…the Lord Edward, lately king of England, of his good will, and by the common counsel and consent of the prelates, earls, and barons, and other nobles, and all the community of the realm, has given up the government of the realm, and has granted and wishes that the government of the said realm should fall upon the Lord Edward, his eldest son and heir, and that he should reign and be crowned king…1
It was in these words, proclaimed in public places throughout the realm, that most of the inhabitants of England heard of the change of ruler effected in the winter of 1326–7. Few knew the details or understood the implications of this event. The abdication, or deposition, of Edward II was arranged by Queen Isabella and her lover Roger Mortimer during an extraordinary parliament held at Westminster in January 1327. The prelates and peers, knights and burgesses present at this meeting were closely in touch with events, as were some of the citizens of London, who put strong pressure on the assembly to deliver the realm from the ineptitude of the king. The people who knew most of all were the members of the deputation sent to Edward at Kenilworth to present the demands of his subjects that he renounce his title. Some of those who attended this meeting later told their stories, and the events were reported in the chronicles.2 It is doubtful, however, whether many were interested in the theoretical significance of the revolution which had taken place. Within the limits of legal memory no king had been deprived of his authority in this way. Edward II had simply lost the right to rule by his own blatant incapacity, and by allowing his henchmen the Despensers to exercise a quite arbitrary authority during the last years of his reign. Somehow (and the details are by no means clear) a satisfactory compromise was reached, by which the king was held to have given up the throne freely and to have bestowed it on his eldest son. Events in 1326–7 could therefore be conveniently interpreted as a simple speeding up of the natural succession. Those who best understood what had happened at Westminster and Kenilworth were precisely those in whose interests it was to draw a discreet veil over the proceedings. The majority of the new king’s subjects in the provinces were in any case more than content to know that a highly unpopular ruler had been removed, and to hope for better things from his successor.
Fifty years later, when Edward III died, the image of the monarchy was very different. Edward was to be remembered as a victorious and honourable king who had won respect abroad and popularity at home. A poem written several years after his death presented him as the minister of God, a scourge to his enemies, and a kind and just ruler to his people: one who indeed deserved the society of the angels.3 At the end of the fourteenth century the St Albans chronicler Thomas Walsingham wrote thus:
Without doubt this king had been among all the kings and princes of the world renowned, beneficent, merciful, and august; given the epithet ‘the Favoured One’ on account of the remarkable favour through which he distinguished himself. . . Certainly his fame spread so far abroad amongst foreign and remote nations that they considered themselves fortunate who were either subject to his lordship or were partly allied with him. Indeed, they did not believe that there could be any kingdom under the heavens which produced so noble, so high-minded, or so fortunate a king, or could in the future produce such another after his decease.4
Walsingham was not blind to Edward’s failings, and attributed the political problems of the 1370s directly to the old king’s moral depravity. But his eulogy left a lasting impression. Edward III was remembered as a great leader in the wars with France, a king who ‘brought back victory in triumphant glory from all encounters on land and sea’. He had ruled his kingdom ‘actively, wisely, and nobly’, showing due devotion to God, generosity to the great, and compassion to the weak.5 As the years passed, the failure of most of his successors to live up to such achievements gave further encouragement to the flourishing cult of Edward III. By the fifteenth century the most popular chronicle of the day, the Brut, claimed that this king had ‘passed and shone by virtue and grace, given to him from God, above all his predecessors that were noble men and worthy’.6 Edward III had become the very prototype of the successful king.
No modern reader could seriously accept all these compliments at face value. Since the nineteenth century, indeed, historians have become a good deal more circumspect about the supposed accomplishments of this king. Edward III is now often seen as a rather second-rate ruler, stubborn and selfish in his foreign ambitions, weak and yielding in his domestic policies. He lacked the forcefulness of Henry II, the statesmanship of Edward I, the charisma of Henry V, or the application of Henry VII. He was prepared to accept short-term compromises and to ignore the wider implications of his actions. Far from providing a model of successful kingship, Edward ultimately damaged the power of the monarchy and contributed to the political difficulties of his successors.7 The adulation of the chronicles has therefore given way to the critical judgements of the textbooks. But in their determination to destroy the myth of Edward III, historians may well have gone too far. To measure his achievements by the failures of later kings is to write history backwards, and to forget the formidable problems which Edward himself faced and overcame. The prestige of the English monarchy had never sunk so low as in 1327. Yet in the course of the next generation, Edward III successfully rebuilt public confidence in the crown. The result was one of the longest periods of political calm in the whole of the later Middle Ages.
That achievement was all the greater considering the number and variety of men that had to be accommodated in the new dispensation. The structure of politics had undergone a fundamental change since the thirteenth century as a result of the unprecedented and often outrageous pressures applied by the crown on its subjects. The disputes which had led to the issue of Magna Carta in 1215 and the subsequent attempt to reform royal government in 1258 were chiefly the concern of the barons, who in the name of the ‘community of the realm’ had sought to defend their own interests against the intrusions of King John and the inadequacies of Henry III. By 1259 the so-called ‘gentry’, the middling landholders in the shires, were also taking part in political debate, though for the next half-century they were usually content to work through the magnates.8 It was Edward I’s wars in Wales, Scotland and France that really transformed the structure of politics. From the 1290s representatives both of the shires and the towns were summoned to meet with the king and his great lords in parliament and authorize universal taxes to subsidize military expenditure. At the same time Edward began to impose extremely heavy charges on the English clergy, and to negotiate special taxes on overseas trade with native and foreign merchants. In return for such financial support, these groups naturally expected some recognition and respect. If the crown asked too much and gave too little in return, then it ran the risk of confrontation. Edward I’s bitter quarrel with Archbishop Winchelsey and his struggle with the barons in 1297 were a dramatic indication of the new forces at work in English politics.9 By 1300 the crown had obtruded itself on to the lives of its subjects in a manner unthinkable in the twelfth century. If Edward I’s successors were to continue with his policies, it was essential that they should also come to terms with the new political society that had grown up in response.
Edward II failed not only in this respect, but also in almost every other of the challenges left him by his father. His clash with the nobility indicated a complete disregard for the interests of any but a handful of his personal followers. In 1311, as in 1258, the great lords took it upon themselves to remove royal favourites and to force on the king ordinances for the better governance of the realm. Had Edward subsequently come to terms with the magnates, he might yet have re-established his credibility with the wider community. But the 1320s witnessed the complete breakdown of cooperation. In 1322 the king defeated and killed his cousin, Thomas of Lancaster, at the battle of Boroughbridge, and began to persecute all those who had supported the Ordinances of 1311. For a while, political society was left leaderless and powerless. Edward II’s deposition was really a palace revolution, the work of Isabella and Mortimer. But the delegation sent to Kenilworth to secure the king’s abdication included a complete cross-section of the community: bishops, monks and friars; earls, lords, barons of the Cinque Ports, provincial knights, Londoners, and possibly representatives from other lesser towns.10 Under exceptional circumstances it was found necessary to mobilize the whole realm against its common enemy, a perverse and grossly incapable king. The lessons for the future were plain enough. Any ruler who so obstinately refused the wise counsels of his great subjects and so consistently failed to provide good governance for the realm was not worthy to hold the title of king. This lesson was not lost on Edward’s successor.
It was in the reign of Edward III that the crown finally came to terms with the new political conditions which had emerged since the later thirteenth century. Realizing the dangers of perpetual conflict and the positive advantages to be gained from consensus, Edward III acknowledged the influence not only of the magnates but also of the other politically active classes – the clergy, the county landholders and the prosperous townsmen – and tried to win their active support for his domestic and foreign policies. It would obviously be a mistake to exaggerate this development. The process of reconciliation was gradual and often painful, and the compromise eventually struck in the middle years of the reign benefited only a small number of men. In many ways it was the nobles who continued to dominate politics and to dictate the fortunes of the crown. The great mass of the king’s subjects remained powerless, and were increasingly resentful of the way in which the ruling classes manipulated power for their own ends. Indeed, certain sections of the rural and urban population felt sufficiently betrayed by their betters to take the only form of political action open to them and launch the Peasants’ Revolt within four years of Edward’s death. Nevertheless, it is clear that by the mid-fourteenth century the ‘community of the realm’ incorporated a larger cross-section of the population than ever before.11 By the end of Edward III’s reign a new political society had emerged in England, one that was to remain substantially unaltered for the rest of the Middle Ages and beyond.
The principal purpose of this book is to examine that society and to explore the political implications of its relationship with the crown. But in order to appreciate these developments, it is first necessary to give a brief outline of Edward III’s long reign. The period divides itself naturally into three phases. The years until the parliamentary crisis of 1341 form a postlude to the reign of Edward II and indicate the formidable problems inherited by Edward III. The middle period from 1341 to 1360 was, by contrast, one of extraordinary good fortune, during which military success abroad and political harmony at home helped to re-establish the prestige and power of the monarchy. After the high point of the early 1360s, however, Edward’s last years witnessed the gradual disintegration of royal authority. Finally, diplomatic and military failures combined with domestic mismanagement to produce a serious political confrontation in the Good Parliament of 1376.