Edward had made alliances to strengthen himself. He had married his daughter Eleanor to the Count of Bar, and Margaret to the heir of Brabant, and betrothed his son Edward to the only daughter of Guy Dampierre, Count of Flanders, thus hoping to restrain Philippe without breaking the peace.
Unluckily, in 1294, a sailors' quarrel took place between the crews of an English and a Norman ship upon the French coast. They had both landed to replenish their stock of water, and disputed which had the right first to fill their casks. In the fray, a Norman was killed, and his shipmates, escaping, took their revenge by boarding another English vessel, and hanging a poor, innocent Bayonne merchant from the masthead, with a dog fastened to his feet. Retaliation followed upon revenge; and while the two kings professed to be at peace, every ship from their ports went armed, and fierce struggles took place wherever there was an encounter. Slaughter and plunder fell upon the defeated, for the sailors were little better than savage pirates, and were unrestrained by authority. Edward, who had a right to a share in all captures made by his subjects, refused to accept of any portion of these, though he did not put a stop to them. The Irish and Dutch vessels took part with the English, the Genoese with the French. At last, upward of two hundred French ships met at St. Mahe in Brittany, and their crews rejoiced over the captures which they had obtained, and held a great carousal. Eighty well-manned English vessels had, however, sailed from the Cinque Ports, and, surrounding St. Mahe, sent a challenge to their enemies. It was accepted; a ship was moored in the midst, as a point round which the two fleets might assemble, and a hot contest took place, fiercely fought upon either side; but English seamanship prevailed over superior numbers, every French ship was sunk or taken, and, horrible to relate, not one of their crews was spared.
Such destruction provoked Philippe, and he summoned Edward, as Duke of Aquitaine, to deliver up to him such Gascons as had taken part in the battle. This Edward neglected, whereupon Philippe sent to seize the lands of Perigord, and, on being repulsed by the seneschal, called on Edward to appear at his court within twenty days, to answer for his misdeeds, on pain of forfeiting the province of Gascony. Edward sent first the Bishop of London, and afterward his brother Edmund Crouchback, to represent him. Edmund's second wife was the mother of Philippe's queen, and it was therefore expected that he would the more easily come to terms, especially as he was commissioned to offer the hand of his royal brother to Blanche, the sister of Philippe, a maiden who inherited the unusual beauty of her family. Apparently all was easily arranged: Philippe promised Edmund that if, as a matter of form, Gascony were put into his hands by way of forfeit, it should be restored at the end of forty days on the intercession of the two ladies, and Blanche should be betrothed to the King.
All was thus arranged. But at the end of the forty days it proved that what Philippe had once grasped he had no notion of releasing; and, moreover, that Blanche la Belle was promised to Albert of Hapsburg! If Edward chose to marry any French princess at all, he was welcome to her little sister Marguerite, a child of eleven, while Edward was fifty-five. The excuse offered was, that Edward, had not obeyed the summons in person, and that another outrage had been perpetrated on the coast. After another summons, he was adjudged to lose not only Gascony, but all Aquitaine.
On discovering how he had been duped, Edward's first impulse was to send out his writs to collect his vassals to recover Gascony, chastise the insolent ill faith of Philippe, and to stir up his foreign connections to support him. He collected his troops at Portsmouth, hoping to augment his army by a general release of prisoners, Scottish, Welsh, and malefactors alike; but while he was detained seven weeks by contrary winds, all these men, after taking his pay, made their escape, and either returned to their countries, or marauded in the woods. A great insurrection broke out in Wales, and he was forced to hasten thither, and from thence was called away to quell the rising of the Scottish barons against Balliol.
Meanwhile, it fared ill with his foreign allies. The Duke of Brabant, father-in-law to his daughter Margaret, was killed in a tournament at the court of her sister Eleanor; and when Eleanor's husband, Henri of Bar, took up arms in the English cause, and marched into Champagne, he was defeated, and made prisoner by the Queen of France. The poor old Count of Flanders and his Countess were invited to Paris by Philippe, who insisted that they should bring his godchild and namesake, the betrothed of young Edward, to visit him. When they arrived, they were all thrown into the prison of the Louvre, on the plea that Guy had no right to bestow his daughter in marriage without permission from his suzerain.
Edward's head was so full of Scotland, that he was shamefully indifferent to the sufferings of his friends in his behalf. Poor Eleanor of Bar, after striving hard to gain her husband's freedom, died of grief, after a few months; and Guy of Flanders contrived to obtain his own release by promising to renounce the English alliance; but Philippe would not set free the poor young Philippa, whom he kept in his hands as a hostage.
One cause of the King's neglect was his great distress for money. He had learnt to have recourse to his father's disgraceful plea of a sham Crusade, and thus, for six years, gained a tenth of the Church revenues; but in 1294, requiring a further supply, he made a demand of half the year's income of the clergy. The new Archbishop, Robert Winchelsea, was gone to Rome to receive his pall; the Dean of St. Paul's, who was sent to remonstrate with the King, died suddenly in his presence; but Edward was not touched, and sent a knight to address the assembled clergy, telling them that any reverend father who dared to oppose the royal will would be considered to have broken the King's peace. In terror they yielded for that time; but they sent a petition to the Pope, who, in return, granted a bull forbidding any subsidies to be paid by church lands to the King without his permission.
Little did Edward reck of this decree. He knew that Boniface VIII. had his hands full of his quarrels with the Romans and with Philippe le Bel, and his own ambition was fast searing the conscience once so generous and tender. Again he convened the clergy to grant his exactions, but Archbishop Winchelsea replied that they had two lords, spiritual and temporal; they owed the superior obedience to the spiritual lord, and would therefore grant nothing till the Pope should have ratified the demand; for which purpose they would send messengers to Rome.
The lay barons backed Edward in making a declaration of outlawry against the clergy, and seizing all the ecclesiastical property, both lands and treasures, except what was within churches or burying-grounds, declaring that, if not redeemed by submission before Easter, all should be forfeited forever. The Archbishop of York came to terms; but the Archbishop of Canterbury held out, and was deprived of everything, retiring to a country village, where he acted as parish priest, and lived upon the alms of the parishioners. He held a synod, where excommunication was denounced on those who seized church property; but the censures of the Church had lost their terrors, and the clergy gradually made their peace with the King, Winchelsea himself among the last.
The laity had looked on quietly at the oppression of the clergy, and indeed had borne their share of exactions; but these came at last to a point beyond endurance, and Edward's need, and their obstinate resistance, led to another step in the formation of our constitution.
In 1297 he made a new alliance with Guy of Flanders, and was fitting out three armies, against Scotland, Guienne, and Flanders. To raise the means, he exacted five marks as a duty on each sack of wool exported to Flanders, and made ruinous requisitions for wheat on the landowners. Merchants and burghers, barons and clergy, took counsel together, and finding each other all of one mind, resolved to make a stand against this tax on wool, which was called the 'Evil Toll,' and to establish what Magna Carta had already declared, that the nation would not be taxed against its own consent.
The King's brother, Edmund of Lancaster, had lately died while commanding in Guienne, and Edward, meeting his vassals at Salisbury, gave the command of the army, thus left without a head, to Humphrey Bohun, Earl of Hereford, and Roger Bigod, Earl of Norfolk-the one Constable, the other Marshal of England. To his great wrath, they answered that their offices only bound them to attend the King's person in war, and that they would not go. Edward swore a fierce oath that they should either go, or hang. Bigod coolly repeated the same oath, that he would neither go nor hang, and back to their own estates they went, and after them thirty bannerets, and 1,500 knights, who, by main force, hindered the King's officers from making any further levies on their barns and storehouses.
Nothing was left Edward, but to speak them fair. He summoned his vassals to meet him in London, reconciled himself to Archbishop Winchelsea, and on the 14th of July, 1297, when all were assembled at Westminster, he stood forth on a platform, attended by his son, the Primate, and the Earl of Warwick, and harangued the people. He told them that he grieved at the burthens which he was forced to impose on them, but it was for their defence; for that the Scots, Welsh, and French thirsted for their blood, and it was better to lose a part, than the whole. 'I am going to risk my life for your sake,' he said. 'If I return, receive me; and I will make you amends. If I fall, here is my son: he will reward you, if faithful.'
His voice was broken by tears; and his people, remembering what he once had been rather than what he was now, broke into loud shouts of loyal affection. He appointed his son as regent, and set out for Flanders, but not in time to prevent poor Guy from again falling into captivity, and pursued by requisitions, to which he promised to
