Edward III

King of England (r. 1327-1377)

• Born: November 13, 1312
• Birthplace: Windsor Castle, Berkshire, England
• Died: June 21, 1377
• Place of death: Sheen, Surrey, England

Under Edward’s reign, England witnessed an increase in the governing power of Parliament and especially that of the House of Commons, owing to the necessity for the king to seek parliamentary authority for the money to finance his wars with Scotland and with France.

Early Life

Edward III was the son of Edward II and Queen Isabella of France . Nothing is known of his childhood. At the time of his accession to the throne in 1327, Edward was fourteen years of age. The first three years of his reign found the young king overshadowed by the rule of his adulterous mother, Isabella, and her paramour, Roger Mortimer. Their governance, however, was doomed; Isabella had no clearly conceived plans for her regency, and Mortimer was interested primarily in carving out for himself a great lordship in the west of England. Both their domestic and their foreign policies were failures, insofar indeed as they could be said to have had policies at all. In the fall of 1330, the young king, nearly eighteen years old, led a conspiracy of young lords that successfully overthrew Mortimer and Isabella, arranged for Mortimer’s hanging, and packed the queen off to a convent of Poor Clares, where she lived on until 1358. Edward had come through his first crisis with skill and with bold decisiveness.

Life’s Work

Edward III was one of the most interesting of medieval English kings. To his contemporaries he was the ideal monarch. The embodiment of chivalric values and virtues, Edward also loved war, the hunt, and pageantry. He was a most intelligent man who was conventional in his cultural interests, brilliant in his patronage of the uniquely English perpendicular Gothic, and respectful of learning (which he himself exhibited). This handsome, athletic leader of fighting men was also to become more of a statesman than the following of the great historical scholar Bishop William Stubbs, in the late nineteenth century, was prepared to acknowledge.

The 1330’s encompassed the foundation of the king’s policy toward his great barons, that class without whose cooperation he could not have ruled effectively. Edward was an astute politician in his use of royal patronage; his barons were rewarded for their support by titles and honors. In 1337, the king elevated four barons to earldoms, and as his sons achieved adulthood, they were married to wealthy, noble heiresses. From these marriages, however, descended the men who fought to secure the Crown in the Wars of the Roses. Another tie that bound selected nobles to the king was his foundation of the Order of the Garter in 1348, which united the king and his chosen intimates in a chivalric and almost mystical bond of common interests and dreams, reviving an Arthurian mystique that had never in fact existed, ornamented by round tables, tournaments, and festive pageantry.

The domestic history of the reign is chiefly important for the rise in influence of the House of Commons in Parliament. In the Middle Ages, “commons” did not mean the common people; the term meant the well-born of less than aristocratic rank who held extensive land in the countryside, as well as wealthy burgesses of the towns and cities of England. The easy cooperation of king and community so characteristic of the 1330’s was threatened by a small crisis that arose in 1341. The king’s problem with Parliament arose from the initial failures of the Hundred Years’ War, which had commenced in 1337. Like all wars, the war was also expensive, and the king’s requests for money gave the Parliament opportunity to seek royal concessions as the price of grants of money. Moreover, there was conflict between the administration in England and the officials who had accompanied the king to the Continent. At issue, too, was the question of the king’s right to choose his own ministers. These uncertainties and conflicts enlarged the possibilities for Parliament to increase its role in the governance of England. The Parliament of 1341 produced a compromise by which the king reconfirmed the Magna Carta and the Charter of the Forest, both issued originally in 1216. Although these documents were anachronistic in detail by 1341, they had assumed a symbolic status in that they recognized that the king was bound by his own law. Owing to the Parliament’s attempts to control the king’s appointment of his officials, the compromise broke down in the Parliament of 1343, which affirmed the king’s right to appoint his own counselors, as was traditional in medieval England.

Other domestic developments of the reign of Edward III were less dramatic but no less important. While domestic politics were largely eclipsed by the French war, important constitutional developments characterized the period after the early 1340’. The aristocracy cooperated with the king because they had a common interest in the pursuit of the Hundred Years’ War for sporting fun and for profit and because of their common allegiance to England and to her king. The Statute of Treasons was promulgated by Parliament in 1352; theretofore, treason had been defined as an act against the king, a definition open to all-too-obvious political abuse. The statute defined treason as an act against the state rather than against the monarch as a person. The arrival of the Black Death in England around 1347 seems to have had little effect on royal policy, despite its devastating horror among the common people, 40 percent of whom probably were destroyed by this dread pandemic.

Edward’s declining years, when he was apparently afflicted by premature senility and unduly influenced by his mistress, Alice Perrers, gave opportunity for the assertion of parliamentary authority. Edward was not altogether competent to rule, the Black Prince (Edward of Woodstock, the king’s eldest son) was moribund, and the king’s other sons lacked the necessary leadership qualities to lead England effectively. John of Gaunt, Edward III’s second son, while not without ability, did not inspire general confidence. The Parliament of 1376 (the Good Parliament) gathered to consider the state of the kingdom and again focused on the responsibility of royal officials to the representative body. A new threat to the royal prerogative to appoint advisers emerged in impeachment, a form of trial in Parliament that saw lords acting as judges (which was not without precedent) and the Commons as the body presenting the indictment. Commons held the lever here: They could refusetaxation unless the king acquiesced in the trial of his ministers. The process was ahead of its time, however, and failed in the same year.

The Hundred Years’ War, begun by Edward III, was complex in its origins. Edward III regarded the French war as an effort understood in chivalric terms rather than in the frame of reference of modern nationalism. Probably the root cause of the war was the festering English resentment at the loss of the northern French lands that had been held by the Norman and Angevin kings; these areas had been lost under Richard I and John, and Henry III’s attempts to recover the territories were unsuccessful. As well, the growth in landed power of the king of France threatened the remaining holdings in France subject to the king of England, and the French government supported the Scots in their resistance to English interference in their internal affairs. In 1337, when it was apparent that war was imminent, Edward III advanced his claims to the French throne; he was the grandson of Philip IV the Fair through his mother, Isabella. The first phase of the war, ending with the Peace of Brétigny in 1360, was crowned with the success of English arms. The most notable victories of the English were at Sluys (a naval battle fought off that Flemish city in 1340), Crécy (1346), and Poitiers (1356). The English victories at the last two battles were assured by superior leadership, by strategy and tactics, and by the longbow, the master of the field both in firepower and in range. The Peace of Brétigny was favorable to the English, but it was never effectuated, and the last years of Edward’s reign saw the war largely characterized by skirmishes and plundering, with no large set-piece battles involving the English. His death, on June 21, 1377, may have resulted from the complications of premature senility.

Significance

Edward III assumed the monarchy at the time of its degradation; at the end of his reign, England was preeminent among European powers. His policies succeeded because of harmonious symbiosis between the king and other elements of the polity. This successful cooperation was both the cause and the result of some compromise of royal authority and prerogative. Edward’s success was also fortified by the pomp and pageantry of his chivalric court and by military success. Clashes with Parliament were few, and the twin highlights of the history of this representative body were the growth in the power of Commons and the practical end of the king’s right to tax without consultation. Edward was revered by his people, easily the most popular fourteenth century ruler of his island realm, an astute politician and a military hero.

Bibliography

Barnie, John. War in Medieval English Society: Social Values and the Hundred Years’ War, 1337-99. Ithaca, N.Y.: Cornell University Press, 1974. A pioneering study of the impact of war on the English people, examined in terms of the political and social elites, the clergy, the educated, and the laity.

Bothwell, J. S. The Age of Edward III. Rochester, N.Y.: York Medieval Press, 2001. Discusses Edward’s redistribution of estates, politics and propaganda, peace negotiations, legal history, and more.

Fowler, Kenneth. The Age of Plantagenet and Valois: The Struggle for Supremacy, 1328-1498. New York: Putnam, 1967. A lavishly illustrated, clearly written overview of the Hundred Years’ War and of its times.

Hewitt, H. J. The Organization of War Under Edward III, 1338-62. New York: Barnes and Noble Books, 1966. An original study of the home front, especially the role of civilians in supplying and supporting the war effort.

McKisack, May. The Fourteenth Century, 1307-1399. Oxford, England: Clarendon Press, 1959. The standard narrative history of Great Britain in the reign of Edward III.

Nicholson, Ranald. Edward III and the Scots: The Formative Years of a Military Career, 1327-1335. London: Oxford University Press, 1965. Reveals the complexities of relations among the English, the French, and the Scots.

Perroy, Édouard. The Hundred Years’ War. New York: Capricorn Books, 1965. A very good general history of the war.

Prestwich, Michael. The Three Edwards: War and State in England, 1272-1377. New York: St. Martin’s Press, 1980. A sophisticated interpretation of the reign of Edward III.

Rogers, Clifford J. The Wars of Edward III: Sources and Interpretations. Rochester, N.Y.: Boydell Press, 1999. Covers the Hundred Years’ War and its beginnings, war strategy and organization, English armies, and the relationship between Parliament and war.

Vale, Juliet. Edward III and Chivalry: Chivalric Society and Its Context, 1270-1350. Woodbridge, England: Boydell Press, 1982. A brilliant book, argues with conviction that the impact of chivalry at the court of Edward III was essential to his reign, and to later generations’ understanding of it.