave Philip an opportunity to declare John's fiefs forfeited by feudal law. Philip then seized all the English possessions north of the river Loire. The loss of these possessions abroad had the result of separating England almost completely from Continental interests; for France it meant a great increase in territory and population. Philip made Paris his chief residence, and that city henceforth became the capital of France.

LOUIS IX, THE SAINT, 1226-1276 A.D.

During the long reign of Philip's grandson, Louis IX, rich districts to the west of the Rhone were added to the royal domains. This king, whose Christian virtues led to his canonization, distinguished himself as an administrator. His work in unifying France may be compared with that of Henry II in England. He decreed that only the king's money was to circulate in the provinces owned directly by himself, thus limiting the right of coinage enjoyed by feudal lords. He restricted very greatly the right of private war and forbade the use of judicial duels. Louis also provided that important cases could be appealed from feudal courts to the king's judges, who sat in Paris and followed in their decisions the principles of Roman law. In these and other ways he laid the foundations of absolute monarchy in France.

PHILIP IV, THE FAIR, 1265-1314 A.D.

The grandson of St. Louis, Philip IV, did much to organize a financial system for France. Now that the kingdom had become so large and powerful, the old feudal dues were insufficient to pay the salaries of the royal officials and support a standing army. Philip resorted to new methods of raising revenue by imposing various taxes and by requiring the feudal lords to subst.i.tute payments in money for the military service due from them.

THE ESTATES-GENERAL

Philip also called into existence the Estates-General, an a.s.sembly in which the clergy, the n.o.bles, and representatives from the commons (the "third estate") met as separate bodies and voted grants of money. The Estates-General arose almost at the same time as the English Parliament, to which it corresponded, but it never secured the extensive authority of that body. After a time the kings of France became so powerful that they managed to reign without once summoning the nation in council. The French did not succeed, as the English had done, in founding political liberty upon the vote and control of taxation.

188. THE HUNDRED YEARS' WAR BETWEEN FRANCE AND ENGLAND, 1337-1453 A.D.

PRETEXT FOR THE WAR

The task of unifying France was interrupted by a deplorable war between that country and England. It continued, including periods of truce, for over a century. The pretext for the war was found in a disputed succession. In 1328 A.D. the last of the three sons of Philip IV pa.s.sed away, and the direct line of the house of Capet, which had reigned over France for more than three hundred years, came to an end. The English ruler, Edward III, whose mother was the daughter of Philip IV, considered himself the next lineal heir. The French n.o.bles were naturally unwilling to receive a foreigner as king, and gave the throne, instead, to a nephew of Philip IV. This decision was afterwards justified on the ground that, by the old law of the Salian Franks, women could neither inherit estates nor transmit them to a son. [22]