History of England 1-6

One of the brothers, Richard de Folville, had been appointed as rector of Teigh by his eldest brother. It was a convenient cover. When he and his followers were one day pursued by various officers of the peace, they took refuge in his church. From that vantage they shot many arrows, killing at least one of their pursuers. But then the local people took the law, literally, into their own hands; they dragged Richard from the church and beheaded him on the spot. The other brothers managed to escape justice.

Other criminal bands were to be found in the early decades of the fourteenth century. One leader called himself ‘Lionel, king of the rout of raveners’, and he wrote threatening letters from ‘our castle of the wind in the Greenwood Tower’. So violence at the centre rippled through a country already troubled by famine and disease.

Smaller incidents of disorder are recorded. Robert Sutton insulted Roger of Portland, clerk of the sheriff of London, in open court; he put his thumb to his nose and exclaimed, ‘Tprhurt! Tprhurt!’

John Ashburnham rode up to the sheriff ’s court, held in the open air, and so threatened the sheriff that he fled; at which point Ashburnham whistled on his fingers, as a signal that his men should rise up in ambush.

When a writ was served on Agnes Motte, she appealed to her neighbours; with drawn weapons they compelled the servers of the writ to eat it, wax and parchment.

When the mayor of Lynn tried to change the rules of trade, a crowd of tradesmen, under the leadership of the prior, dragged him from his house, placed him on a stall in the marketplace, and forced him to swear on the host that he would make no changes. It is interesting here that the prior of Lynn led the charge. But other clerics were involved in lawlessness. A gang of six monks from Rufford Priory attacked, and held to ransom, a local gentleman.

The rector of Manchester invited a local couple, with their daughter, to dinner. The rector’s servants seized the daughter, broke two of her ribs, and then deposited her in the rector’s bed; he had sex with her that night, but the unfortunate girl died from her injuries a month later.

The king’s court at Westminster was not immune from lawlessness. An attorney was sitting on a table in the great hall – ‘close to the sellers of jewels’ – when the other party to his suit threatened to kill him if he did not abandon it; he was then dragged off the table and struck on the head. Someone else pulled a knife on him. The attorney extricated himself from his attackers and ran to the bar of the court calling for help; the men followed him, their swords drawn, but the officials of the court somehow managed to bar the doors against them. They were then disarmed and taken to the Tower.

In the summer of 1322 the king called a parliament at York, in the course of which a statute was passed that allowed him complete and independent rule. The ordinances of 1311 were once more abandoned. Contemporaries were in no doubt about the situation. The magnates were now too frightened to thwart the will of the king. Parliaments were of no account. Reason had given way to threats and penalties. Whatever pleased Edward, now had the force of law. He sought out the rebels in every shire, confiscating their lands or fining them heavily. His treasury grew and grew on the proceeds. ‘Serve us in such a way that we will become rich’, he wrote to the officials of his exchequer.

He was not to find riches in conquest. He led a campaign in Scotland against Robert Bruce, but achieved nothing except the detention of six Scottish prisoners; with the absence of provisions severely affecting his troops, he marched southwards across the border. But the Scottish army pursued him, and almost caught him near Bridlington in East Yorkshire; he fled in panic to York, a singularly unfortunate end to a futile expedition. He was forced to sign a treaty with Robert Bruce at the beginning of 1323, the principles of which he broke almost immediately. The king’s bastard son, Adam, was killed in the course of the campaign.

The difficulties with France, over the disputed territory of Gascony, had not been resolved. The French had even planted a bastide or fortified town in the middle of the duchy. So the king sent his wife, Isabella, to negotiate with the French king, Charles IV; since she was that king’s sister, some hope of success could be conjectured. But there was a problem. Edward did not trust Isabella, and Isabella had no affection for Edward. Once they were separated by the Channel, anything might happen. The king made another fateful decision; he sent his eldest son, Edward, to the French court to do fealty for the land of Gascony. Both wife and son were now in France.