Chapter 13
Section 13 of Volume 1B of History of England from the Invasion of Julius Caesar to the Revolution of 1688. For more information, or to volunteer, please visit LibriVox.org. Recording by Morgan Scorpion. History of England from the Invasion of Julius Caesar to the Revolution of 1688 by David Hume. volume i b section thirteen chapter thirteen part five berwick was already taken by assault sir william douglas the governor was made prisoner
above seven thousand of the garrison were put to the sword and edward elated by this great advantage dispatched earl warren and twelve thousand men to lay siege to dunbar which was defended by the flower of scottish nobility the scots sensible of the importance of this place which if taken laid their whole country open to the enemy advanced with their main army under the command of the earls of buchan lenox and mar in order to retrieve it warren not dismayed at the great superiority of their number marched out to give them battle he attacked them with great vigour and as undisciplined truth when numerous are but the more exposed to a panic upon any alarm he soon threw them into confusion and chased them off the field with great slaughter the loss of the scots is said to have amounted to twenty thousand men the castle of dunbar with all of its garrison surrendered next day to edward who after the battle had brought up the main body of the english and who now proceeded with an assured confidence of success
the castle of roxburgh was yielded by james steward of scotland and that nobleman from whom is descended the royal family of stuart was again obliged to swear fealty to edward after a feeble resistance the castles of edinburgh and stirling opened their gates to the enemy all the southern parts were instantly subdued by the english and to enable them the better to reduce the northern whose inaccessible situation seemed to give them more security edward sent for a strong reinforcement of welsh and irish who being accustomed to a desultory kind of war were the best fitted to pursue the fugitive scots into the recesses of their lakes and mountains but the spirit of the nation was already broken by their misfortunes and the feeble and timid baliol discontented with his own subjects and overawed by the english abandoned all those resources which his people might yet have possessed in this extremity he hastened to make his submissions to edward he expressed the deepest penitence for his disloyalty to his liege lord and he made a solemn and irrevocable resignation of his crown into the hands of that monarch
edward marched northwards to aberdeen and elgin without meeting an enemy no scotchman approached him but to pay him submission and to do him homage even the turbulent highlanders ever refractory to their own princes and averse to the restraint of laws endeavoured to prevent the devastation of their country by giving him early proofs of obedience and edward having brought the whole kingdom to a seeming state of tranquillity returned to the south with his army there was a stone to which the popular superstition of the scots paid the highest veneration all their kings were seated on it when they received the right of inauguration an ancient tradition assured them that wherever this stone was placed their nation should always govern and it was carefully preserved at scone as the true palladium of their monarchy and their ultimate resource amidst all their misfortunes edward got possession of it and carried it with him to england he gave orders to destroy the records and all those monuments of antiquity which might preserve the memory of the independence of the kingdom and refute the english claims of superiority
the scots pretend that he also destroyed all the annals preserved in their covenants but it is not probable that a nation so rude and unpolished should be possessed of any history which deserves much to be regretted the great seal of baliol was broken and that prince himself was carried prisoner to london and committed to custody in the tower two years after he was restored to liberty and submitted to a voluntary banishment in france where without making any further attempts for the recovery of his royalty he died in a private station earl warren was left governor of scotland englishmen were entrusted with the chief offices and edward flattering himself that he had attained the end of all his wishes and that the numerous acts of fraud and violence which he had practised against scotland had terminated in the final reduction of that kingdom returned with his victorious army into england an attempt which he made about the same time for the recovery of tiennes was not equally successful he sent thither an army of seven thousand men
under the command of his brother the earl of lancaster the prince gained at first some advantages over the french at bordeaux but he was soon after seized with a distemper of which he died at bayonne the command devolved on the earl of lincoln who was not able to perform anything considerable during the rest of the campaign but the active and ambitious spirit of edward while his conquests brought such considerable accessions to the english monarchy could not be satisfied as long as jen the ancient patrimony of his family was wrested from him by the dishonest artifices of the french monarch finding that the distance of that province rendered all his efforts against it feeble and uncertain he purposed to attack france in a quarter where she appeared more vulnerable and with this view he married his daughter elizabeth to john earl of holland and at the same time contracted an alliance with guy earl of flanders stipulated to pay him the sum of seventy five thousand pounds and projected an invasion with their united forces upon philip their common enemy
he hoped that when he himself at the head of the english flemish and dutch armies reinforced by his german allies to whom he had promised or remitted considerable sums should enter the borders of france and threaten the capital itself philip would at last be obliged to relinquish his acquisitions and purchase peace by the restitution of jen but in order to set this great machine in movement considerable supplies were requisite from the parliament and edward without much difficulty obtained from the barons and knights a new grant of a twelfth of all their movables and from the boroughs that of an eighth the great and almost unlimited power of the king over the latter enabled him to throw the heavier part of the burden on them and the prejudices which he seemed always to have entertained against the church on account of the former zeal of the clergy for the mountfoot faction made him resolve to load them with still more considerable impositions and he required of them a fifth of their movables but here he met with an opposition which for some time disconcerted all his measures and engaged him in enterprises which were somewhat dangerous to him and would have proved fatal to any of his predecessors
the eighth who had succeeded celestine in the papal throne was a man of the most lofty and enterprising spirit and though not endowed with that severity of manners which commonly accompanies ambition in men of his order he was determined to carry the authority of the tiara and his dominion over the temporal power to as great a height as it had ever attained in any former period sensible that his immediate predecessors by oppressing the church in every province of christendom had extremely alienated the affections of the clergy and had afforded the civil magistrate a pretence for laying like impositions on ecclesiastical revenues he attempted to resume the former station of the sovereign pontiff and to establish himself as the common protector of the spiritual order against all invaders for this purpose he issued very early in his pontificate a general bull prohibiting all princes from levying without his consent any taxes upon the clergy and all clergymen from submitting to such impositions
and he threatened both of them with the penalties of excommunication in case of disobedience this important edict is said to have been procured by the solicitation of robert de wynne chelsea archbishop of canterbury who intended to employ it as a rampart against the violent extortions which the church had felt from edward and the still greater which that prince's multiplied necessities gave them reason to apprehend when a demand therefore was made on the clergy of a fifth of their movables a tax which was probably much more grievous than a fifth of their revenue as their lands were mostly stocked with their cattle and cultivated by their villains the clergy took shelter under the bull of pope boniface and pleaded conscience in refusing compliance the king came not immediately to extremities on this repulse but after locking up all their granaries and barns and prohibiting all rent to be paid them he appointed a new synod to confer with him upon his demand
the primate not dismayed by these proofs of edward's resolution here plainly told him that the clergy owed obedience to two sovereigns their spiritual and their temporal but their duty bound them to a much stricter attachment to the former than to the latter they could not comply with his commands for such in some measure the requests of the crown were then deemed in contradiction to the express prohibition of the sovereign pontiff the clergy had seen in many instances that edward paid little regard to those numerous privileges on which they set so high a value he had formerly seized in an arbitrary manner all the money and plate belonging to the churches and convents and had applied them to the public service and they could not but expect more violent treatment on this sharp refusal grounded on such dangerous principles instead of applying to the pope for a relaxation of his ball he resolved immediately to employ the power in his hands and he told the ecclesiastics that since they refused to support the civil government they were unworthy to receive any benefit from it and he would accordingly put them out of the protection of the laws
this vigorous measure was immediately carried into execution orders were issued to the judges to receive no cause brought before them by the clergy to hear and decide all causes in which they were defendants to do every man justice against them to do them justice against nobody the ecclesiastics soon found themselves in the most miserable situation imaginable they could not remain in their own houses or convents for want of sustenance if they went abroad in quest of maintenance they were dismounted robbed of their horses and clothes abused by every ruffian and no redress could be obtained by them for the most violent injury the primate himself was attacked on the highway was stripped of his equipage and furniture and was at last reduced to board himself with a single servant in the house of a country clergyman the king meanwhile remained an indifferent spectator of all these violences and without employing his officers in committing any immediate injury on the priests which might have appeared invidious and oppressive he took ample vengeance on them for their obstinate refusal of his demands
though the archbishop issued a general sentence of excommunication against all who attacked the persons or property of ecclesiastics it was not regarded while edward enjoyed the satisfaction of seeing the people become the voluntary instruments of his justice against them and inure themselves to throw off that respect for the sacred order by which they had so long been overawed and governed the spirits of the clergy were at last broken by this harsh treatment besides that the whole province of york which lay nearest to the danger that still hung over them from the scots voluntarily from the first voted a fifth of their movables the bishops of salisbury eli and some others made a composition for the secular clergy within their dioceses and they agreed not to pay the fifth which would have been an act of disobedience to boniface's bull but to deposit a sum equivalent in some church appointed them whence it was taken by the king's officers many particular convents and clergymen made payment of a like sum and received the king's protection those who had not ready money entered into recognizances for the payment
and there was scarcely found one ecclesiastic in the kingdom who seemed willing to suffer for the sake of religious privileges this new species of martyrdom the most tedious and languishing of any the most mortifying to spiritual pride and not rewarded by that crown of glory which the church holds up with such ostentation to her devoted adherents but as the money granted by parliament though considerable was not sufficient to supply the king's necessities and that levied by compositions with the clergy came in slowly edward was obliged for the obtaining of further supply to exert his arbitrary power, and laid an oppressive hand on all orders of men in the kingdom. He limited the merchants in the quantity of wool allowed to be exported, and at the same
time forced them to pay him a duty of forty shillings a sack, which was computed to be above the third of the value. He seized the rest of the wool, as well as all the leather of the kingdom, into his hands, and disposed of these commodities for his own benefit. He required the sheriffs of each county to supply him with two thousand quarters of wheat, and as many of oats, which he permitted them to seize wherever they could find them. The cattle and other commodities
necessary for supplying his army were laid hold of without the consent of the owners, and though he promised to pay afterwards the equivalent of all these goods, men saw but little probability that a prince who submitted so little to the limitations of law could ever, amidst his multiplied necessities, be reduced to a strict observance of his engagements. He showed at the same time an equal disregard to the principles of the feudal law, by which all the lands of his
kingdom were held. In order to increase his army, and enable him to support that great effort which he intended to make against France, he required the attendance of every proprietor of land possessed of twenty pounds a year, even though he held not of the crown, and was not obliged by his tenure to perform any such service. These acts of violence and of arbitrary power, notwithstanding the great personal regard generally borne to the king, bred murmurs in every order of men,
and it was not long ere some of the great nobility, jealous of their own privileges, as well as of national liberty, gave countenance and authority to these complaints. Edward assembled on the sea-coast an army which he proposed to send over to Gascony, while he himself should in person make an impression on the side of Flanders, and he intended to put these forces under the command of Humphrey Boran, Earl of Hereford, the constable, and Roger by God,
Earl of Norfolk, the Marichal of England. But these two powerful earls refused to execute his commands, and affirmed that they were only obliged by their office to attend his person in the wars. A violent altercation ensued, and the king, in the height of his passion, addressing himself to the constable, exclaimed, Sir Earl, by God, you shall either go or hang. By God, Sir King, replied Hereford, I will neither go nor hang.
And he immediately departed with the Marichal and above thirty other considerable barons. Upon this opposition, the king laid aside the project of an expedition against Jen, and assembled the forces which he himself purposed to transport into Flanders. But the two earls, irritated in the contest and elated by impunity, pretending that none of their ancestors had ever served in that country,
refused to perform the duty of their office in mustering the army. The king, now finding it advisable to proceed with moderation, instead of attainting the earls, who possessed their dignities by hereditary right, appointed Thomas de Berkeley and Geoffrey de Gainville to act in that emergence as constable and maréchal.
He endeavoured to reconcile himself with the church, took the primate again into favour, made him, in conjunction with Reginald de Grey, tutor to the prince, whom he intended to appoint guardian of the kingdom during his absence. and he even assembled a great number of the nobility in Westminster Hall to whom he deigned to make an apology for his past conduct.
He pleaded the urgent necessities of the crown, his extreme want of money, his engagements from honour as well as interest to support his foreign allies and he promised, if he ever returned in safety, to redress all their grievances,
to restore the execution of the laws and to make all his subjects compensation for the losses which they had sustained meanwhile he begged them to suspend their animosities to judge him by his future conduct of which he hoped he should be more master to remain faithful to his government or if he perished in the present war to preserve their allegiance to his son and successor there were certainly from the concurrence of discontents among the great and grievances of the people materials sufficient in any other period to have kindled a civil war in england but the vigor and abilities of edward kept every one in awe and his dexterity in stopping on the brink of danger and retracting the measures to which he had been pushed by his violent temper and arbitrary principles saved the nation from so great a calamity the two great earls dared not break out into open violence they proceeded no further than framing a remonstrance which was delivered to the king at winchelsea when he was ready to embark for flanders
they there complained of the violations of the great charter and that of forests the violent seizure of corn leather cattle and above all of wool a commodity which they affirmed to be equal in value to half the lands of the kingdom the arbitrary imposition of forty shillings a sack on the small quantity of wool allowed to be exported by the merchants and they claimed an immediate redress of all these grievances the king told them that the greater part of his council were now at a distance and without their advice he could not deliberate on measures of so great importance but the constable and marechal with the barons of their party resolved to take advantage of edward's absence and to obtain an explicit assent to their demands when summoned to attend the parliament at london they came with a great body of cavalry and infantry and before they would enter the city required that the gates should be put into their custody
the primate who secretly favoured all their pretensions advised the council to comply and thus they became masters both of the young prince and of the resolutions of parliament their demands however were moderate and such as sufficiently justified the purity of their intentions in all their past measures they only required that the two charters should receive a solemn confirmation that a clause should be added to secure the nation for ever against all impositions and taxes without consent of parliament and that they themselves and their adherents who had refused to attend the king into flanders should be pardoned for the offence and should be again received into favour the prince of wales and his council assented to these terms and the charters were sent over to the king in flanders to be there confirmed by him edward felt the utmost reluctance to this measure which he apprehended would for the future impose fetters on his conduct and set limits to his lawless authority on various pretences he delayed three days giving any answer to the deputies and when the pernicious consequences of his refusal were represented to him he was at last obliged after many internal struggles to affix his seal to the charters
as also to the clause that bereaved him of the power which he had hitherto assumed of imposing arbitrary taxes upon the people that we may finish at once this interesting transaction concerning the settlement of the charters we shall briefly mention the subsequent events which relate to it the constable and marechal informed of the king's compliance were satisfied and not only ceased from disturbing the government but assisted the regency with their power against the scots who had risen in arms and had thrown off the yoke of england chapter v
