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Medieval politics was dictated very largely by the character and the ambitions of the king. By the later Middle Ages the crown was tending to become more anonymous: personal monarchy had begun to give way to impersonal bureaucracy. But the king remained the fount of justice and patronage, the protector of his subjects, and the defender of the realm. If he was too young, too old or too inept, the whole political and administrative machine could easily break down. In 1327 it was convenient to maintain the fiction that Edward III was of an age to rule. But there was also a keen awareness that certain great matters, such as a proposed revision to the Charter of the Forests, could not be dealt with until he reached maturity.1 Similarly, Edward’s final illness meant that the government was unable for some months to respond to the request of the Good Parliament that Prince Richard be created Prince of Wales.2 These are just two examples of the problems that arose whenever the country found itself without an effective ruler. Conversely, too much intervention could also pose a threat to political stability. The wilful abuse of power by kings and their aristocratic cronies provoked widespread opposition and led ultimately to the overthrow of both Edward II and Richard II. In the later Middle Ages, then, it was important not only that the king should rule effectively, but that he should be seen to rule well and wisely. This demanded a perception, a sensitivity and a flexibility all too often lacking in the Plantagenet dynasty. It is our present task to describe how Edward III developed such skills, and to assess the wider implications for the state of politics in his reign.
THE CHARACTER OF EDWARD III
Edward III had little formal instruction in the art of kingship. He was given a collection of handbooks or ‘mirrors for princes’ on his betrothal to Philippa of Hainault in 1326, but it is extremely doubtful that he read or comprehended these works. 3 When he received from Walter de Milemete his very own tract on kingship, Edward was probably much more impressed with the sumptuous illustrations than with the implications of the text.4 His conception of the royal office was formed not by theory but by practice, and in particular by the models provided among his historical and mythical ancestors. The anonymous author of the Life of Edward II had wished on the future Edward III all the virtues of his predecessors: the industry of Henry II, the bravery of Richard I, the longevity of Henry III, the wisdom of Edward I, and – the best he could do – the good looks of Edward II.5 This habit of referring to the past obviously appealed to Edward III. He collected chronicles of English history, and in 1352 he consulted the writer Ranulph Higden on some unspecified point in the latter’s Polychronicon.6 He was especially taken by the achievements of Henry II and Edward I, and tried to emulate their imperialist policies.7 By appealing to the glories of the past, Edward III indicated his hopes for the future and advertised to contemporaries his plan for the revival of the monarchy.
Edward III was a man of conventional tastes and habits. He was bluff, brave, generous, slightly boorish, heartily heterosexual, fair-minded and, on the whole, even-tempered. Above all, he fitted the contemporary image of kingship. In his religious observances, for instance, Edward was careful to follow fashion, patronizing the friars, founding colleges of secular clerks, visiting shrines, and showing due devotion to the Virgin.8 He was a natural showman, and proved remarkably successful at manipulating public opinion through displays of majesty. A notable example is provided by the royal touch, the practice whereby anointed kings blessed (and reputedly healed) those suffering from scrofula.9 Between November 1340 and November 1341, for instance, when his popularity was otherwise extremely low, Edward carried out no fewer than 355 ritual healings, at least 257 of them at Westminster.10 We can perhaps better understand the collapse of Stratford’s opposition during the summer of 1341 when we realize the symbolic significance of these and other ceremonies going on in the capital. The king’s cultural interests also had a political dimension. Edward’s principal love was architecture, and the major building programme initiated at Windsor Castle in the 1350s was particularly close to his heart. His total expenditure on palaces, castles, chapels and hunting lodges was at least £130,000.11 But this extravagance never incited criticism, partly because a good deal of it was funded out of Edward’s private income, and partly because it was deemed an appropriate princely pastime. The pageantry and spectacle of the Tudor regime was still some way off; but the trend was set by the mid-fourteenth century, and Edward III’s contemporaries liked it.
Much of Edward’s popularity rested on his success as a soldier. Several of his escapades – like the rescue of the Countess of Atholl from the siege of Lochindorb in 1336 – had a strongly romantic flavour.12 Others were distinctly dangerous. At Christmas 1349, for example, Edward was informed that the town of Calais, only recently won after a long siege, was about to be betrayed to the French. With scant regard for his own safety, he immediately crossed the Channel in the company of a small band of soldiers and helped to save the town.13 Such impetuosity did not always serve the king so well. Edward’s tactics at Crécy in 1346 indicate a high degree of planning and organization; but as the campaign of 1360 showed, he was too often distracted from his principal purpose – in this case the siege of Rheims – by the prospect of easy pickings in the shape of plunder and ransoms.14 For contemporaries, however, there was no such questioning of the king’s accomplishments. Indeed, his prowess in war did much to redeem his mistakes at home. Like his grandfather, Edward deliberately encouraged the equation between his own victories and the feats of King Arthur. In 1331 he visited the centre of the Arthurian cult at Glastonbury, and in 1345 he ordered a search to be made for the body of Arthur’s supposed ancestor, Joseph of Arimathea.15 Similarly, in 1343, Edward invoked more recent memories of the battle of Sluys by presenting five model ships crafted in gold to the principal pilgrimage centres of the English Church.16 Shortly afterwards he issued a new gold coin, the noble, with a striking representation of himself aboard a ship of war. This imagery sank deep into the public consciousness, and earned the king a special reputation as lord of the seas both in his own and in later generations.17 Edward III, in fact, emerges from the records as one of the most image-conscious kings of the later Middle Ages.
THE DEPOSITION OF EDWARD II
It is a commonplace of historical writing that Edward III’s vision of kingship was conditioned by the fate of Edward II. There is much truth to this. The monarchy had suffered a considerable blow as a result of the revolution of 1326–7, and many of the policies of Edward III were inevitably designed to wipe clean the soiled reputation of his dynasty. It would be quite wrong, however, to suggest that Edward was much troubled by the ghost of his father. The so-called articles of deposition, which detailed the reasons why Edward II had forfeited his right to rule, may have been read before the parliament of January 1327; but no attempt was made to publicize them throughout the country and they were never cited against Edward III in political debate.18 Initially, there was a tendency for those aggrieved by the crown to refer in a general way to the punishment meted out to the previous king. William of Pagula, the articulate vicar of Winkfield (Berkshire), held forth on the evils of royal purveyance in the early 1330s, and made some pointed remarks to Edward III about the fate of tyrants.19 John Stratford, whose name has often been linked with the earlier articles of deposition, also made various references to the downfall of Edward II during his quarrel with Edward III in the winter of 1340–1.20 But it is interesting to note that these allusions were never taken up by parliament, even at the height of the ensuing crisis. And with the improvement in the political climate after the 1340s, such references ceased altogether. There was no suggestion at the end of Edward III’s reign that the king stood in any danger of deposition. It was only Richard II’s obstinacy that forced the magnates once again to cite, and finally to use, the precedent of 1326–7.21
One of the principal reasons for Edward III’s comparative security was his position as the legitimate heir to the throne. Unlike the later usurper Henry IV, Edward never had to resort to deceit in order to justify his title.22 As a mere youth, he could also claim that he was innocent of the violent deeds of 1326–7. It is almost certain that Edward II was murdered at Berkeley Castle in September 1327;23 but Edward III was not implicated in the event, and after his own coup in 1330 he was quick to lay the blame for the old king’s death on the discredited Earl of March.24 Edward was indeed sufficiently confident of his own position to pay public respect to his predecessor. He was generous to the monks of Gloucester who had charge of Edward II’s remains, and he diligently fulfilled his father’s various bequests and religious foundations.25 He had little to fear from the occasional rumours that the former king was still alive, and responded discreetly and calmly to such reports. Edward III clearly appreciated that his own position rested heavily on the principle of dynastic continuity.
This sense of continuity also explains why the revolution of 1326–7 was not accompanied by any formal statement restricting the power of the crown. Edward III’s accession marked a new dispensation only in the sense that it provided his subjects with the opportunity to rebuild the old political structures undermined by Edward II. Although Mortimer and Isabella betrayed that hope, the elite simply trusted that things would improve when the young king came of age. On Edward’s assumption of power in 1330, the mood was therefore conciliatory, conservative, and optimistic. The community anticipated the restoration of normality, and eagerly awaited proof of a similar commitment on the part of the king.
THE ROYAL POLICY OF EDWARD III
The idea that Edward III had a consistent ‘policy’ has not found favour with constitutional historians. Stubbs believed that Edward’s opportunism marked a weakness of character and a deficiency of statesmanship, and most historians still attribute the king’s success merely to his conciliatory attitude.26 The common picture is that of a ruler prepared to compromise his power in order to maintain personal popularity and political peace. But it would be quite unrealistic to suppose that Edward III consciously and recklessly destroyed the authority of the throne. A reconsideration of the fortunes of the royal prerogative during the mid-fourteenth century will reveal that Edward’s political objectives were considerably more consistent and ambitious than has usually been suggested.
The results can best be judged by examining a few specific cases. It was in the course of Edward III’s reign that parliament successfully abolished or restricted a number of the crown’s more contentious feudal prerogatives. In 1340, for instance, it was agreed to release the country from the threat of tallage and scutage, and for the rest of his reign Edward III made no further attempt to levy these arbitrary taxes.28 Moreover, in 1352 the crown conceded that in future feudal aids should be collected only with the consent of parliament.29 It is important to recognize, however, that such promises were usually only given when the levies had proved unproductive (as in the case of tallage and scutage),30 or when Edward had already exercised such rights (as in the case of the feudal aid).31The timing of these concessions is therefore of crucial importance.
Much the same holds true for the contemporary legislation on purveyance. Most of the statutes passed between 1330 and 1360 were intended to reduce corruption among the king’s purveyors rather than restrict the levies themselves. It was only in 1362, when the war was apparently over, that the king was prepared to abolish countrywide prises for the upkeep of his armies and garrisons, and to restrict compulsory purveyance to the maintenance of the royal household.32 Indeed, there are reasons to question the effectiveness of this statute once the French war broke out again in 1369.33 Nevertheless, the importance of such legislation should not be minimized. By the end of Edward III’s reign, parliament had made a permanent and considerable impact on the king’s feudal rights.
The crown’s constitutional powers fared very differently. Edward III was far too much of a traditionalist to ignore the ancient privileges of the crown, and he could cling as jealously as any of his predecessors to those rights deemed to be inherent to his title. It was only in 1340–1 that the desperate financial situation forced Edward to make major concessions. In April 1340 he had to accept a series of special parliamentary tribunals to investigate the activities of royal tax collectors and financiers, and agreed in principle to the idea of a permanent baronial committee nominated in parliament and enjoying comprehensive power over the crown’s income and expenditure.34 The regency council subsequently appointed to run the country in Edward’s absence was actually permitted to exercise the king’s feudal rights, to appoint and dismiss ministers, and to do all that was necessary for the administration of the realm.35 In effect, then, royal government was put into commission. Edward’s return from the continent in December 1340 marked the end of this extraordinary council, but not of the political arguments behind it. Indeed, in April 1341 the king was forced to accept the appointment of another audit committee, to allow the peers a say in the selection of royal ministers, and to give parliament the right to attaint such officers of state.36 These new concessions represented a substantial infringement of the royal prerogative. But the renunciation of this legislation later in 1341 made it clear that the king was determined to protect his political rights.37 Edward may have sworn at his coronation to uphold the just laws and customs which the community of the realm might choose; but as events in 1341 showed, it was the king alone who remained the arbiter of what was good and just.
In theory, this action restored Edward to the plenitude of power. He now enjoyed the same authority claimed by his father in the years following the Statute of York of 1322 or by Richard II after the collapse of the Appellant regime in 1388–9.38 The vital difference, of course, was that Edward III refused to use the royal prerogative as an instrument of tyranny. In particular, he avoided those arbitrary trials and executions which had claimed so many aristocratic victims between 1322 and 1330. Indeed, in 1352 he made what was arguably one of the most significant political concessions of his reign by defining the various crimes which could be treated as high or petty treason. This made it impossible for the king to proceed against his political opponents on the trumped-up charge of ‘accroaching the royal power’.39 Richard II later had good reason to regret the restrictions contained in this statute. But it is most unlikely that Edward III saw the legislation as damaging to the prerogative. Treason was a political irrelevance in the 1350s; and the king never actually had occasion to test his remaining powers by citing the legislation against an opponent. The Statute of Treasons may have represented a safeguard against tyranny, but it did little to alter the practical power of the crown in the mid-fourteenth century.
The real test of the king’s authority, as Edward III well appreciated, was in the financial sphere. It was during this reign, as we shall see, that parliament came to enjoy exclusive control over the granting of direct and indirect taxes. This undoubtedly gave the commons greater influence and encouraged them to intervene in many areas of high politics.40 But this is not to say that parliament had any real control over the king’s financial administration. From 1340 the commons tried to establish the principle that taxes granted for the defence of the realm should be spent solely on war; but the king clearly made free with such supplies, and by the 1350s was reserving at least some of the profits of direct and indirect taxation for the expenses of his increasingly extravagant court.41Again, parliament argued that all extraordinary levies should cease in the event of a truce being drawn up. Edward III, however, carried on collecting taxes for their full duration, regardless of the state of war or diplomacy.42 There was apparently no question, for instance, that the six-year wool subsidy begun in 1356 should not run its course, despite the fact that peace was concluded in 1360.43 Finally, after 1371, the commons began to agitate for the appointment of groups of barons to administer extraordinary taxes.44 The apparent intention (not made specific until after Edward’s death) was to provide parliament with detailed statements on the expenditure of wartime subsidies. But this clearly aroused memories of the audit committees of 1340–1, and the requests were summarily dismissed. It might be argued that Edward III’s ministers were only delaying the inevitable, for the parliaments of Richard II and Henry IV were to take important stands on the appropriation of supplies and the accountability of war treasurers. 45 Nevertheless, Edward’s refusal to compromise on this matter is a notable example of his determination to maintain the initiative and to avoid the damaging political compromises into which he had been forced in 1340–1.
The last and most obvious demonstration of Edward’s constitutional rights came during the political squabbles of the 1370s. In 1371 the government was forced to dismiss the chancellor, treasurer and keeper of the privy seal, and to replace them with laymen.46But this was no mere repeat of the ministerial crisis of 1340–1. The new officials were appointed by and answerable to the king, not parliament; and although the three principal offices of state remained in the hands of laymen for the next six years, parliament was certainly not consulted on the government’s decision to revert to clerical chancellors and treasurers in January 1377. Indeed, the whole royalist revanche in the months following the Good Parliament drew directly on the precedent of 1341 and demonstrated very clearly that the prerogative was still a powerful instrument with which to outmanoeuvre the king’s enemies. The authority of the crown therefore remained very much a political reality in the mid-fourteenth century. The rarity with which Edward III actually asserted the prerogative was a sign not of some constitutional weakness but of the extraordinary consensus which prevailed for so much of his reign.
THE KING AND GOVERNMENT
Much as they may have disliked it, medieval kings had to apply themselves to the task of government. In the twelfth century, this had meant being constantly on the move: both Henry I and Henry II had travelled around their dominions with a rapidity that remains impressive even today. By the fourteenth century, however, the king’s itinerary tended to be more restricted. Indeed, Edward III’s personal knowledge of his kingdom was remarkably limited. The Scottish campaigns of the 1330s often led the king through the midlands and the north.47 But a detailed analysis of his itinerary in the decade 1345–55 reveals that, in normal circumstances, Edward rarely went further west than Wiltshire and Dorset or north of Northamptonshire.48 By the 1360s his geographical range had become still more restricted, and during the last years of the reign the court was usually lodged either at the queen’s manor of Havering (Essex) or at the royal palaces of Woodstock (Oxfordshire), Windsor (Berkshire), Sheen (Middlesex), Eltham and Queenborough (Kent).49
There was, of course, a very practical reason why Edward chose to spend the majority of his time in one particular corner of the realm. All his principal residences were within a day’s journey of the capital. Ministers were summoned to attend the king at his country seats,50 and a squadron of royal messengers maintained constant communication between the court and its professional advisers at Westminster.51 Edward retained his private quarters in Westminster Palace, and made frequent if brief visits there to meet foreign envoys,52 to consult with his councillors, and to hold parliaments. The itinerary of Edward III indicates a deliberate attempt to balance the king’s personal preference for country life with the constant pressures of government; and the evidence suggests that, for most of the reign at least, this compromise proved remarkably successful.
Edward III was not a bureaucrat by inclination: pen-pushing had no place in his vision of kingship. But impatience with administration did not mean a total disregard for business. The king well appreciated the essential distinction between mundane matters ‘of course’ (de cursu) which could safely be left to the professional administrators, and important matters ‘of grace’ (de gratia) which should be dealt with by him alone.53 There were three principal means by which Edward III communicated his will to the central government: by word of mouth; by writs under the privy seal; and by letters under the secret seal or signet. The frequency with which the first method was used can be attested by the large number of instruments issued from the chancery and warranted per ipsum regem (by the king himself). As Edward III’s reign wound on, however, both the chancery and the exchequer showed a marked preference for written warrants.54 The matters which feature in the resulting correspondence are predictable enough: the administration of war; the regulation of government officials; the operation of justice; and the distribution of patronage. But the following analysis of these subjects provides a more general insight into the nature and success of Edward III’s regime. The king was attentive to administrative detail not because he liked it, but because it was the very stuff of politics.
It was undoubtedly in times of war that Edward III was most actively involved in government. During the Scottish campaigns of the 1330s the king actually transferred the chancery, exchequer and court of common pleas to a northern base at York, the better to control his administration.55 When he went to the continent, these departments were left at Westminster under the token charge of one of the infant princes. On these occasions, Edward took both his great and privy seals with him, and created a great seal of absence for the use of the domestic government. Convention, or specific written instructions, then divided responsibility between the king and the regency council.56
Inevitably, this situation sometimes caused problems. In 1336, while at Perth, the king discovered that the chancery had failed to carry out his wishes with regard to a grant made to Lady Mortimer.57 Similarly, in the winter of 1355–6 when Edward was called north to deal with the Scots, his ministers at Westminster chose to ignore a controversial royal order for the seizure of the Bishop of Ely’s estates.58 By far the most serious conflict arose in 1338–9, when the regency council refused to be bound by the restrictions of the Walton Ordinances and found itself unable to raise sufficient money to meet the considerable costs of Edward’s campaign in the Low Countries. After 1341, however, there is little to suggest any real administrative conflict during the king’s military expeditions. Edward was every bit as determined to maintain his own scale of priorities in 1346–7 and 1359–60 as he had been in 1338–40.59 The difference was not that he had given up his special wartime powers, but that his administrators were content to abide by his decisions and in particular were able to meet his financial demands.
Edward III was much involved in the elaborate preparations that went on before each of his military campaigns. He frequently issued instructions for the array of soldiers and for the levy of horses, arms and victuals for his armies.60 He seems to have shown particular concern for the defence of the seas. In 1337 the council drew up a memorandum on shipping for his attention; and in 1372 when awaiting embarkation on his last abortive campaign, Edward personally ordered the arrest of all those who had deserted, or might desert, from the royal fleet.61 In 1351 he issued instructions to the sheriff of Somerset and Dorset for the preparation of 6,000lbs of rope for the rigging of his ships; and he took a keen interest in the convoy system instituted in the early 1350s to protect the wine fleet trading with Gascony.62
The king was also personally involved in diplomacy. His secret correspondence with the Pope in 1330 and his meetings with the French kings in 1325, 1329 and 1331 gave him an early grounding in international affairs, and he remained actively interested in the work of his ambassadors and negotiators for most of the reign. On the eve of Edward’s departure for the continent in 1338, for instance, the treasury of the exchequer was opened up and certain documents – probably concerning his claims in France – were made available for royal inspection.63 In 1362, Edward actually wrote E. Rex in his own hand at the foot of a diplomatic document sent to the King of Castile.64 In November 1348, he crossed the Channel in the company of the Prince of Wales, the Earl of Warwick, Treasurer Edington and others, in order to put the finishing touches to a projected treaty with the Count of Flanders.65 And in 1360 he intervened directly and decisively in the negotiations at Calais in order to ensure that the renunciation clauses were removed from the main text of the Brétigny settlement.66 Edward was clearly much more than a figurehead for his armies and his diplomatic service; he emerges from the records as an active and, by his own standards, a conscientious war leader.
When Edward was not fighting or planning a campaign, he was inevitably rather less involved in administration. In the early years of the reign, indeed, it was only the shortage of funds that usually led the king to interfere in the business of government.67 But the crisis of 1340–1 did much to stir him from his early complacency. When he returned secretly from the continent in December 1340 to take his vengeance on the domestic administration, Edward had his great and privy seals with him, and swiftly took charge of the whole governmental machine. The invitation to his subjects to submit complaints against royal ministers and agents,68 the subsequent order for the appointment of special commissions of oyer and terminer,69 and the ensuing announcement of the king’s sincere desire to wipe out corruption and oppression:70 all these actions betray Edward’s highly personal interpretation of the problem facing the country early in 1341. His administrative output during these weeks and months was indeed considerable, and it heralded a period of much more active and consistent participation in government.
Although it is impossible to make statistical comparisons, it seems that an appreciable proportion of government business during the central period of the reign arose directly from Edward’s personal wishes. He intervened in a whole range of subjects: from special arrangements for the governance of Calais to an inquiry into the forgery of wardrobe bills;71 from instructions on the disposition of the temporalities of the bishopric of Norwich to a ban on the construction of a new cemetery near the Tower of London during the plague of 1349.72 Very occasionally, as in 1350, he would write his own response on a document in order to authorize further government action.73 More frequently, he ordered the chancery to send the great seal to him so that charters, letters patent and writs drawn up at his instruction might be validated. 74 Some of these solemn documents were checked by the king personally, and if he objected to a particular wording, as in a grant made to the Earl of Arundel in 1361, the whole thing had to be written out again.75 Even during the summer months, when the pace of government slackened and the royal family went off hunting, such duties did not cease. In August-September 1361, for example, while taking his leisure at Beaulieu Abbey in the New Forest (Hampshire), Edward was called upon to authorize numerous grants of ecclesiastical benefices, to ratify the appointment of a new household official, to make a gift of a royal wardship, and to order a special judicial inquiry into hostilities between various towns on the south coast.76 The king was the ultimate source of all authority: wherever he went, the channels of communication had to be kept open and the ceaseless round of business carried on.
Given the scale and the complexity of royal administration, however, it was inevitable that most of the work had to be undertaken by professional bureaucrats in the capital and trustworthy local amateurs in the shires. Once again, the challenge posed to his authority in 1340–1 seems to have persuaded Edward that he must make more active use of his right to appoint, regulate and dismiss these ministers. The selection of laymen to fill the offices of chancellor and treasurer in December 1340 was deliberately intended to make the civil service more accountable to the crown; and the dismissal of William Thorp, chief justice of king’s bench, on charges of corruption in 1350 illustrates the ultimate dependence of even the most trusted ministers on the whim of the king.77On occasions, Edward could also be found intervening at lower levels in the bureaucracy. In 1343 he personally selected chancery clerks to take custody of the great seal on the death of the chancellor, and in 1349 he informed another group of custodians that no important documents should be issued during the current vacancy without his knowledge.78 In 1365 he presided in person over a special inquiry in the exchequer which resulted in the removal of the two chamberlains, Ralph Brantingham and Richard Piriton, and a number of lesser clerks.79 Edward’s newly developed interest in government even extended into the shires. In 1345 he gave personal instructions for the appointment of a commission to deliver the gaol at Baldock (Hertfordshire), and sent a list of recommended judges to the chancellor.80 In 1360 he decided that Nicholas Seymour was unfit to hold office as sheriff of Somerset; and in 1356 he wrote angrily to the chancellor that the ex-sheriff of Herefordshire should be reinstated immediately and not dismissed without a specific royal command.81 These snippets of information suggest that Edward III maintained a considerable hold over the personnel of central and local administration during the middle years of his reign. It was precisely by such means that he could best regulate the government carried out in his name and ensure the active co-operation of his ministers in the task of rebuilding royal authority.
One of the principal responsibilities of a medieval king was to uphold the law. All justice flowed in theory from the throne: indeed, the court of king’s bench, as well as the council and the chancery, maintained the fiction that their sessions were held coram rege(before the king). In reality, of course, the king left the bulk of civil and criminal proceedings to the professional judges, and tended to involve himself only in cases concerning men of high rank. In a more general sense, however, he was expected to uphold the rights of his subjects and to protect them from the corruption and iniquities of the legal system.82 The king’s record on law-keeping therefore did much to determine public opinion of his regime.
There is little to indicate that Edward III took much interest in judicial administration during his early years. In 1332 he was present at Stamford (Lincolnshire) when a member of the notorious Folville gang, which had been terrorizing the east midlands, was committed to Lincoln gaol by the justices of trailbaston.83 But the king was inevitably preoccupied with war, first in Scotland and then in France, and gave no real thought to the operation of criminal law in his absence. Indeed, his principal intervention in judicial administration during this period turned out to be highly controversial, for the king began to offer pardons to those criminals who agreed to serve in his armies.84 There was nothing new about this form of inducement, but the dramatic escalation in the number of pardons issued by the crown – at least 850 in 1339–40 alone – inevitably created disquiet. There was a widespread belief that soldiers returning from the wars were responsible for the increasing level of crime and violence, and there were frequent requests in parliament that charters of pardon should be restricted. The king, however, refused to compromise. The statutes of 1328–36 limiting the crimes for which pardons might be granted were simply ignored; and the system undoubtedly continued to be abused throughout the 1340s and 1350s.85 This evidence, and more occasional references to arbitrary royal intervention in the courts,86 suggest that the young Edward III had a distinctly opportunistic attitude to the law.
Nevertheless, royal involvement in justice was not wholly negative. Edward’s interest was evidently aroused by the events of 1340–1, when he set up special inquiries into maladministration in the shires.87 The king played no direct part in these proceedings, and was content merely to reserve for himself the punishment of certain malefactors such as Sir John Coggeshall, a former sheriff of Essex.88 Undoubtedly, however, he was impressed by the political implications and the potential financial profits of such extraordinary judicial sessions, and the experience made him more inclined to involve himself at all levels in legal administration. Late in 1341, for instance, when he visited Newcastle upon Tyne, Edward ordered a special investigation into civil government to be presided over by the controversial keeper of the privy seal, William Kilsby.89 In March 1344, when he made a brief visit to East Anglia, he established contact with the justices of oyer and terminer then working in Suffolk, ordered the immediate payment of their expenses, and subsequently sent to the chancellor a list of thirty men indicted in the sessions with orders that they should be punished.90 In 1349 he issued personal instructions to the justices in eyre in Kent to negotiate a fine with the shire community for the cessation of judicial proceedings.91 Finally, in January 1356 when Edward again passed through Newcastle on his way to the border, he appointed a group of household officers and royal judges to look into the work of the customs collectors in the port.92 The king’s active participation in justice during the 1340s and 1350s provides one of the most graphic examples of his determination to recover the ground earlier lost by the crown through ineptitude and negligence.
Much the same pattern emerges from a study of Edward’s role as arbitrator in disputes involving the great lay and ecclesiastical lords. Such cases can be found all through the reign, from his intervention in the quarrel between the Abbot and townsmen of Bury St Edmunds in 1331 to his mediation in a conflict between Oseney Abbey and the men of Oxford in 1374.93 Nevertheless, it is noticeable that the majority of royal judgments fell within the period of political harmony from the 1340s to the 1360s, when Edward’s reputation was at its height and his decisions universally respected. The king was particularly concerned to establish his authority over the Marcher lords, and intervened regularly in their private disputes. In 1345, for example, he insisted that he should have the final say in a quarrel involving the Welsh lands of Gilbert Talbot; and in 1353–4 he intervened decisively to support the Earls of Warwick and March in separate disputes over the lordships of Gower and Denbigh.94 Many such decisions were purely arbitrary, and were motivated by political considerations. Between 1346 and 1348, for instance, the council found itself unable to resolve a jurisdictional dispute between the Bishop of Norwich and the town authorities of Lynn; but the king was clear as to who should win, and in 1350 settled the contested judicial powers on his trusted councillor, Bishop Bateman.95 Where two powerful parties were involved, the loser could obviously create trouble. The Earl of Salisbury felt much aggrieved at the loss of Denbigh and other Welsh lands to the new Earl of March in 1354, although he seems to have done no more than to petition for compensation from the crown.96 On the whole, in fact, a clever political balancing act seems to have kept most of the magnates satisfied. In 1347, for instance, Edward took the side of his aunt, the Countess of Norfolk, against his cousin, the Earl of Northampton, in a private land dispute; but in the same year he showed favour to Northampton by personally supporting the latter’s claim to a portion of the manor of Thaxted (Essex).97 When the king’s grasp of politics declined in the 1370s, his reputation as adjudicator inevitably deteriorated.98 But for most of his reign Edward III appreciated that the manipulation of justice was an essential part of political management; and by working within the bounds of propriety he was able to maintain widespread respect for his role as supreme judge.
Judicial discretion was simply one element in the elaborate machinery of royal patronage. The range of titles and privileges in the king’s gift was prodigious: dukedoms, earldoms and knighthoods; bishoprics and benefices; public offices and sinecures; franchises, pardons, protections, exemptions, licences, wardships, annuities – the list is apparently endless. Almost all patronage was a matter of grace, to be exercised by the king alone. When he went abroad in 1338, indeed, Edward III specifically ordered that no business touching the royal grace should be dealt with by the home government unless a special authorization was received from the king under the privy seal.99 Admittedly, some lesser forms of royal patronage were exercised by the king’s ministers. The chancellor, for instance, had the right to present to all ecclesiastical benefices in the king’s gift valued at less than 20 marks (£13 6s 8d) a year,100 and was occasionally tempted to interfere with other more valuable offices. In December 1344, Edward III discovered that Robert Sadington had dared to counteract his orders about a presentation to Fugglestone Church (Wiltshire), and as punishment ordered the immediate suspension of all the chancellor’s rights of patronage.101 But until the mid-1370s at least, there is little reason to doubt that the vast majority of grants emanating from the chancery did indeed represent the personal preferences of Edward III.102
Much of this business arose from requests made by the king’s subjects. Indeed, the audience of petitions formed the bulk of Edward III’s daily work.103 There was an inevitable tendency for the king to favour his servants, his relatives and his great men. His attention was naturally drawn to the wage demands of a royal chaplain, to Prince Edmund’s appeal for help in a land dispute, to the Earl of Stafford’s concern over the infringement of his liberties, and to the Archbishop of Canterbury’s application for permission to extend one of his parks.104 But petitions normally concerned matters of grace, and the majority therefore needed to go before the king. In 1349, when parliament was adjourned at the last moment because of the plague, Edward conceded that private petitions might be taken to the chancellor and the keeper of the privy seal; but he specifically reserved to himself all requests touching the royal grace.105 Consequently, there were many matters brought before the king by individuals with little or no political influence. Edward involved himself personally in an attempt by Peter Corbet to escape appointment as sheriff of Gloucestershire, in the protest of the rector of Horncastle (Lincolnshire) against persons challenging his right to the benefice, in the plight of the friars minor of Bristol who had inadvertently taken control of certain property in the town without permission, and in the plea of a Plymouth innkeeper, John Baygge, who had lost several good drinking cups and all his wine as a result of a break-in at his premises.106 Even routine requests could end up coming before the king. The one surviving petition endorsed with a note in Edward’s own hand is an application from two royal clerks for a licence to travel to Rome in 1350, a matter that was normally dealt with quite satisfactorily by the bureaucrats.107
The widespread belief that requests could only be satisfied if they reached the king’s person meant that Edward was constantly and relentlessly pursued. He received petitions while fighting on the Scottish border and preparing expeditions on the Kentish coast.108Some persistent suitors even got their requests sent across the Channel when the king was at Calais in 1346–7.109 At other times, petitioners or their messengers had to roam around the royal forests in the hope of finding the king out hunting. In August 1362, for instance, while he was at Shipton under Wychwood (Oxfordshire), Edward received several petitions, including one from the Black Prince’s councillor Sir James Audley requesting rights of patronage over a parish church.110 In formal terms at least, the king’s responsibility for such business continued right to the end of his life. As late as May-June 1377 petitions were still being taken down to the court at Sheen and approved by the application of the royal signet.111 Edward III clearly regarded the audience of petitions as a vital and regular part of his system of patronage, and a formative influence on the individuals who made up the political society of his day.
Undoubtedly the most important aspect of royal patronage was the distribution of titles and property to support the peerage.112 From the Norman Conquest onwards the kings of England had looked upon their landed resources and their feudal rights primarily as a means of rewarding good service. It was not their custom to maintain a large demesne or to reserve escheats for the upkeep of the crown. It is true that Edward II used the lands forfeited from his baronial opponents to build up a new royal estate in the 1320s, but even he made free use of confiscations to create gifts for his favourites. Consequently, when Edward III began to redistribute that estate in the 1330s, he was not resorting to reckless alienation but simply reverting to earlier practice. At first, he concentrated on members of the royal family. But in 1337 he began to use the royal estates as a means of endowing his new batch of earls. Huntingdon, Suffolk and Salisbury were each promised incomes of 1,000 marks (£666 13s 4d) a year, and Northampton £1,000. These sums were made up from grants of lands (many of them escheats from the king’s deceased brother, John of Eltham), expectations (promises of lands in the future, chiefly from the estates of Queen Isabella and the childless Earl of Surrey), and cash (paid out of the county farms and the customs).
Such generous patronage did not go uncriticized. According to parliament in 1340 and 1343, Edward’s alienations prevented him from supporting himself out of crown revenues, and made the country liable to heavy taxation. It is noticeable that the king made fewer expectancies after the 1340s, and tended to rely on wealthy heiresses or on cash payments as a means of endowing new earls. Ralph Stafford derived his income chiefly from his wife Margaret Audley’s inheritance, and from an annuity of 1,000 marks (£666 13s 4d) at the ports of London and Boston. Elizabeth Burgh and Blanche of Lancaster were quickly snapped up as brides for the king’s second and third sons, and the Warenne lands were used to create an endowment for the fourth, Edmund of Langley. In fact, the decline in new creations, together with the re-leasing of large estates on the deaths of the two queens and the gradual maturing of older expectancies, meant that the pressures of patronage were somewhat reduced in the second half of Edward’s reign. Nevertheless, it is probably true that the king’s unrestrained largesse in the 1330s restricted his patronage in later years. At the time of the Good Parliament it was apparently felt that neither Edmund of Langley nor Thomas of Woodstock had sufficient lands and titles to support their princely status.113 If the king lacked the resources with which to endow his own children, then he clearly had little chance of satisfying the demands of all the magnates.
It was largely for this reason that Edward III began in the 1370s to make more use of his feudal resources as a means of rewarding servants and courtiers. The sale of wardships and marriages and the leasing of escheated lands was nothing new: after the Black Death of 1348–9, for instance, there had been particularly lively competition for the lands and heirs of tenants-in-chief. But on that occasion leases and wardships had been spread fairly evenly between close relatives of the deceased tenants, neighbouring magnates, and professional servants of the crown.114 In the 1370s, by contrast, the balance swung decisively in favour of the king’s friends. It was Lord Latimer who secured the wardship of two of the most valuable estates falling to the crown in these years, those of Edward Courtenay and Henry Beaumont.115 There is little to suggest that the terms of such leases were any more favourable than those offered earlier in the reign. But the preferential treatment accorded to unpopular figures led parliament to conclude that the king was dissipating his feudal resources. In 1376 the commons demanded that the income from ‘archbishoprics, bishoprics, abbacies, baronies, escheats, fines, ransoms, wardships, marriages, and all profits belonging and escheating into the king’s hand’, should be reserved for the upkeep of the war, and not granted away by the king without the ‘good and wise deliberation of his great council’.116 This was a direct challenge to the royal prerogative, and the government’s response was understandably evasive. But in Richard II’s first parliament the commons again asked that the council consider those grants which had impoverished the crown during the previous reign; and finally, in 1404, parliament demanded the resumption of all lands and rights ‘of the ancient inheritance of the crown’ granted away since the fortieth year of Edward III’s reign (that is, 1366).117 Whether or not the disposition of feudal perquisites in the 1370s had actually weakened the crown’s finances, the blatant favouritism shown by Edward during his last years had obviously created an enduring political tradition.
What is most remarkable, however, is that between 1343 and 1376 parliament never once criticized the wisdom of the king’s policy or challenged his right to control patronage. For over thirty years, Edward’s treatment of the nobility went largely unquestioned. The principal reason was that the king’s favours were spread widely, evenly and temperately. Changes in the nature of landholding and inheritance undoubtedly restricted the supply of wardships in the second half of Edward’s reign; but it was primarily the misuse of patronage, not the shortage of it, that led to problems in the 1370s.118 Throughout his reign, Edward III tended to use the vast majority of the lands and rights falling into his hands as a means of promoting the aristocracy, and he never seems to have thought of employing such resources to create a new financial base for the monarchy. In this respect, however, he was simply following the traditions of his predecessors. Indeed, he would have come in for a good deal more criticism had he failed to be so open-handed. It was a considerable achievement, in a century punctuated by several major political crises over patronage, that Edward III kept both the magnates and the wider political community satisfied for so long.
EDWARD III AND PARLIAMENT
The time at which the king’s political skills came most obviously into play was during a session of parliament. The Modus Tenendi Parliamentum (‘Method of Holding Parliament’), a private tract composed in 1321–2, placed particular importance on the fact that the king should be present in parliament and take an active part in its proceedings.119 Edward III certainly agreed with this. Admittedly, a number of assemblies were held in 1339–40 and 1346 while he was on the continent; and in 1351 and 1372 the king was again planning to be away from the country when parliament met.120 But such absences inevitably tended to hinder proceedings. Common petitions put forward in 1340 could not be answered without being referred directly to the king;121 and even in 1376–7 as Edward lay paralysed by illness, it was deemed necessary to take the lists of petitions to him in order that the replies, supplied in this case by the council, could be confirmed.122 Parliament was the acknowledged forum in which to debate the affairs of state, to discuss the making of war and peace, to settle the grievances of the community, and to dispense patronage. At each level of business, the king’s involvement was obviously crucial. A session of parliament therefore provided the most important test of the crown’s political authority in the later Middle Ages.
Because the mid-fourteenth century witnessed such a substantial growth in the power and influence of parliament, it has usually been concluded that the monarchy lost ground, and ended up compromising its authority for the sake of political harmony. But this is not necessarily how Edward III, or his subjects, viewed the situation. The idea of a constant struggle for power, an attempt to ‘win the initiative’, is a fallacy bred by Whig historians.123 Before the seventeenth century, parliament had no real intention of controlling the monarchy or the executive, and any influence that it enjoyed was largely dependent on the goodwill of the crown. The remainder of this chapter will offer a new perspective on Edward III’s reign by looking at parliament not from the viewpoint of the community, but from that of the king.
During the reign of Edward I, parliament had taken on two new and important functions. First, it had come to be seen as a court in which private individuals could seek judicial remedies by appealing directly to the king’s grace. Although petitions could be presented at any time and in any place, it was only during a session of parliament that the suitor was actually guaranteed access to the king and promised some form of response before the end of the session. This was a very important principle, and some historians believe that it set parliament apart from all other assemblies and institutions.124 It certainly made parliament extremely popular. From an early stage there had been real concern that meetings were becoming inundated with private business. By the early fourteenth century it had become official policy only to encourage complaints against the king’s ministers and local agents, matters which had little chance of being judged fairly in the common law courts.125 Indeed, it was only when Edward III wished to investigate the ranks of central and local government, as in 1330 and 1340–1, that he specifically invited his subjects to enter private petitions in parliament.126 At other times, war and diplomacy provided the focus of debate, and lesser matters were all too frequently neglected. In three successive assemblies in 1332, other pressing business or poor attendance prevented the audience of private petitions; and thirty years later concern was being expressed about the fate of such requests sent before the king.127 The public response was swift, and by the middle of Edward III’s reign the number of private petitions received in parliament had already fallen dramatically.128
This did not mean that parliament ceased to fulfil its special function as a forum for the redress of grievances. Indeed, by the 1320s a new and more important form of document – the commune or common petition – had come to take precedence over private bills in the business agenda of parliament.129 The earliest common petitions, dating from Edward I’s time, were so called not because they were drawn up by the commons, but because the matters contained in them were deemed to be of common interest to the realm. Then, in the 1320s and 1330s, an important change occurred. The knights and burgesses in parliament began to articulate the grievances of the community and to draw up lists of demands to be presented to the crown. Although the lords sometimes participated in this process,130 the commune petitions had now effectively become the petitions of the commons. In 1327 the new regime of Isabella and Mortimer set an important precedent by responding to the list of grievances aired in parliament and offering remedial legislation which was written up on the statute roll and proclaimed in the shires.131 Neither at this point nor at any other stage in Edward III’s reign did the knights and burgesses win the right to have their petitions answered in this way.132 But the clear expectation after 1327 was that the crown would offer solutions, and if necessary create statutes, in response to the lists of common petitions presented in parliament.
The political importance of this development can best be appreciated when we turn to the second of the special functions taken on by parliament since Edward I’s time: namely, the granting of taxation. By the 1290s it had been accepted that direct taxes charged on the whole realm ought to be sanctioned by assemblies containing representatives of the community.133 Between 1290 and 1322, successive governments had been able to raise over £635,000 from such subsidies, making these by far the most profitable taxes then available to the English crown.134 The names applied to the authorizing bodies varied widely until the 1310s, and the terms colloquium or tracta-tum were actually used more often than parliamentum.135 In Edward I’s day the distinction was probably of little importance. But by 1327 the terminology was becoming more precise, and an increasing number of representative assemblies granting taxes were being labelled parliaments.136 If parliament were to gain exclusive control over taxation, then presumably it would only be a matter of time before the commons brought their petitions into play and made the redress of grievances a condition of the grant of supply.
Edward III, not surprisingly, did not relish such a prospect. Indeed, the early years of his reign witnessed several attempts to avoid the specific association between taxation and petitioning. It is interesting to note that four of the seven direct subsidies raised between 1327 and 1338 were authorized not in parliaments but in assemblies officially designated as great councils.137 These were held at Lincoln in September 1327, at Nottingham in September 1336, at Westminster in September 1337, and at Northampton in July 1338 (see Appendix 5). In terms of personnel, such councils were more or less identical to parliaments; and most historians have called them such.138 But there may well have been an important distinction. If it was only in parliament that the commons had the right to present petitions, then the knights and burgesses sitting in these great councils would have no formal opportunity to demand concessions. When the political situation was uneasy, as in 1327, or when the king was in need of very heavy taxation, as in 1336–8, we can well understand why the government would prefer to avoid negotiating with parliament. Inevitably, the councils were not completely silent. At Lincoln in 1327 the commons entered a petition concerning a legal technicality; and in 1336 the Nottingham council requested the enforcement of legislation made in the previous parliament.139 But it may be significant that the two administrative concessions won by the Northampton assembly of 1338 (on the appointment of sheriffs and the granting of respites from debts) were secured specifically by the magnates.140 There is certainly nothing to compare with the lengthy lists of common petitions surviving from the parliaments of 1324, 1325, 1327, 1333, 1334 and 1339.141 Until the outbreak of the Hundred Years War, then, it is quite possible that Edward III was deliberately trying to prevent parliament from claiming exclusive authority over wartime subsidies.
This plan failed. Events in the late 1330s showed that the complaints of the community were simply compounded by efforts to silence them. Intense suspicion also arose as a result of the crown’s parallel attempts to use merchant councils to grant indirect taxation in the form of wool subsidies.142 In January 1340 the commons in parliament took a new and daring step when they authorized a forced loan of 30,000 sacks of wool. The grant was made ‘under certain conditions, comprised in indentures and sealed with the seals of the prelates and other lords’. If these conditions were not fulfilled then the community ‘would not be bound to grant the aid’.143 The conditions have not survived, but they probably bore a close affinity with the extant list of common petitions put forward in the subsequent parliament of March 1340.144 For the first time, the commons had made a specific link between grants of supply and the redress of grievances. After 1340, Edward III was forced to accept that direct subsidies should always be negotiated in parliament, and that the commons should always be allowed an opportunity to express their opinions on government policy. By the 1350s he was also prepared to concede that parliament should have sole control of the wool subsidy. In turn, it became regular practice for the crown to use its replies to the common petitions as a basis for formal legislation. The statute roll was therefore transformed from a series of government-inspired legal codes into a collection of short-term measures designed to placate the king’s subjects.145 This is one of the most pronounced and remarkable political developments of Edward III’s reign. And yet it would be quite wrong to suppose that it deprived the king of authority. To understand the new working relationship built up after 1340 we need to recognize the way in which the crown could manipulate parliament for its own benefit, and to appreciate the considerable political acumen displayed by Edward III in his dealings with the lords and commons.
By the 1330s it was widely recognized that parliament should always be consulted before the king made war on a foreign power.146 Edward III certainly never flouted this convention. But this is not to say that king and parliament were always of one mind. The discussions held in the winter of 1332–3, for instance, indicated widespread indifference or even hostility to the king’s planned attack on Scotland.147 Unfortunately, we have no record of the great council of 1337 when Edward’s plan for the impending French war was discussed and approved. Again, the assembly was probably required to give token assent to a strategy already worked out in detail by the king and his close advisers. Nevertheless, in the following years Edward was to make much political capital out of this, constantly reminding the lords and commons that they had consented to the war, and were therefore under a direct obligation to finance it.148 In order to reinforce these arguments, parliament was sent reports on the king’s movements in 1338–9 and news of the victory at Sluys in 1340.149 Such efforts did comparatively little to alter the perception of a wasteful and reckless campaign. But after the Stratford crisis and the improvement in Edward’s military fortunes, parliament was gradually forced to acknowledge both the legitimacy and the practicability of the war. Edward’s propaganda campaign reached a climax in 1346, when letters recounting the king’s progress were sent out with the summonses to parliament, and a document found at Caen purporting to be a plan for an invasion of England was read out to the assembly in order to drum up xenophobic hatred of the French.150 Meanwhile, the speeches made by the chancellor or the chief justice of king’s bench at the start of each session regularly referred to the latest military advances, and the lords and commons were encouraged to believe that their advice would be sought on all proposed truces and treaties.151 Even the terms of the Brétigny settlement were apparently presented to parliament for confirmation in January 1361.152
After the reopening of the war in 1369 it became an increasing embarrassment to the government to have to report on the fortunes of English armies. But parliament still provided an opportunity to rally support. In the assembly of 1369, for example, the king urged men to take up arms against France, promising – rather unrealistically – that those who followed his standard would be assured of rewards in the shape of conquered lands.153 It is hardly likely that the commons were taken in by mere words: they needed evidence of success before they happily handed the realm over to the king’s tax collectors. From Edward’s point of view, however, reference to parliament had its desired effect, for it allowed him to present his wars as the supreme expression of the public will.
Once parliament had accepted the need for war, there was actually very little it could do to resist the king’s demands for taxes. According to the principles of roman and canon law, ‘urgent necessity’ bound the people to assist the public authorities in the event of a national emergency.154 Not surprisingly, the English crown had eagerly seized upon this idea in the thirteenth century, and by the 1310s the full details of the doctrine of necessity were being cited in government documents.155 It remains doubtful, however, whether such scholastic notions had much impact on the majority of the taxpaying public. Indeed, as recently as 1324–5 parliament had twice refused to subsidize Edward II’s war with France.156 The fact that this was not repeated until 1376 probably says more about the different personalities of Edward II and Edward III than about any sudden change in the political theory of the state. 157 On the other hand, parliament must have recognized that it had some formal obligation to support the king. The ninth of 1340 and the wool tax of 1341 – two of the heaviest direct subsidies granted in the whole of Edward III’s reign – were authorized in parliaments which otherwise proved fundamentally hostile to the crown’s military schemes. For the most part, Edward’s success in reconciling the community to the obligations of long-term warfare after 1341 may be attributed to two great practical advantages: namely, the right to decide when parliament should meet, and the ability to hold out on political concessions until a tax had been granted.
The reign of Edward III witnessed a major decline in the frequency of parliaments. From the late thirteenth century until 1341, sessions had normally been summoned at least once, and often two or three times, a year.158 But after 1341 the number dwindled, and the timing of assemblies became, in effect, a form of political management. It was now most unusual for two parliaments to be held in the same year; and it was not unknown for two or even three years to elapse between meetings (see Appendix 5). Since parliament no longer met at any particular season, the king was free to summon it whenever suited him best. In the 1340s it became normal practice to issue writs just as truces were about to terminate or fresh campaigns were about to begin. The clear intention was to reaffirm the country’s commitment to the war and to extract further grants of taxation. In February 1351, the fact that Edward was busy planning a new continental campaign undoubtedly encouraged the commons to authorize an extension of the wool subsidy; and in January 1352 the king deliberately emphasized the uneasy state of Anglo-French talks in order to justify his request for another three years of direct taxation.159
The commons clearly resented the decline in the number of parliaments, and in 1362 and 1376 they demanded that there should be at least one assembly a year. 160 Yet, by their own actions, they tended to play into the king’s hands. One of the most effective ways to secure regular meetings would have been to grant taxes for one year only, as had been normal practice until the 1330s. But the three fifteenths and tenths awarded to the king on the eve of the French war in 1337 set an important precedent; and during the 1340s and 1350s it became common for parliament to grant direct taxation for two or three years in succession. The tendency was even more marked with indirect taxation. Between 1343 and the end of the reign, the wool subsidy was never authorized for less than two years, and on one occasion, in November 1355, it was conceded for a remarkable six years (see Appendix 3). This obviously reduced the number of occasions on which the king needed to appeal for money, and left the commons with fewer opportunities to present their grievances. Whether it was the plea of necessity or the king’s war record that persuaded the commons to give such generous support, parliament’s new fiscal authority ironically made Edward III one of the richest rulers of medieval England.
Perhaps the most important of all the discretionary powers enjoyed by the king in the management of parliament was his right to answer common petitions after the required subsidy had been won.161 In 1340 and 1341, during a time of acute political and financial crisis, the commons were able to delay the formal grants of taxation until the king had issued the statutes. But after 1341 this was no longer possible. Usually the schedule of taxation and the list of common petitions were submitted together. The commons clearly hoped that their generosity would encourage the government to give positive replies to their political demands. But the king remained free to answer petitions as he saw fit; and having secured his taxes, he could obviously afford to be more selective in the choice of matters to be made up into legislation. Thus, in 1372, one of the common petitions referred optimistically to ‘the statute that will be made in this present parliament’.162 But in fact there is not a single entry on the statute roll relating to this assembly. This example demonstrates vividly the very different attitudes of king and commons towards the process of political debate in parliament.
On other occasions, of course, the crown could act considerably more generously. Nevertheless, it was still perfectly normal for requests to be refused, delayed or ignored. In March 1371, for instance, when the commons granted a subsidy of £50,000, several of their petitions were left unanswered at the end of the assembly. A special council containing selected members of the parliament was summoned to Winchester in June to receive replies to the relevant items; but by this stage a number of the petitions – including a complaint against the equitable jurisdiction of the chancery and a request for the reservation of taxes to pay the expenses of troops arrayed in the shires – had already been dismissed and crossed off the parliament roll.163 If petitions threatened to infringe the crown’s freedom of action – as, for example, on the appointment of ministers (1343), the movements of the king’s bench (1352), or the rights of tenants-in-chief (1372) – then Edward was particularly quick to refute them. 164 One of the most frequent replies given to common petitions, in fact, was le roi s’avisera (the king will reflect), a delaying tactic which usually ensured that nothing at all got done. The net result of all this was that the concessions allowed by the crown and made up into formal legislation on the statute roll represented only a proportion – and sometimes a small proportion – of the total business brought before the king in the common petitions.
Finally, it is important to realize that even the statute roll possessed a good deal less sanctity in the fourteenth century than in later times. Magna Carta, the Charter of the Forests, and the great codes of Edward I were certainly revered. It was an established principle that they could not be altered outside parliament, and that any legislation which conflicted with them was invalid.165 The attitude to more recent legislation, however, was a good deal more flexible. In 1348 it was stated categorically that the king made the statutes only with the assent of the lords and commons, and not through them.166 And what the king did, he could also undo. In extreme circumstances, as in 1341, Edward III simply revoked laws which were held to be contrary to his prerogative. And on many other less controversial issues he maintained his right to review, amend and repeal the statutes without the necessary consent of the commons.167 One notable instance concerned the king’s right to present vacant benefices in the gift of bishops on the grounds that he or his predecessors had filled such offices during earlier episcopal vacancies. A statute of 1340 stated that this right could only be claimed within three years of the relevant vacancy; but the legislation was interpreted very loosely by the courts, and in 1352 it was actually revoked, without reference to parliament, on the grounds that it infringed the king’s regalian rights.168
In 1377, it is true, Edward III’s advisers agreed to a petition that statutes should not be repealed without the assent of parliament. But this petition seems to have arisen less from a point of principle and more from the commons’ concern over the neglect of the statutes on purveyance.169 Consequently, no formal statement was made on the statute roll, and the council’s reply was of little use as a political precedent. In fact, what the petition of 1377 really demonstrates is the crown’s remarkably selective and opportunistic approach to the actual enforcement of legislation. Undoubtedly the most striking case of all in this respect is provided by the legislation of 1330 and 1362 requiring annual parliaments.170 The fact that only twenty-four such assemblies met in the last thirty-six years of Edward III’s reign says more for his government’s policy than any bland statement of good intent. The theory that no statute could limit the power of the throne seems to have meant in practice that only those pieces of legislation positively advantageous to the king were ever really observed by him and actively enforced by his government.
Edward III’s deliberate attempt to place the war at the forefront of parliamentary business therefore had extremely important consequences in the period between 1341 and 1371. It allowed the king to recover the procedural advantages temporarily lost in 1340–1, and gave him the opportunity to rebuild the political and financial authority undermined during the Stratford crisis. It would, of course, be wrong to ignore the considerable advances also made by the lords and commons during these years. Although parliaments became less frequent after 1341, the individual sessions were generally longer and probably harder fought (see Appendix 5). Nevertheless, it is important to realize that parliament became the very epitome of the new political consensus built up in the 1350s and 1360s. Alongside the hard bargaining, there was also a great deal of back-slapping. In the assembly of 1368, for instance, Edward repeatedly expressed his thanks to the community, in the most florid language, for its past and continuing support; and in reply the assembly prefaced its petitions with a high-flown address to ‘our highest, most excellent and most redoubted lord’, the king. Such pandering had the required effect: Edward got his wool subsidy, the parliament got its statutes, and the meeting was rounded off agreeably with a state banquet to which the king invited all of the lords and many of the commons.171
This episode says much for Edward III’s extraordinary achievement. The king used a highly sophisticated system of political management to create one of the longest periods of domestic peace in the whole of the later Middle Ages. That system collapsed not because it was inherently unworkable but because Edward’s sons and grandsons lacked the military success and political perception on which it had been based. It was not until the time of Henry V that England once more found a king able to identify both the risks, and the rewards, offered by Edward III’s style of monarchy.172
Edward III, like every other medieval king, remains an enigma. We know far too little of his private life, his personal prejudices and his political ambitions to be able to construct an authoritative picture of his character. What we can say, on the basis of the evidence reviewed so far, is that his policies were a good deal more coherent and consistent than has usually been suggested. Edward was far too much of an opportunist to resist short-term compromises or vote-winning concessions. But after 1341 at least, he never lost sight of his ultimate goal: the restoration of royal power. At no point between 1341 and 1376 did Edward ever allow parliament to appoint, dismiss or judge his ministers, to set up and nominate permanent councils, to challenge his exclusive rights over patronage, to dictate military or diplomatic policy, or to restrict the expenditure of taxes. These matters, which had been central to the opposition’s programme in 1340–1, all came up again in 1376– 7, and were to provide some of the main points of friction between crown and parliament under Richard II and Henry IV. The fact that they did not emerge for over thirty years in the mid-fourteenth century is striking testimony both to Edward III’s popularity and to his success in rebuilding and maintaining the authority of the crown.