History of England 1-6

Edward I was once known as the ‘English Justinian’ on the grounds that he gave shape and purpose to English law. The great jurist of the seventeenth century, Edward Coke, remarked that he enacted ‘more constant, standing, and durable laws than have been made ever since’. The ‘Statute of Westminster the First’, passed in the earliest parliament of his reign, was followed by nine other statutes ranging from matters of law and order to the debts of merchants. They were practical and specific measures to confront immediate problems. In the Statute of Winchester, for example, it was decreed that all hedges and underwood should be cleared from the sides of the highways to a distance of 200 feet (61 metres); they could not then be used to provide shelter for thieves.

The measure was timely and necessary. Parts of the countryside were beset by marauding gangs, many of them drawn from the soldiers who had fought in Edward’s wars. There were no other rewards for old soldiers. Other groups of ruffians were hired by members of the local gentry in order to pursue private feuds or to terrify their tenants. So special courts known as ‘trailbaston’, which meant the act of clenching a club or staff, were set up to deal with acts of felony and trespass. The name originally described the ruffians themselves, and then became applied to the judges who sentenced them.

The king took his share of the proceeds of justice, of course, and the judges themselves grew rich. They were despised as much as they were feared. In some of the popular verses of the period the judges are compared unfavourably to those outlaws who sought refuge in the woods. What difference between the thieves in hiding and the thieves in office? In one song the usher of the court addresses a defendant. ‘Poor man, why do you trouble yourself ? Why do you wait here? Unless you give money to everybody in this court, you labour in vain. If you have brought nothing, you will stand altogether out of doors.’ We have here a medieval paradox. Even as the law was being shaped and refined, the exponents of the law were mocked and vilified. Royal law was being condemned even as it was being extended.

Nevertheless forms and procedures had to be followed; there had developed a legal routine. In the period of Edward’s reign the number of attorneys rose from approximately 10 to 200. They became a new elite. Where there is money to be made, there are people who will wish to create privileged access to it. The phenomenon itself is of a piece with other developments of the early fourteenth century. The households of the great were being run by staffs of trained managers, and farms were organized by estate managers. War itself was being professionalized. The king no longer summoned a national host from the shires; instead he came more and more to rely upon paid troops led by full-time commanders. As the business of the realm became more complex, it became the province of full-time officers whom we might describe as a civil service; the chancery alone employed more than 100 clerks, and had a secure home at Westminster. The first proper parliamentary record, giving an account of proceedings, dates from 1316.

Yet the force of the royal will was still paramount. Two judges were once arguing a case in the king’s presence. Edward was beginning to lose patience with their lengthy deliberations. Eventually he interrupted them, saying, ‘I have nothing to do with your disputations, but God’s blood, you shall give me a good writ before you arise hence!’ He did not mean good in the sense of meritorious; he meant one that worked in his favour. The monkish author of The Song of Lewes had written of Edward, when he was a prince, that ‘whatever he wants he holds to be lawful, and he thinks that there are no legal bounds to his power’.

Edward had remained in Gascony from 1286 to 1289, seeking to control the affairs of the land that mattered as much to him as England. On his return he discovered, according to one chronicler, ‘a very real oppression hanging over the country’. One of his clerical servants, Adam de Stratton, had acquired an unsavoury reputation for various financial malpractices. He was part of a system of bribery and corruption that had flourished more than ever in the king’s absence of three years. The rage of the king was wonderful to behold. He stormed into the chambers of the man, exclaiming, ‘Adam! Adam! Where art thou?’ In Adam’s house, at Smalelane near the Fleet Prison, was found a hoard of £13,000.