Chapter 38
Section 38 of Edward III by William Parsons Warburton. This LibriVox recording is in the public domain, read by Pamela Nagami. Concluding Chapter Part 1. Character of Edward III and of His Reign. It is no light task to attempt to form a due estimate of the character of King Edward III. He and his gallant son have so long been recognized heroes of English romance that it is far easier to join in the chorus of admiration than to criticize or faintly praise.
Edward III, from an external point of view, undoubtedly ranked as the foremost man of his time, and always bore himself worthily of the great personage that he was. Of middle stature, but gracefully and strongly built, he had a winning address and commanding countenance, a godlike face, the old chronicler says. His training was well adapted to fit him for his exalted place. But if we are to believe that he received an admirable education, the expression
must be taken relatively. For in the fourteenth century, and long after, the culture of a gentleman consisted chiefly in the acquisition of such accomplishments as breaking a spear and holding a hawk gracefully, writing, dancing, dressing, and carving to perfection. But book-learning was left to louts. It would be a bold assertion that he could read, write, or speak English. In his youth, the language of the court and the feudal castle was exclusively Norman French, that is to say,
a French patois only half naturalized in a foreign country, and in fact a corruption of a corruption. Of which speech, said Chaucer, the Frenchmen have as good a fantasy as we have in hearing of Frenchman's English. He was doubtless acquainted with Latin or the barbarous jargon which went by the name, a great deal of it being no better than English words with Latin terminations, the use of which was so general that not only were the records and other state papers written
therein, but accounts were kept and political songs composed in Latin. As for the origin and history of this language, the poet Gower, one of the most learned men of the age, conjectures that Latin was invented by the old prophetess Carmens, but that Aristarchus, Donatus, and Didymus regulated its syntax and prosody. The highest geographical authority of the fourteenth and following century, Higdon, author of its Polychronicon, was not acquainted with the fact
that the earth is a globe, and like Herodotus, peopled its unexplored regions with dragons, satyrs, and devils. Sir John Mandeville, who had been himself a great traveler, tells of Ethiopians with only one foot, but that as large as a parasol. Giants twenty-eight feet long, and foul and evil women, who have precious stones for eyes and sleigh with beholding like a basilisk. All the best learning and talent of the age were engrossed and absorbed in the childish,
unprofitable subtleties of scholastic speculation, which was then believed to be the highest form of intellectual exercise, and about which a few words must be said. At the latter end of the Middle Ages, very few Europeans, even among those reputed good scholars, were acquainted with the Greek language. In the 12th century, however, the writings of Aristotle became known in the West at third hand through Latin translations of Arabic versions. A mixture of Arabian and Greek
philosophy rapidly interpenetrated the whole of the theology of Europe, and Greek and Arabian terms and dialectics or methods of reasoning became the forms in which all theological discussion was carried out. In this treadmill of human thought and ingenuity, whole lives were spent and whole libraries composed. The single result of which labor has been to fill posterity with barren amazement, an amazement such as we feel on beholding the pyramids, at the stupendous
waste of power for no discoverable use. Edward was indeed more of a soldier than a scholar, and also more of a soldier than of a general. The king himself or his marshals, for he understood the royal art of choosing good men, made undoubtedly a happy selection of the ground on which to fight the Battle of Crecy, and skillfully disposed the handful of men who were to stand up against the great army of France. Even that victorious struggle was an example not so much of successful
generalship, as of the latent capabilities of brave men, animated, not depressed by the sense of danger, and facing overwhelming odds with the deliberate fury of some wild hunted animal, who will no longer withdraw before his pursuers, but turns to bay at last, armed with the tenfold strength of rage and despair, to sell his life as dearly as he can. In the battle off Slush, Edward fought with the ferocious courage of the House of Anjou, but his campaigns were in most
instances unprofitable and inglorious. There is little to show that he possessed the higher qualities of a warrior, and to attempt to rank him with the greatest strategists and captains of all time, is to provoke an idle controversy. As a soldier and a legislator, he looms large between Edward II and Richard II, but seems a man of ordinary stature, when measured with the great First Edward or the greater First William. He can hardly be called a great statesman,
but in the absence of any minister of conspicuous ability, he seems to gather up in himself all the powers of the administration, and to be the sole exponent of the national will. His reign presents a marked contrast to those of his successors, in which the king is lost or distinguishable only by a crown and scepter, amid a turbulent crowd of actors. From the day, when as yet a boy, he dragged down Mortimer from his pride of place, Edward III was master of his own house,
and no subject dared to approach the throne but with bowed head and bended knee. He understood better perhaps than any other sovereign of his dynasty the great importance of keeping on good terms with his people, and almost in every successive parliament he had the credit of making concessions to the nation, but he was in all probability quite as arbitrary as the most arbitrary of his predecessors. The very fact that the great charter and the charter providing
against the extension of the forests were re-enacted and confirmed twelve times in his reign is sufficient evidence that they were infringed upon at least an equal number of times. Over and over he pledged himself to observe the statute of Edward I, de telagio non cocedendo, and not to impose arbitrary taxes on the people, but always with some reservation which enabled him, without actual breach of faith,
to reimpose them under the plea of necessity. He pursued the objects of his ambition with a keenness and intensity of purpose which often made him forgetful of his kingly obligations as well as of the sufferings of his people. He was prudent as well as bold, but his prudence had a short range and hardly amounted like his grandfather's to sagacity, while his measures dealing with the symptoms rather than with the disease are wanting in
the character of breadth and permanence. To assert that Edward III did not act upon the true principles of political and social science, is only to say, in other words, that he was not centuries in advance of his time. But it is difficult altogether to acquit him of the charge, which indeed he more than once cynically admitted, of having taken measures to increase the revenue of the crown at the expense of the interests of the nation at large. He was a genuine Englishman
in his rough and ready and often incoherent policy, in his contempt of foreigners and in his audacious confidence in himself and his countrymen, in his love of manly exertion, his personal pride and popular sympathies, and his freedom from lasting enmity and vindictiveness. He might almost be called a typical Englishman, were it not for a certain love of frippery, fine clothes and scenic effect, which he probably inherited with his French blood.
That his reign was unusually free from scandals, to which, indeed, the connection of his dotage with Alice Perez is the chief exception, is perhaps mainly due to the admirable choice of a wife made for him by his execrable mother. For there is little to induce us to believe that with all his ceremonial devoutness, he aimed at higher purity of life than his contemporaries, in an age when all things were condoned to all men, and indeed to all women, so long as they
kept on good terms with Holy Church. He was, it may readily be granted, the embodiment of the popular ideal of chivalry in his time. But that ideal was very far removed from the ideal set forth by romance in King Arthur and Ser Galahad, we cannot indeed too warmly admire the nobler features of medieval chivalry, its discipline, valor, courtesy, devotion, and respect for the weaker sex. But the annals of the time prove only too clearly and constantly that these
characteristics were not incompatible with selfishness, impurity, greed, class pride, and vindictiveness, and cruelty, or that heartless levity which is the worst form of cruelty, to the individual woman. Before the end of Edward III's reign, chivalry had begun to show its first symptoms of decline. The marked success of the cautious and unchivalrous tactics which Charles the Wise had adopted at the suggestion of Duguay-Clan, the introduction of new methods of
fighting, which deprived highly trained horsemen of their former superiority and comparative invulnerability in battle, had all tended to bring it into discredit. But it was not doomed to extinction for many a long day. Chaucer, indeed, in the rhyme of Sir Topaz makes open fun of the chivalric histories, and almost anticipates Don Quixote, but it was the courtiers of Queen Elizabeth who first exchanged the two-handed cross-hilted sword for the rapier, and it was
another fifty years before chivalry received its death blow amidst the general laughter of mankind in the immortal novel of Cervantes. Though chivalry had unquestionably a large share in the formation of much that is admirable in our national English habits of thought and action, we need waste no regrets over its decline and fall. All that was independent of accident and circumstance, all that was really worth preserving in that splendid but imperfect type of character,
survives amongst us still, adapted to the altered conditions of the times, in the ideal of a gentleman. Feudalism and chivalry decline together. The cramped and narrow theory of tenure by military service, in feudal times the keystone of the social system, was giving way before a multitude of new and complicated reciprocal relations, which sprang up with increasing wealth and intelligence, on the one hand, and the growing necessities of finding a broader basis for
authority on the other. European society was being reconstructed out of old and simpler elements, which had been breaking up and were crumbling away. The Catholic Church itself, hitherto the type of compactness and immobility, was beginning to feel the influences of this remarkable period of transition in the attacks made by bolder spirits on her doctrine and discipline. The chief interest of the age of Edward III does not lie upon the surface, and its secret
is altogether missed by the contemporary chronicler Foissart, to whom we owe such a minute and spirited but superficial picture of the rain. Its real glories spring not from its gigantic military efforts, which only wasted the resources of the country, and even when crowned with almost miraculous success, produced absolutely no abiding results, but from its calamities and disasters. From the Black Death, which emancipated the English serf. From the loss of Aquitaine,
which at once and forever stamped its insular and independent character upon the English nation and monarchy. From the enormous drain of money, which constantly brought the king face to face with his people, and taught him and his nobles that if a nation is to put forth its united strength in the hour of need, its rulers must learn to take account of the wrongs of the many as well as of the rights of the few. It is a striking illustration of what has been called the
irony of human events, that while from the point of view of the principal actors in the scene, nothing remains of the great war for the crown of France but the memory of dazzling and unsubstantial triumphs, its indirect and unforeseen effects, the concessions which it was the means of wringing from royal prerogative and feudal tyranny, are felt among us to this day and remain as real, fruitful, and unalienable accessions to the ever-widening empire of human freedom.
The interest of the history of the fourteenth century is not to be compared with the wonderful awakening of Europe, as from a frost-bound winter sleep in the 13th, but it possesses a peculiar interest and importance of its own. It will be indeed remembered by our countrymen, chiefly as the age in which their forefathers proved, that Englishmen were the hardest hitters in Europe, and won victory after victory against desperate odds. It is in vain, for cold reason, to contend
against the spell of the names of Crécy and Poitiers. They will forever stir the English heart, like the blast of a trumpet or the rustling of a consecrated banner. But these battles are not, after all, the true titles of the age to honor. Searching deeper down, we shall find and thankfully admit that the century was one not of conquest but of transition, development, emancipation, and characterized by a silent and gradual contraction of the area of privilege and a corresponding enlargement of the area of liberty.
End of Section 38
