Edward I

I

Introduction

Edward I, called Longshanks (1239-1307), King of England (1272-1307), son of Henry III, regarded as one of the great Plantagenet kings. The first half of his reign witnessed the consolidation of the realm after the troubles of the 1260s; the conquest of Wales; the transformation of the law by a series of statutes; and the development of Parliament. Edward’s later years were more difficult. War with France achieved little, and his wars in Scotland were ultimately unsuccessful. He faced a serious political crisis in 1297, and many issues were still unresolved at the time of his death.

II

Upbringing and Early Career

Edward was born on June 17, 1239, the eldest son of Henry III and Eleanor of Provence. The name that Henry chose for the baby reflected his devotion to the cult of Edward the Confessor, in whose church of Westminster Abbey the baptism took place. The boy soon had his own household. In it he had the company of other children, notably his cousin Henry of Almain. Little is known of his education, but by the time he was almost 17 he had sufficient martial skills to take part in a tournament specially arranged for him.

Edward married Eleanor, daughter of Alphonso X of Castile, in 1254, when he was 15 and she 13. This was to be a remarkable match. The couple were devoted to each other, and Eleanor accompanied her husband as he travelled both in England and abroad in a way that few queens did. When she died in 1290, the route taken by the funeral entourage was marked by the building of the splendid Eleanor Crosses. With marriage came a degree of financial autonomy. Edward received an impressive landed endowment from his father, consisting of most of Ireland, the king’s conquests in north Wales, along with important lands in south Wales, the earldom of Chester, and various estates in England. Yet he had little real independence at this stage. Henry III’s court was dominated by factions. The king’s own half-brothers, sons of his mother, Isabella of Angoulême, by marriage to her second husband Guy de Lusignan, were ambitious and ruthless. The queen’s relatives from Savoy formed another powerful group. Until 1257, Edward was largely under the influence of the Savoyards. However, the power of this faction waned, and as the influence of the Lusignans rose, so Edward attached himself to their group.

With the political crisis that burst on England in 1258, the young heir to the throne began to play an independent, but hardly consistent, role. The crisis was the result of widespread dissatisfaction with Henry III’s rule. One of the leaders of the opposition was Edward’s uncle, Simon de Montfort, Earl of Leicester. Initially, Edward sided with the Lusignans, whose expulsion from the realm was demanded by the reformers. In March 1259 he made an alliance with the Earl of Gloucester. The agreement lists Edward’s supporters, an influential group of young men, including his cousin, Henry of Almain, son of the Earl of Cornwall, Earl Warenne, Roger Clifford, and Roger Leyburn. In October 1259 Edward switched his political allegiance again, and declared his support for Simon de Montfort. The earlier alliance with Gloucester turned to enmity. Edward took the opportunity of the king’s departure for France in November 1259 to appoint his friends to influential positions. There was a real danger that his quarrel with Gloucester would result in civil war, and on Henry III’s return to England in May 1260 the king put Edward back into leading reins. It seems likely that he had another brief flirtation with the baronial opposition in the spring of 1261, but he spent much of the period from 1260 to 1263 abroad, enjoying himself in tournaments. In 1263 he returned to deal with the problems resulting from Llywelyn ab Gruffudd’s military successes in the Welsh borders. Edward had no success against the Welsh. He worked hard, however, to rebuild his political support, particularly among the Welsh marcher lords; the cynical view was that he won men over by granting them land.

In 1264 matters came to a head. The French king, Louis IX, had been asked to mediate in the dispute between the king and Simon de Montfort. His verdict backed Henry III. Montfort had no option other than to resort to arms. At Lewes he won an unexpected victory. In the early stages of the battle Edward successfully charged one wing of the baronial army, pursuing them far from the main battlefield. By the time he and his men returned it was to find that the royalist cause was lost. Edward and his cousin Henry of Almain gave themselves up as hostages, so allowing many of the marcher lords who supported Edward to remain free. In May of the following year Edward escaped from custody. Men flocked to support him, and at Evesham the royalists under Edward’s command slew Montfort, and won a decisive victory. Edward had a strong voice in the government of the late 1260s, but not a completely dominant one. In 1268 he took the cross, and his attention was increasingly directed towards a crusade.

III

The Crusade

The force that sailed with Edward in the summer of 1270 on crusade was small; the contracts he made with his followers suggest that he had about 225 knights with him. He arrived in southern France too late to join the main expedition under Louis X, which went to Tunis. By the time he arrived, hostilities were over. From Tunis, the fleet sailed for Sicily, where the majority of the crusaders abandoned the expedition. Edward determinedly carried on, and in May 1271 he arrived at Acre. He was able to conduct a couple of raids against the Muslims, but a truce spelled the end of further military action. The most famous incident on the expedition took place in June 1272, when a Muslim assassin attacked him. Edward was wounded with a poisoned dagger, but managed to kill his attacker. The romantic tale is that his wife, Eleanor, sucked the poison from the wound, but it was more probably the skill of an English surgeon that saved his life.

The crusade did little to help preserve the Crusader kingdom of Jerusalem. It was very expensive, and England would need to be heavily taxed to meet the costs. Edward had demonstrated obstinate determination in pursuing a project that others quickly realized had little chance of success. At the same time he was cautious in the policies he adopted when he reached the East. The Crusade was, however, viewed as a noble cause, and Edward’s reputation was undoubtedly much enhanced by his participation in it, the more so because his father, despite all his piety, had never himself taken part in a Crusade.

IV

Accession and Early Reign

Edward was in southern Italy, returning from the Crusade, when he became king in 1272. He did not hasten to England, but went first to Gascony in France. He reached England only in 1274. In his absence, the country had been well run by a council; echoes of the troubles of the 1260s had been few. Edward had learned from the reforms of those years, and his government took forward some elements of the baronial programme, notably those dealing with issues at the local level. A massive inquiry into a wide range of matters was set up, which yielded the Hundred Rolls. These provided details of many abuses, from the usurpation of royal rights to the misdeeds of local officials. The same year also saw the government put on a more secure financial footing. Customs duties on the export of wool were agreed in Parliament in the spring, and in the autumn a tax of one-fifteenth of the value of people’s movable goods (mostly food and animals) was granted. In 1279 a complete re-coinage was begun. Not all change was successful, however; an attempt in 1275 to reorganize the running of royal estates by appointing three stewards had foundered by 1282.

The early period of the reign was one of astonishing creativity and change in government. Further detailed investigations at a local level took place in 1279. Returns survive for no more than five counties, but this was a survey far more detailed than William I’s Domesday Book. More inquiries were undertaken in 1285. Edward’s government had an astonishing wealth of information in its hands. The Statute of Rhuddlan of 1284 instituted a major overhaul of financial administration and exchequer procedure. Much was done to simplify and improve procedures, and to provide for every eventuality. What Edward did not achieve was full solvency. He was dependent on loans from his Italian bankers, the Riccardi of Lucca, and on grants of taxation.

Edward spent the years 1286 to 1289 in Gascony, and on his return was convinced that much had gone wrong in his absence. He conducted a large-scale purge of the judiciary and dismissed many of his officials. Financial solvency was bought for a time by the king’s decision to expel the Jews from England in 1290, as a grateful Parliament granted a tax of one-fifteenth in return. Heavy taxation of the Jews over many years meant that they were no longer useful to the king as a source of finance; the decision to expel them was also influenced by their failure to fulfil the terms of the Statute of the Jews of 1275. This had forbidden usury, and had given the Jews 15 years in which to become merchants or artisans—an impossible target. The great period of reform and change ended in the early 1290s. Two very important men were removed from the scene. Ralph Hengham, chief justice of the King’s Bench, was dismissed in 1290, and the chancellor, Robert Burnell, died in 1292. The loss of their influence was crucial. Edward’s later years saw no more large-scale inquiries such as those of 1275, 1279, and 1285. Legislation was far more limited in scope. The attention of the government became increasingly focused upon war.