1306-1307 lish alike. He hoped that one nation, justly ruled under one government, would grow up in the place of two divided peoples. It was better even for England that Edward's hopes should fail. Scotland would have been of little worth to its more powerful neighbor if it had been cowed into subjection; whereas when, after struggling and suffering for her independence, she offered herself freely as the companion and ally of England to share in common duties and common efforts, the gift was priceless. That Scotland was able to shake off the English yoke was mainly the work of Robert Bruce. The Bruces, like Balliol, were of Norman descent, and as Balliol's rivals they had attached themselves to Edward. The time was now come when all chances of Balliol's restoration were at an end, and thoughts of gaining the crown stirred in the mind of the younger Bruce. His one powerful rival among the nobles was done away with and Bruce made for Scone and was crowned king of Scotland in the presence of many of the chief nobility. Edward now conquered Scotland for a third time, and Bruce's supporters were carried off to English prisons, and their lands divided among English noblemen. Bruce almost alone escaped. He knew now that he had the greater part of the nobility as well as the people at his side, and even in his lonely wanderings and hairbreadth escapes he was, what neither Balliol nor Wallace had been, the true head of the Scottish nation. Before the end of 1306 he reappeared and inflicted heavy losses on the English garrisons. In 1307 Edward once more set out for Scotland; but he was now old and worn out, and he died at Burgh on Sands, a few miles on the English side of the border. The new king, Edward II., was as different as possible from his father. He was not wicked, like William II. and John, but he detested the trouble of public business, and thought that the only advantage of being a king was that he would have leisure to amuse himself. During his father's life he devoted himself to Piers Gaveston, a Gascon, who encouraged him in his pleasures and taught him to mistrust his father. Edward I. banished Gaveston; Edward II., immediately on his accession, not only recalled him, but made him regent when he himself crossed to France to be married to Isabella, the daughter of Philip IV. The barons, who were already inclined to win back some of the authority of which Edward I. had deprived them, were very angry at the place taken over their heads by an upstart favorite, especially as Gaveston was ill-bred enough to make 1308-1314 jests at their expense. The barons found a leader in Thomas, Earl of Lancaster. He was an ambitious man, who tried to play the part which had been played by Earl Simon without any of Simon's qualifications for the position. In 1308 the king yielded to the barons so far as to send Gaveston out of the country to Ireland as his lieutenant. In 1309 he recalled him. The barons were exasperated, and in the Parliament of 1310 they brought forward a plan for taking the king's government out of his hands, very much after the fashion of the Provisions of Oxford. Twenty-one barons were appointed Lords Ordainers, to draw up ordinances for the government of the country. In 1311 they produced the ordinances. Gaveston was to be banished for life. The king was to appoint officers only with the consent of the barons, without which he was not to go to war nor to leave the kingdom. The ordinances may have been justified in so far as they restrained the authority of a king so incapable as Edward II. Constitutionally their acceptance was a retrograde step, as, like the Provisions of Oxford, they placed power in the hands of the barons, passing over Parliament as a whole. Edward agreed to the ordinances, but refused to surrender Gaveston. The barons took arms to enforce their will, and in 1312, having captured Gaveston, they beheaded him near Warwick without the semblance of a trial. While Edward and the barons were disputing, Bruce gained ground rapidly. In 1313 Stirling was the only fortress of importance in Scotland still garrisoned by the English, and Edward II. put himself at the head of an army to relieve it. On June 24, 1314, Edward reached Bannockburn, within sight of Stirling. After a battle, the vast English host turned and fled. Stirling at once surrendered, and all Scotland was lost to Edward. Materially, both England and Scotland suffered grievously from the result of the battle of Bannockburn. English invasions of southern Scotland and Scottish invasions of northern England spread desolation far and wide, stifling the germs of nascent civilization. Morally, both nations were in the end the gainers. The hardihood and self-reliance of the Scottish character is distinctly to be traced to those years of struggle against a powerful neighbor. England, too, was the better for being balked of its prey. No nation can suppress the liberty of another without endangering its own. Edward was thrown by his defeat entirely under the power of Lancaster, who took the whole authority into his hands and placed 1321-1326 and displaced ministers at his pleasure. Lancaster, however, was a selfish and incompetent ruler. It was rather by good luck than by good management that Edward was at last able to resist him. Edward could not exist without a personal favorite, and he found one in Hugh le Despenser. Despenser was at least an Englishman, which Gaveston had not been, and his father, Hugh le Despenser the elder, did his best to raise up a party to support the king. In 1321, however, Parliament, under Lancaster's influence, declared against them, and sentenced them to exile. Edward took arms for his favorites, and in 1322 defeated Lancaster at Boroughbridge, and then had him tried and beheaded at Pontefract. Favorites as they were, the Despensers had at least the merit of seeing that the king could not overpower the barons by the mere assertion of his personal authority. At a Parliament held at York in 1322 the king obtained the revocation of the ordinances, and a declaration that "matters to be established for the estate of our lord the king and of his heirs, and for the estate of the realm and of the people, shall be treated, accorded, and established in Parliaments by our lord the king, and by the consent of the prelates, earls and barons, and commonalty of the realm, according as hath been hitherto accustomed." Edward I. had in 1295 gathered a full Parliament, including the commons. But there was no law to prevent him or his successors excluding the commons on some future occasion. Edward II. by this declaration, issued with consent of Parliament, confirmed his father's practice by a legislative act. Unless the law were broken or repealed, no future statute could come into existence without the consent of the commons. For some years after the execution of Lancaster, Edward, or rather the Despensers, retained power, but it was power which did not work for good. Edward was entirely unable to control his favorites. The elder Despenser was covetous and the younger Despenser haughty, and they both made enemies for themselves and the king. Queen Isabella was alienated from her husband, partly by his exclusive devotion to the Despensers and partly by the contempt which an active woman is apt to feel for a husband without a will of his own. In 1325 she went to France, and was soon followed by her eldest son, named Edward after his father. From that moment she conspired against her husband. In 1326 she landed, accompanied by her paramour, Robert Mortimer, and bringing with her foreign troops. The barons rose in her favor. 1327 London joined them, and all resistance was speedily beaten down. The elder Despenser was hanged by the queen at Bristol. The younger was hanged, after a form of trial, at Hereford. Early in 1327 a Parliament met at Westminster. It was filled with the king's enemies, and under pressure from the queen and Mortimer Edward II. was compelled to sign a declaration of his own wrong-doing and incompetency, after which he formally resigned the crown. He was allowed to live for eight months, at the end of which he was brutally murdered in Berkeley Castle. The deposition of Edward II.—for his enforced resignation was practically nothing less than that was the work of a faithless wife and of unscrupulous partisans, but at least they clothed their vengeance in the forms of Parliamentary action. It was by the action of Parliament in loosing the feudal ties by which vassals were bound to an unworthy king that it rose to the full position of being the representative of the nation, and at the same time virtually proclaimed that the wants of the nation must be satisfied at the expense of the feudal claims of the king. The national headship of the king would from henceforward be the distinguishing feature of his office, while his feudal right to personal service would grow less and less important every year. Chapter XV FROM THE ACCESSION OF EDWARD III. TO THE TREATY OF BRETIGNI. LEADING DATES 1327-1360 REIGN OF EDWARD III., A.D. 1327-1377—ACCESSION OF EDWARD III., E DWARD III. was only fourteen at his accession. For three years power was in the hands of his mother's paramour, Mortimer. Robert Bruce, though old and smitten with leprosy, was still anxious to wring from England an acknowledgment of Scottish independence, and, in spite of the existing truce, sent an army to ravage the northern counties of England. Mortimer was at his wits' end, and in 1328 agreed to a treaty acknowledging the complete independence of Scotland. It was a wise thing to do, but no nation likes to acknowledge failure, and Mortimer became widely unpopular. He succeeded indeed in breaking up a conspiracy against himself, and in 1330 even executed Edmund, Earl of Kent, a brother of Edward II. The discontented barons found another leader in the king, who, young as he was, had been married at fifteen to Philippa of Hainault. Though he was already a father, he was still treated by Mortimer as a child, and virtually kept a prisoner. Edward rebelled, seized Mortimer and hanged him, and Queen Isabella was never again allowed to take part in public affairs. Isabella's three brothers, Louis X., Philip V., and Charles IV., had successively reigned in France. Had not Salic Law prohibited the rule of a woman Isabella would have been in the line of succession. At the time of the death of Charles IV. England was still under the control of Mortimer and Isabella, and though Isabella, being the sister of Charles IV., thought of claiming the crown, not for herself, but for her son, Mortimer did not press the |