Edward I

King of England (r. 1272-1307)

• Born: June 17, 1239
• Birthplace: Westminster Palace, London, Middlesex, England
• Died: July 7, 1307
• Place of death: Burgh-on-the-Sands, near Carlisle, Cumberland, England

Edward was highly regarded in his own time as a Crusader, conqueror of Wales, and “hammer” of the Scots, and modern historians admire him principally as lawmaker and lawgiver, the monarch who brought Parliament into partnership in the governance of England.

Early Life

Edward I succeeded his father, Henry III, as king of England while on crusade in the Holy Land, following a tempestuous youthful career in the conflicts between Henry and his rebellious barons, the latter led by Simon de Montfort. Edward, one of the greatest English kings, was tall, athletic, handsome, and a courageous man who gloried in battle and in tournaments and who commanded the intricacies of the law and of the art of government. Edward combined, in his complex personality, order and efficiency, the capacity not only for cool judgment but also for unreasoning fury, a religious devotion at least conventional, and a cultured mien. Capable of open honesty and of devious behavior, efficient yet a proto-Romantic, he presaged his grandson’s revival of what was perceived as Arthurian chivalry. Edward I succeeded to a still-restive realm.

As was customary in the experience of kings succeeding weak or insouciant monarchs, he spent the earliest and most fruitful years of his reign regaining what he and his advisers considered royal rights temporarily lost. In so doing, this king created what was in fact a new form of monarchy, one based on the cooperation rather than on the domination of the politically significant elements of his realm. Edward was a great king because he was a successful politician.

Life’s Work

Edward’s reign was far more fruitful in government policy and in parliamentary statutes during his first twenty-five years than during the last ten; in part, this was a result of the growing distractions and expenses of the wars with Wales, Scotland, and France. Military conflict always takes precedence over domestic issues, although the former may make the latter unquiet, as it did during 1297-1307. Edward’s people wearied of their sovereign’s wars and, more important, of the resources in men, money, and commitment needed to support them. Before the foreign policies of Edward I interrupted his domestic program, however, this king’s relations with his parliament led to the great statutes that characterize his reign and give it historical significance.

The first historically important piece of legislation issuing from the king’s parliament was the Statute of Gloucester, enacted in 1278, which investigated the sources of franchise holders’ claims to their jurisdictions and questioned by what right (quo warranto) a person was entitled to exercise his claimed legal authority over others. In theory, unless the claimant could exhibit written evidence of a royal grant to hold his liberties, or prescriptive tenure, the lord’s right to hold his putative authority was challenged. These inquests bear an obvious relationship to growing ideas of inalienability of royal sovereignty. Although the effects of the statute were far less wide-ranging than once was thought, the resulting inquests did nevertheless abolish long use as a future justification for jurisdictional claims and prevented the growth of new franchises without royal grant. The statute {I}De viris religiosis{/I} (1270) limited the alienation of lands to the Church without a royal license; six years later, {I}Circumspecte agatis{/I} limited and defined the rights of church courts over secular cases at law.

The year 1285 saw two more statutes of deep significance: Westminster II, which controlled entailed estates, and {I}Nisi prius{/I}, which enhanced the authority of the court of common pleas. In the same year, the Statute of Winchester marked a step in the evolution of military service from the feudal practice of basing service on landholding (the knight’s fee) to one based on the monetary value of land; the apparent reason for this legislation was to make more Englishmen liable for scutage (the payment of money to the king in lieu of personal service). Edward I’s last great statute {I}Quia emptores{/I} (Westminster III, 1290) effectively halted the growth of subinfeudation (the practice whereby landholders alienated part of their holdings to others) by making the subtenant hold his landed rights from the ultimate, rather than from the immediate, possessor of the granted lands. These statutes, which in the long run undermined the feudal structure of society, were not intended to do so; they represented an attempt to modernize, rather than to destroy, feudalism.

As the legislation of Edward I in part brought nonnoble elements of English society into a share in the governance of the realm, so more obviously did the growth of Parliament. By the late thirteenth century, kings had a perceived need to consult with elements of the polity beyond the nobility. Yet one must not assume that the growth of Parliament should be equated with the growth of representative government; popular representation occurred in only about 10 percent of the parliaments of the reign, and even then popular meant only politically influential nonecclesiastical and nonnoble classes, not representatives of the common people, who waited until modern times for their voice to be heard in Parliament. Parliament in the reign of Edward I was almost always controlled by the king, who used it to extend, not to restrict, his powers; Edward wanted support, not meaningful opposition.

However, despite the absence of representatives of the common people, Parliament did exhibit a broadening of consultation beyond the nobles and higher clergy, a further step away from governance by the king consulting only with the political and ecclesiastical feudality. Parliament’s principal functions were not legislative; it was primarily the high court of England, and its other miscellaneous functions were distinctively secondary to its judicial role. The English Parliament differed in fundamental ways from its cognates on the Continent: Its members’ actions bound all Englishmen, the members were not limited in their deliberations, they had national (rather than regional, as in France) control over taxation, and the English nobility had a sense of wider fiscal and political responsibility even to classes other than their own. The English Parliament institutionalized political restraint over the king, thus making him, unlike his contemporary in France (Philip IV the Fair), a constitutional king, a king whose actions had to be taken with the possibility of opposition in mind. Yet one must not exaggerate the often-alleged parliamentary limitations on the king; after all, even in the crises of 1297-1300, the king did achieve his aims with very little sacrifice of effective power.

Edward’s relations with the borderlands of Wales and Scotland brought him grudging success in the first instance, frustration in the second. English penetration of Wales had a long history, going back to the reign of William the Conqueror. Throughout the twelfth and thirteenth centuries, Welsh princes and lords played important roles in English politics, trying to expand their powers when the English polity was weakly governed and to defend them when the English and the lords of the Welsh marches were strong; the fortunes of the two countries were becoming increasingly intertwined. Thus, when Edward I took advantage of a quarrel between Llewelyn ap Gruffydd (ruler of Snowdonia) and his brother Dafydd to intervene in Welsh politics, there was no novelty in Anglo-Welsh relations but rather a continuation of old mutual policies of pursuing targets of opportunity. In this case, Edward suspected the coalescing of Welsh loyalties around Llewelyn. The Welsh lost the war that began in 1276, yet they retained elements of peculiarity (language, culture) that persist in somewhat attenuated form today. Unlike the nascent romantic nationalism of the modern Scots, that of the Welsh had long roots. Llewelyn’s power was confined to north Wales, while the denizens of the rest of the region cooperated with the English. Yet this situation proved to be ephemeral; all of Wales rose against the English in 1282; Edward and the marcher lords responded with efficiency and speed, conquering the Welsh, killing Llewelyn and subjecting his brother Dafydd to the disagreeable fate of being hanged, drawn, and quartered. The constitutional result was the Statute of Wales (1284). This statute, which should be compared with the Act of Union (with Scotland) of 1707, incorporated Wales into the royal domain, divided north Wales into shires, and subjected the area to English law and governmental procedures (although it recognized the continuance of Welsh law and custom). In 1301, the principality of Wales was created as a special entity under the eldest son of the monarch (in this case, Edward II of Caernarvon, the future Edward II). The Welsh did not go gentle into that good night; sporadic revolts occurred throughout the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries (the most famous was that of Owain ab Gruffydd, better known in the lore of William Shakespeare as Owen Glendower, during the reign of Henry IV), but in general the Welsh proved loyal, if somewhat burry, subjects of the Crown.

This could not be said of the Scots, in part because the northern Celts took advantage of English troubles with Wales and forged the Auld Alliance with France that persisted into modern times. The history of Anglo-Scottish relations paralleled that of the English and Welsh, but the Scottish kings and nobility were much more interrelated by blood and by interests with those of England. The precipitating incident that led to the Anglo-Scottish conflicts of the reign of Edward I was the death of Alexander III of Scotland in 1286; his heir was his granddaughter Margaret, the “maid of Norway.” She died as Queen Margaret in 1290, leaving the Scottish crown prey to the ambitious claims of three candidates: John de Baliol, Robert Bruce, and John Hastings. Edward I intervened in the matter in his recognized capacity as overlord of Scotland.

Edward I, after examining law and tradition, recognized Baliol as king (1292). Unfortunately both for the histories of England and Scotland, Baliol was viewed by the Scottish nobles as too subservient to the wishes of Edward I. In 1295, the Scottish alliance with France was sealed; late in this year, Edward I prepared for the war that he began with the invasion of Scotland in the following March. Edward seemed easily to triumph, and the disgraced Baliol, yielding his kingdom, departed from Scotland never to return. The fabled Stone of Scone at this time was taken to England, where it remains embedded in the English coronation throne at Westminster. The Scots rose in rebellion against Edward in 1297, led by William Wallace, Andrew of Moray, Robert Bruce (later King Robert of Scotland), and the aged Robert of Wishart, bishop of Glasgow. Most of the leaders abandoned the fight against superior English power, but Wallace continued to resist, leading not magnates but men of lower social position.

The resistance took the form of what now could be called guerrilla warfare. The first large-scale battle turned into disaster for the English at Stirling Bridge (1297). Wallace was not again to win a major battle with the English, and he was delivered to the English and hanged in 1305. English attempts to treat the Scots as generously as they had the Welsh failed: The Scots had not been conquered, and they maintained a stubborn resistance against an English people tiring of war and of fiscal levies. In early 1306, another major revolt began, led by King Robert, grandson of the royal claimant of 1291. It is this revolt that brought Edward north to Burgh-on-the-Sands, where he died in 1307.

Edward’s policy with regard to France was much less important than that toward his Celtic fringe, more a distraction than a dominating concern. Its chief interest lies in the ways in which the issues at contest between the kings of England and of France foretold issues important in the etiology of the Hundred Years’ War, which began in 1337. Could the English monarchs maintain their lordship of Gascony in the face of growing French expansionism? Could marriage alliances between the two dynasties solve the political problems? Could naval hostilities in the Channel be confined so as to avoid aggravating a coming wider war? During and after the reign of Edward I, the answer to all these questions was no.

Significance

The reign of Edward I was as important as any in the Middle Ages in laying the foundations of national, as opposed to feudal, monarchy. He expanded the base of military service, enlarged the taxation of commerce, and was the father of the Parliament that was so central to English government in his reign and thereafter, that body that brought the community of the realm into partnership with the king in the governance of England. Nor was Edward unsuccessful in his dealings with the Church: He continued to control the Church in England (although with less notoriety than his cousin Philip IV the Fair, suppressor of the Templars and conqueror of the Papacy). Hammer of the Scots he may well have been, but they were an indestructible anvil. His addition of Wales to the realm reflects a pattern to be seen in his policies toward France as well the expansion of the realm beyond an ethnically well-defined base.

Plantagenet Kings of England, 1154-1399

Reign

• Monarch

1154-1189

• Henry II (with Eleanor of Aquitaine, r. 1154-1189)

1189-1199

• Richard I the Lion-Hearted

1199-1216

• John I Lackland

1216-1272

• Henry III

1272-1307

• Edward I Longshanks

1307-1327

• Edward II (with Isabella of France, r. 1308-1330)

1327-1377

• Edward III (with Philippa of Hainaut, r. 1327-1369)

1377-1399

• Richard II

Bibliography

Chancellor, John. The Life and Times of Edward I. London: Weidenfeld and Nicolson, 1981. Illustrated, clearly written biography intended for the general reader with no previous knowledge of Edward I or his realm.

Morris, John E. The Welsh Wars of Edward I. Phoenix Mill, England: Alan Sutton, 1996. An excellent discussion of Edward and wars with the Welsh.

Plucknett, T. F. T. Legislation of Edward I. Oxford, England: Clarendon Press, 1962. Comprehensive introduction to Edward for those with some knowledge of the social and legal history of the reign.

Powicke, F. M. The Thirteenth Century, 1216-1307. 2d ed. Oxford, England: Clarendon Press, 1962. An excellent source on the life and reign of Edward and the times he dominated and personified.

Prestwich, Michael. Edward I. New Haven, Conn.: Yale University Press, 1997. Part of the Yale English Monarchs series, a look at Edward and his reign.

Prestwich, Michael. The Three Edwards: War and State in England, 1272-1377. New York: Routledge, 2003. Focuses on the concepts and realities of war and the state, although the scope is not limited to these areas.

Raban, Sandra. England Under Edward I and Edward II, 1259-1327. Malden, Mass.: Blackwell, 2000. Looks at the reigns of Edward I and Edward II and their place in British history. Includes bibliography and index.

Sayles, G. O. The King’s Parliament of England. New York: W. W. Norton, 1974. An excellent introduction to parliamentary history for the nonspecialist.

Stones, E. L. G., and Grant G. Simpson. Edward I and the Throne of Scotland, 1290-1296. 2 vols. New York: Oxford University Press, 1978. The indispensable collection of documents concerning the earlier phase of the struggle for the rule of Scotland.

Watson, Fiona J. Under the Hammer: Edward I and Scotland, 1286-1307. East Lothian, Scotland: Tuckwell Press, 1998. Focuses on Scotland’s struggle for independence.