Edward III of England

“ George W. Smalley, for so many years the American correspondent of the New York Tribune in London, could write recently in the Century the belief of a foreigner and a republican that "England is a very democratic country, but there does not exist in England the vestige of a republican party."
King Edward, therefore, came to the throne of Great Britain and its Empire at a time when the influence of the Sovereign was growing in proportion as the influence and popularity of Parliament appeared to be waning. ”

“ And throughout his reign the nation understood Edward. His was a great simple character which appealed to them. His faults were the faults of a strong man who will not be turned aside from his purpose; his ambitions were bound up in England only. To make her a strong united kingdom was the dream of his life, and though in this cause, he fought relentlessly, alike against Llewellyn of Wales and Wallace of Scotland, he strove with equal vigour to give his people good laws, fair taxation, and just representation. ”

“ Till the days of George III. every English king also called himself king of France.
Despite his victory at Sluys, Edward was so exhausted by his land campaign that he was forced before the end of 1340 to make a truce and return to England. He unfairly blamed his chief minister, Archbishop Stratford, for his financial distress, and immediately on his return vindictively attacked him. Before the truce expired a disputed succession to the duchy of Brittany gave Edward an excuse for renewing hostilities with France. In 1342 he went to Brittany and fought an indecisive campaign against the French. ”

“ On the other hand, we do not find in him—we have indeed no opportunity of finding in him—the great legislative power of Edward the First. But he was not unmindful of his duties as a king, and in the midst of his campaigns he found time for the cares of civil government. England never had a more popular sovereign, though he made demands upon it in men and money which, considering the shortness of his reign, must have exceeded all precedent;155 and even in the country which he ruled as a stranger he won a general admiration and respect. ”

“ On this theory Edward himself was doubtless the true heir to the321 French monarchy. But even admitting the claims of Edward, his rights had certainly not descended to Henry V, seeing that even in England neither he nor his father was true to the throne by lineal right. A war with France, however, was sure to be popular with his subjects, and the weakness of that country from civil discord seemed a favorable opportunity for urging the most extreme pretensions. ”

“ Addressing a British Parliamentary Delegation to Paris on November 26th, the Premier, M. Combes, eulogized King Edward and toasted him as the sovereign to whom they owed the treaty. At the annual banquet of the British Chamber of Commerce in Paris on December 3d, its president, Mr. O. E. Bodington, made a similar reference to the King. To the Montreal Witness on December 7th, Senator Dandurand, who had just returned from England, paid the following French-Canadian tribute to His Majesty: "The King is the most popular crowned head in Europe to-day. ”

“ King Edward now himself assumed the reins of government; he was still very young, but in the middle ages men ripened quick if they died early, and Edward at nineteen was thought both by others and himself old enough to take charge of the policy of the realm. He was in his youth a very well-served and well-loved sovereign, for he had all the qualities that attract popularity—a handsome person, pleasant and affable manners, a fluent tongue, and an energy that contrasted most happily with the listless indolence of his miserable father. ”

“ There is not a reign among those of the ancient English monarchs which deserves more to be studied than that of Edward III, nor one where the domestic transactions will better discover the true genius of that kind of mixed government which was then established in England. ”

“ No claim could have been more utterly baseless, for the Parliamentary title by which the House of Lancaster held England could give it no right over France, and the strict law of hereditary succession which Edward asserted could be pleaded, if pleaded at all, only by the House of Mortimer. Not only the claim indeed, but the very nature of the war itself was wholly different from that of Edward the Third. Edward had been forced into the struggle against his will by the ceaseless attacks of France, and his claim of the crown was little but an afterthought to secure the alliance of Flanders. ”

“ From United States newspapers, the exponents of public opinion in a great kindred nation, came a wonderfully unanimous and kindly expression of real feeling. To the New York Herald the late King appeared as blessed with "a genial personality, a kind heart and a strong common sense, together with that highest quality of supreme importance in a ruler and statesman—tact"; to the Buffalo News King Edward was "the ablest Royal ruler England has known in centuries;" ”

“ Interested in music, and devoted to play-acting, he was badly educated, taking the coronation oath in the French form provided for a king ignorant of Latin. Vain, irritable, and easily moved to outbursts of childish wrath, he was half-conscious of the weakness of his will, and was never without a favourite, whose affection compensated him for his subjects' contempt. The household of so careless a master was disorderly beyond the ordinary measure of the time. While Edward irritated the nobles by his neglect of their counsel, he vexed the commons by the exactions of his purveyors. ”

“ A false chivalry had gradually been taking the place of the old feudal sentiment, and Edward was [219] open to be moved both by the impulses of a spurious knight-errantry and by personal motives of ambition and passion. When once engaged in the war, however, he acted both energetically and prudently. His marriage with Philippa of Hainault, and the close commercial interdependence of England and the countries on the North-east of France, gave him an opening which he eagerly employed. He entered into alliances with the Princes of that neighbourhood, with Brabant, Gueldres, Juliers and Cologne. ”

“ His position was strengthened by his personal qualities which made him the hero of the younger generation; and his influence began to modify the policy of Edward the king's son, who, since the flight of his Poitevin kinsmen, was gradually arriving at broader views of national policy. Even before his father's journey to France, Edward took up a line of his own. In the October parliament of 1259, he listened to a petition presented to the 108council by the younger nobles [1] who complained that, though the king had performed all his promises, the barons had not fulfilled any of theirs. ”

“ He joined the expedition fitted out by the Duke of Lancaster in the summer of 1355 to aid the king of Navarre, which was finally abandoned, and the earl sailed later with the king to Calais, and took part in Edward's campaign in northern France [see under Edward III] . Returning to England with the king, he accompanied him in his campaign in Scotland, which lasted until the spring of 1356. Meanwhile his brother Sir Richard followed the Prince of Wales into France in 1355, was sent by him with letters to England in December, rejoined his army, and fought at Poitiers on 19 Sept. ”

“ Before long Philip of France was able to build up a French party in appearance as formidable-in reality as useless as Edward's attempted confederation. Edward's most important ally, Guy of Flanders, was forced to renounce his daughter's marriage to the heir of England and hand her over to Philip's custody. The time was not yet come for effective European coalitions; the real fighting had to be done by the parties directly interested in the quarrel. ”

“ Edward was convinced that the real cause of his failure was the remissness of the home government, and resolved to wreak his vengeance on his ministers. He was encouraged to this effect by Bishop Burghersh, who still remembered his old feuds with Archbishop Stratford, and may well have believed that the archbishop, who had a financier's dread of war, had wilfully ruined his rival's diplomacy. But Edward dared not openly return to England, for his Flemish creditors regarded his personal presence as the best security for his debts. ”

“ EDWARD I. (1239-1307) , king of England, born at Westminster on the 17th of June 1239, was the eldest son of Henry III. and Eleanor of Provence. He was baptized Edward after Edward the Confessor, for whom Henry had special veneration, and among his godfathers was Simon de Montfort, earl of Leicester, his aunt Eleanor’s husband. His political career begins when the conclusion of a treaty with Alphonso X. of Castile, by which he was to marry the Spanish king’s half sister Eleanor, necessitated the conferring on him of an adequate establishment. ”

“ But since the rule of Edward began, England enjoyed a prosperity so unbroken that far heavier burdens would hardly have brought about a diminution of the well-being which stood in glaring contrast to the desolation long inflicted by Edward's wars on France. A war waged exclusively on foreign soil did little harm to England, and offered careers whereby many an English adventurer was gaining a place among the landed classes. ”

“ Parliament granted no money; and Edward only met his daily expenses by loans, contracted from every quarter, and by keeping tight hands on the confiscated estates of the Templars. Both the king and the leading earls made every excuse to escape attending the ineffective parliaments of that miserable time. Two short visits to France gave Edward a pretext for avoiding his subjects. There were some hasty musterings of armed men on pretence of tournaments. But the king was still formidable enough to make it desirable for the barons to carry out the treaty. ”

“ He seized the property of Walter, Bishop of Lichfield, who in the late reign had opposed him in his office as treasurer, and bestowed it on Gaveston; and after that young man had, by his ostentation, by his success in the lists, and by a reckless use of his happy gift of applying nicknames, excited the anger of the great nobles, Edward was foolish enough, on leaving England to do homage for his French dominions, to leave him as Governor of the country. Consequently, no sooner was he crowned than the Barons demanded in Parliament the dismissal of the favourite. ”

“ After the Hundred Years' War had been in progress less than a quarter of a century, it seemed as if Edward III. had won all that he could possibly claim—peace and sovereignty over all the outlying parts of his dominion at home, and over more than he had set out to gain on the Continent. But the war was renewed by the action of Edward's vassal lords in France, only nine years later, and before his death, which happened in 1377, scarce a possession on the Continent was left to England except the city of Calais and a narrow strip of coast south of Bordeaux, in Guienne. ”

“ Edward was before all things a soldier. He was not only the consummate knight, the mirror of chivalry, but a capable tactician with a general's eye that took in the essential points of the situation at a glance. His restless energy ensured the rapidity of movement and alertness of action which won him many a triumph over less mobile and less highly trained antagonists; while they inspired his followers with faith in their cause and with the courage which succeeds against desperate odds. Yet the victor of Crecy cannot be numbered among the consummate generals of history. ”

“ A modern nation had arisen out of the old world-state and world-spirit. In the England of Edward III., Chaucer, and Wycliffe, we have reached the consummation of the movement whose first beginnings we have traced in the early storms of the reign of Henry III. It is in the development of this tendency that the period from 1216 to 1377 possesses such unity as it has.
During the years of peace after the treaty of Calais, Edward III. completed the scheme for the establishment of his family begun with the grant of Aquitaine to the Black Prince. ”

“ Edward seems to have proceeded with the full intention of giving a just and legal judgment, and after several meetings, in November 1292, a decision was arrived at in favour of John Balliol. Meanwhile, during the settlement of the question, Edward had taken possession of the Scotch castles, had appointed the great officers of the kingdom, and had caused the regents to exact an oath of fealty to him as superior lord. The new King accepted the throne distinctly as a vassal of England, and finally, to make his dependence perfectly clear, did homage after his coronation. ”

“ As grandson of Louis X. he aspired to the French throne, and was anxious to prevent John's return. Edward had no good-will for a possible rival, but it was his interest to keep up the anarchy, and he had no scruple in backing up Charles. There was talk of Edward becoming King of France and holding the maritime provinces, while Charles as his vassal should be lord of Paris and the interior districts. English mercenaries, who had lost their occupation with the truce, enlisted themselves in the service of Navarre. ”

“ The queen, with the relatives and connections of her family, formed one party, and the other nobles and peers of England another party, and great was the animosity and hatred that prevailed. The English nobles had never been satisfied with Edward's marriage, and they were very jealous of the influence of the queen's family and relations. This feud had been kept down in some degree while Edward lived, and Edward had made a great final effort to heal it entirely in his last sickness. ”