not bound to it by his tenure; his visible reluctance to confirm the Great Charter, as if that concession had no validity from the deeds of his predecessors; the captious clause which he at last annexed to his confirmation; his procuring of the pope's dispensation from the oaths which he had taken to observe that charter; and his levying of talliages at discretion even after the statute, or rather charter, by which he had renounced that prerogative; these are so many demonstrations of his arbitrary disposition, and prove with what exception and reserve we ought to celebrate his love of justice. He took care that his subjects should do justice to each other, but he desired always to have his own hands free in all his transactions, both with them and with his neighbors. The chief obstacle to the execution of justice in those times was the power of the great barons; and Edward was perfectly qualified, by his character and abilities, for keeping these tyrants in awe, and restraining their illegal practices. This salutary purpose was accordingly the great object of his attention; yet was he imprudently led into a measure which tended to increase and confirm their dangerous au thority. He passed a statute which, by allowing them to entail their estates, made it impracticable to diminish the property of the great families, and left them every means of increase and acquisition.* * Edward observed a contrary policy with regard to the church: he seems to have been the first Christian prince that passed a statute of mortmain; and prevented by law the clergy from making new acquisitions of lands, which by the ecclesiastical canons they were forever prohibited from alienating. The opposition between his maxims with regard to the nobility and to the ecclesiastics, leads us to conjecture, that it was only by chance he passed the beneficial statute of mortmain, and that his sole object was to maintain the num ber of knights' fees, and to prevent the superiors from being defrauded of the profits of wardship, marriage, livery, and other emoluments arising from the feudal tenures. This is, Indeed, the reason assigned in the statute itself, and appears to have been his real object in enacting it. The author of the Annals of Waverley ascribes this act chiefly to the king's anxiety for maintaining the military force of the kingdom; but adds, that he was mistaken in his purpose; for that the Brady of Boroughs, p. 25, from the records Amalekites were overcome more by the prayers of Moses than by the sword of the Israelites.* The statute of mortmain was often evaded afterwards by the invention of “ uses." Edward was active in restraining the usurpations of the church; and excepting his ardor for crusades, which adhered to him during his whole life, seems in other respects to have been little infected with superstition, the vice chiefly of weak minds. But the passion for crusades was really in that age the passion for glory. As the pope now felt himself somewhat more restrained in his former practice of pillaging the several churches in Europe by laying impositions upon them, he permitted the generals of particular orders, who resided at Rome, to levy taxes on the convents subjected to their jurisdiction; and Edward was obliged to enact a law against this new abuse. It was also become a practice of the court of Rome to provide successors to benefices before they became vacant: Edward found it likewise necessary to prevent by law this species of injustice. The tribute of one thousand marks a year, to which King John, in doing homage to the pope, had subjected the kingdom, had been pretty regularly paid since his time, though the vassalage was constantly denied, and indeed, for fear of giving offence, had been but little insisted on. The payment was called by a new name of " census," not by that of tribute. King Edward seems to have always paid this money with great reluctance; and he suffered the arrears at one time to run on for six years,† at another for eleven: but as princes in that age stood continually in need of the pope's good offices, for dispensations of marriage and for other concessions, the court of Rome always found means, sooner or later, to catch the money. The levying of first-fruits was also a new device begun in this reign, by which his holiness thrust his fingers very frequently into the purses of the faithful; and the king seems to have unwarily given way to it. In the former reign, the taxes had been partly scutages, partly such a proportional part of the movables as was granted by parliament; in this, scutages were entirely dropped, and the assessment on movables was the chief method of taxation. Edward, in his fourth year, had a fifteenth granted him; in his fifth year, a twelfth; in his eleventh year, a *Page 234. See also M. West. p. 409. Rymer, vol. ii. p. 862. thirtieth from the laity, a twentieth from the clergy; in his eighteenth year, a fifteenth; in his twenty-second year, a tenth from the laity, a sixth from London and other corporate towns, half of their benefices from the clergy; in his twentythird year, an eleventh from the barons and others, a tenth from the clergy, a seventh from the burgesses; in his twentyfourth year, a twelfth from the barons and others, an eight from the burgesses, from the clergy nothing, because of the pope's inhibition; in his twenty-fifth year, an eighth from the laity, a tenth from the clergy of Canterbury, a fifth from those of York; in his twenty-ninth year, a fifteenth from the laity, on account of his confirming the perambulations of the forests; the clergy granted nothing; in his thirty-third year, first, a thirtieth from the barons and others, and a twentieth from the burgesses, then a fifteenth from all his subjects; in his thirty fourth year, a thirtieth from all his subjects, for knighting his eldest son. These taxes were moderate; but the king had also duties upon exportation and importation granted him from time to time the heaviest were commonly upon wool. Poundage. or a shilling a pound, was not regularly granted the kings for life till the reign of Henry V. in 1296, the famous mercantile society, called the "merchant adventurers," had its first origin: it was instituted for the improvement of the woollen manufacture, and the vending of the cloth abroad, particularly at Antwerp: * for the English at this time scarcely thought of any more distant com merce. This king granted a charter or declaration of protection and privileges to foreign merchants, and also ascertained the customs or duties which those merchants were in return to pay on merchandise imported and exported. He promised them security; allowed them a jury on trials, consisting half of natives, half of foreigners; and appointed them a justiciary in London for their protection. But notwithstanding this seeming attention to foreign merchants, Edward did not free them from the cruel hardship of making one answerable for the debts, and even for the crimes of another, that came from the same country. We read of such practices among the present barbarous nations. The king also imposed on them a duty * Anderson's History of Commerce, vol. i. of two shillings on each tun of wine imported, over and above the old duty; and forty pence on each sack of wool exported besides half a mark, the former duty.* In the year 1303, the exchequer was robbed, and of no less a sum than one hundred thousand pounds, as is pretended.† The abbot and monks of Westminster were indicted for this robbery, but acquitted. It does not appear that the king ever discovered the criminals with certainty, though his indignation fell on the society of Lombard merchants, particularly the Frescobaldi, very opulent Florentines. The pope having in 1307 collected much money in Eng. land, the king enjoined the nuncio not to export it in specie, but in bills of exchange; ‡ a proof that commerce was but ill understood at that time. : Edward had by his first wife, Eleanor of Castile, four sons; but Edward, his heir and successor, was the only one that survived him. She also bore him eleven daughters, most of whom died in their infancy of the surviving, Joan wag married first to the earl of Glocester, and after his death to Ralph de Monthermer: Margaret espoused John, duke of Brabant: Elizabeth espoused first John, earl of Holland, and afterwards the earl of Hereford: Mary was a nun at Ambresbury. He had by his second wife, Margaret of France, two sons and a daughter; Thomas, created earl of Norfolk and mareschal of England; and Edmund, who was created earl of Kent by his brother when king. The princess died in her infancy. Rymer, vol. iv. p. 361. It is the charter of Edward I. which is thre confirmed by Edward III. Rymer, vol. ii. p. 1092. Rymer, vol. ii. p. 930. [1307.] THE prepossessions entertained in favor of young Edward, kept the English from being fully sensible of the extreme loss which they had sustained by the death of the great monarch who filled the throne; and all men hastened with alacrity to take the oath of allegiance to his son and successor. This prince was in the twenty-third year of his age, was of an agreeable figure, of a mild and gentle disposition, and having never discovered a propensity to any dangerous vice, it was natural to prognosticate tranquillity and happiness from his government. But the first act of his reign blasted all these hopes, and showed him to be totally unqualified for that perilous situation in which every English monarch during those ages had, from the unstable form of the constitution, and the turbulent dispositions of the people derived from it, the misfortune to be placed. The indefatigable Robert Bruce, though his army had been dispersed, and he himself had been obliged to take shelter in the Western Isles, remained not long inactive; but before the death of the late king, had sallied from his retreat, had again collected his followers, had appeared in the field, and had obtained by surprise an important advantage over Aymer de Valence, who commanded the English forces.* He was now become so considerable as to have afforded the king of England sufficient glory in subduing him, without incurring any danger of seeing all those mighty preparations, made by his father, fail in he enterprise. But Edward, instead of pursuing his advan *Trivet, p. 346. |