so abandoned all pretence of fulfilling the object of their existence. Naturally, such conduct drew upon them the condemnation of public opinion, and a body which was at once rich, landed and idle, and had at command a body of 40,000 picked cavalry, could not expect to be viewed with indifference. In addition to this, rumours were in circulation that life in the East, and their long contact with the Mohammedan world, had impaired both the orthodoxy and the manners of the knights. These accusations obtained the widest credence in France, where the order was particularly strong, and were taken up by Philip the Fair. As Pope Clement v. was a mere creature of Philip, the hostility of the French king was fatal to the order. After an investigation, the value of which is much decreased by the use of torture to extort confessions, a council held at Vienne in 1311 suppressed the order, and the bulk of its property was assigned to the Hospitallers, whose operations at Rhodes had recently gained them considerable popularity. CHAPTER III EDWARD III: 1327-1377 Born 1312; married, 1328, Philippa of Hainault. Fall of Mortimer-Scottish Affairs bring on War with France, which led to important Constitutional Developments-Battles of Sluys and CrecySiege of Calais-The Black Death, and its effects on the Manorial System -Battle of Poitiers and Treaty of Bretigny-Spanish Expedition leads to a disastrous renewal of the War-Growth of a strong feeling against the Pope and the Clergy-John of Gaunt and Wyclif-The Reforms of the Good Parliament. THE deposition of Edward 11. had been effected by the coalition of three parties: a court party, represented by Isabella and the king's Condition half-brothers, the earls of Norfolk and Kent; the Lords of Parties. Marcher, headed by Mortimer; and the Lancastrians or Northerners, led by Earl Thomas's younger brother Henry; and in nominating a standing council of fourteen to manage the State during the new king's minority, the claims of each were fully taken into consideration. Henry of Lancaster, who, on the reversal of his brother's attainder became earl of Lancaster, Leicester, Lincoln, and Derby, was its president; and other leading members were the earls of Norfolk and Kent, Bishop Orleton, the treasurer and confidant of Mortimer and the queen, and John Stratford, the rising administrator and friend of Lancaster, who had drafted the articles of accusation against the late king. Mortimer contented himself with the reality of influence, and devoted himself to amassing enormous wealth. Scottish The immediate attention of the new government had to be given to Scotland. In 1323, a truce for thirteen years had been signed; but the confusion into which English affairs had fallen suggested to Bruce the opportuneness of the moment for securing a complete recognition of his independence; and in 1327 he broke the truce, and sent an army under Douglas into the northern counties. The tactics of the Scots made them the most formidable of raiders. Their soldiers were all mounted. Each carried on his saddle a bag of oatmeal, and an iron plate on which he cooked it, mixed with water from the nearest stream. For meat they trusted to plunder, and Invasion of having flayed the captured beasts, they fastened their skins England. by the legs to four posts, filled them with water, and, having lighted a fire beneath, boiled the flesh. Such an army was too rapid in its motions to be easily followed; but after a long chase Edward found them encamped on the banks of the Wear, near Stanhope. Their position was too strong to be assaulted with success: a proposal that the English should be allowed to cross without opposition and fight on fair ground was scornfully rejected by Douglas; and, after some manoeuvring, the Scots broke up their camp and recrossed the Border. Such an inglorious campaign gave little encouragement to either party to continue the war. Bruce was now an old man, and was anxious to secure a peaceful reign for his little son David; the northern barons were tired of having their estates subjected to continual pillage; and, accordingly, in Treaty of 1328, a treaty was made at Northampton, by which in Northampreturn for £20,000 the English king renounced the claim to overlordship made by his grandfather, and gave his sister Joan to be brought up as David's affianced wife. The next year Robert Bruce died, and was succeeded by David, who, at his coronation, was anointed with oil, thus asserting that he reigned as an independent monarch, and not merely as the vassal of England. ton. Prudent as the peace of Northampton undoubtedly was, it proved exceedingly unpopular in the south of England, where the ravages of war had not been felt. One of the chief accusations against the late king had been the loss of Scotland; and the appropriation by Mortimer and Isabella of the £20,000 seemed to be the culmination of the dis grace. For some time the council had been anything but harmonious; and in 1328, Lancaster, disgusted with a position which gave him the appearance of responsibility without any of the reality of power, formed a plan to get rid of Mortimer, who had recently been Plots against created earl of March. The scheme, however, was pre- Mortimer. mature the earls of Norfolk and Kent, who for a moment joined Lancaster, deserted him, and the earl was compelled to make terms Mortimer then turned on the unfortunate earl of Kent, accused him of plotting to restore Edward II., of whose continued existence he had been persuaded by Mortimer's agents, and in March 1330 hurried him to execution. This wicked act roused the horror of the whole country: Lancaster felt that he would be himself the next victim, and he at once took effective measures to secure the assistance of Edward for the overthrow of his mother's paramour. The young king had been married in 1328, and was already the father of a son, afterwards the Black Prince, when in 1330 Lancaster opened his eyes to the extraordinary insolence of Mortimer. Then measures were promptly taken. In spite of all Mortimer's precautions he was arrested in NotMortimer tingham Castle, and, having been taken to London, was hanged. hanged on the elms at Tyburn. Isabella herself was stripped of her ill-gotten wealth, restricted to a pension of £3000 year, and condemned to perpetual residence at the manor of Rising, where she lived till 1358. With the fall of Mortimer, the real reign of Edward III. may be said to begin. The young king was, and continued to be all his life, primarily Character of a soldier. His morality was founded on the code of honour Edward III. enjoined by the laws of chivalry, and he represented in his own person the strength and the weakness of that institution. Honourable in dealing with all who came within the social pale of the knightly order, he had little sympathy for the trader or the peasant. Scrupulously courteous, he was little affected by the laws of Christian morality. A mirror of knightly accomplishments, he was vain, selfish, and pitiless. He regarded England chiefly as the source of his supplies of men and money, and persisted in pursuing his warlike schemes long after his subjects had become tired of them. At the same time his reign, though mainly associated with his wars, was very important from a constitutional point of view, as his constant demands for money compelled negotiations with parliament, and the consequence was a steady progress towards constitutional government. Stratfords. In the early years of his reign, Edward gave his chief confidence to John Stratford, who became archbishop of Canterbury in 1333, and who, with his brother Robert, engrossed the chief administrative business of the next ten years. Both were men of industry, honesty, and considerable ability; but none of the officials of Edward's reign were marked by any pre-eminence in statesmanship, a circumstance which makes Edward's personal power more conspicuous than it would otherwise have been. In 1332 a new difficulty arose in Scotland. A number of English barons, who held lands at both sides of the border, had lost their Scottish Edward Halidon Hill. estates by the separation of the two kingdoms. These made common cause with Edward Balliol, son of John, the late king, and, the border being closed against them by the orders of the government, took ship at Ravenspur, on the Humber, and landed an army on the coast of Fife. There, by a wonderful stroke of fortune, they defeated a Scottish army with enormous loss in the night battle of Dupplin Moor; and Balliol was crowned at Scone within a few weeks of his landing. His fall was equally rapid. Five weeks later he was badly defeated, and returned to England a helpless and solitary fugitive. Edward had discountenanced this expedition; but as its events seemed to show the weakness of Scotland, he imitated the bad example of Bruce in similar circumstances, and determined to take advantage of David's minority to renew his claim to homage. Accordingly he recognised Edward Balliol's pretensions, and sent him with an army to undertake the siege of Berwick, where he himself arrived in 1333. To save the town, a relieving force of Scots under Archibald Douglas attacked Edward on Halidon Hill, a piece of rising ground two miles Battle of north of the town. Standing on the defensive, the English archers repelled every effort of the Scottish horsemen to make their way up the slope. The obstinacy of the Scots only added to the slaughter; and eventually Douglas himself fell, and with him perished the flower of the Scottish nobility and a vast number of less distinguished combatants. Berwick instantly surrendered. Young David and his queen were hurried off to France, and Balliol was again placed on the throne. His second reign, however, was little longer than his first. Disgusted to find him a mere English puppet, who was willing not only to hold his crown as a vassal of England, but even to hand over to the English king that part of the lowlands which lies east of a line drawn from Linlithgow to Dumfries, i.e. roughly speaking, the old earldom of Lothian (see p. 65), the Scots again rose, and, though Balliol maintained his ground while English support was forthcoming, the English were no sooner engaged in the French war than he began to lose ground. In 1339 he was forced to evacuate the country by David's brother-in-law, Robert the Steward; and, in 1341, David ventured to return to Scotland. The only permanent result of Balliol's temporary success was the acquisition of Berwick by England. Failure of The French war grew out of Edward's attack on Scotland. An alliance with France against England had been from the first the policy of the Scottish patriots; and this policy, which brought untold misery |