History of England 1-6

He had not kept his promises, either. The likely shape of his reign had already become clear. He was considered by the magnates to be weak and ineffectual. He slept late. He prevaricated. None of this would necessarily disqualify a modern monarch but, in fourteenth-century England, it was inexcusable. A king was supposed to embody the prowess and vigour of the country. The failure of the Scottish campaign was a specific sign of the king’s general incapacity. It was further stated that he had so badly managed his resources that his entire household was in decay; as a result he had extorted money unfairly. Numerous complaints were also made concerning specific infringements of Magna Carta, such as the unjust seizure of lands and the misuse of writs.

The parliament of 1311 issued a set of twenty-four ordinances by which the king was supposed to govern. It was declared that the country was on the point of open revolt ‘on account of oppressions, prises and destructions’; ‘prises’ were the confiscations made by royal officials. One contemporary chronicler wrote that the threat of deposition was made against Edward if he failed to comply; if that is correct, then the forces against the king rivalled those against King John a hundred years before. The rebel lords called themselves ‘the community of the realm’ but they were no abstract or objective force; they were not a constitutional ‘party’. It was a world in which the force of individual personality was the cause and spring of action; personal rivalries and affections made up the politics of the period.

The ordinances themselves were designed to produce what might be called baronial rule. The king was not permitted to make war, or leave the kingdom, without the consent of the barons; the king’s justice and the king’s treasury must come under their supervision. A parliament, naturally under their control, would meet once a year. One other stipulation was made. Gaveston, once more, had to go. He was to be banished from the realm before All Saints’ Day, 1 November.

The king refused to countenance these demands and prepared himself for civil war. Gaveston did sail from Dover, two days after the stipulated date, but he returned a month later. Edward and his favourite then moved to the north, and began recruiting an army. It was at this point that the king’s cousin, Thomas of Lancaster, became his most prominent challenger; Lancaster wrote to the queen, promising to rid the court of Piers Gaveston forever. And this was what he proceeded to do. Gaveston was taken at Scarborough, when the forces of the barons besieged the castle there, and a month later he was beheaded in the presence of Lancaster. Two sayings of the period have survived as an apt accompaniment to these events. ‘There is no one who is sorry for me,’ the king is supposed to have complained, ‘no one fights for my rights against the barons.’ The other is a more generalized statement: ‘The love of magnates is as a game of dice, and the desires of the rich like feathers.’

The execution of Gaveston was according to precedent unlawful, since as earl of Cornwall he should have been judged by his peers, but it had the effect of bringing to a summary end the threat of civil war. The gratuitousness of the deed seems to have surprised everyone. Some of the rebel barons returned to the king. If there were a civil war, only the Scots would benefit. The prospect of further hostilities, and the threat of an enemy on the border, concentrated the minds of the lords. Negotiations, in and out of parliament, took place for the best part of two years. In October 1313 the rebel lords made a public apology in Westminster Hall, and the king resumed his powers very little affected by the ordinances of 1311. He had won a marginal, and provisional, victory that was compounded by the birth of a son that guaranteed the continuation of his dynasty. His hatred, for the murderers of his ‘minion’, smouldered.

But his power soon fell apart once more. He took an army into the north, finally to dispose of Robert Bruce, but at Bannockburn he suffered a mighty defeat. The battle was fought in what was called ‘an evil, deep and wet marsh’ wholly unsuited to the English cavalry but more amenable to the Scottish infantry; the earl of Gloucester led a charge into the Scottish ranks, but was cut down. The army of the Scots then attacked the horsemen, crying out ‘On them! On them! On them! They fail!’ The English were massacred, their bodies lying in the marsh or in the river Bannock. The king fled for his life and, with a few followers, sailed to Berwick where he hoped to find safety. He had lost Scotland. The battle of Bannockburn ensured the independence of that country, and was perhaps the worst military disaster of any medieval English king.