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The English Crisis of 1297 in the Light of French Experience

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  15 January 2014

Charles T. Wood
Charles T. Wood*
Affiliation:
Dartmouth College
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Extract

Among the familiar sights crowding the landscape of English history from the dooms of Ine to that crown plucked from a hawthorn bush at Bosworth, none is more deeply cherished than the crisis of 1297 and the “Confirmation of the Charters” to which it gave rise. For, despite all the sharp differences over detail that the documentation for this crisis has engendered, scholars have shown remarkable agreement in seeing it as the one defeat suffered by Edward I in a long and notably successful reign. And to that defeat they have attributed great constitutional significance. Stubbs set the pattern, calling the “result singularly in harmony with what seems from history and experience to be the natural direction of English progress,” and Wilkinson is only one among the many who have recently elaborated on that theme:

The crisis of 1297 … placed a definite check on the tendencies which Edward I had shown, to ignore the deep principles of the constitution under stress of the necessities which confronted the nation … It was a landmark in the advance of the knights … toward political maturity. It helped to establish the tradition of co-operation and political alliance between the knights and the magnates, on which a good deal of the political future of England was to depend …. What the opposition achieved, in 1297, was a great vindication of the ancient political principle of government by consent ….

Type
Research Article
Information
Journal of British Studies , Volume 18 , Issue 2 , Spring 1979 , pp. 1 - 13
Copyright
Copyright © North American Conference of British Studies 1979

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References

1. For bibliography, see Wilkinson, Bertie, Constitutional History of Medieval England 1216-1399 (London, 1948–1952), I, 187Google Scholar, and Kaeuper, Richard W., “Royal Finance and the Crisis of 1297,” in Order and Innovation in the Middle Ages: Essays in Honor of Joseph R. Strayer, eds. Jordan, W. C., McNab, C. B., and Ruiz, T. F. (Princeton, 1976), p. 450Google Scholar, notes 1-3.

2. Stubbs, William, The Constitutional History of England (Oxford, 1880), II, 157Google Scholar.

3. Wilkinson, , Constitutional History, I, 207–08Google Scholar.

4. Strayer, Joseph R., “Consent to Taxation Under Philip the Fair,” in Studies in Early French Taxation (hereafter Studies), Strayer, Joseph R. and Taylor, Charles H. (Cambridge, Mass., 1939), pp. 44–45Google Scholar.

5. Ibid., p. 56 and n. 182.

6. Ibid., p. 58.

7. Brown, Elizabeth A. R., “Cessante Causa and the Taxes of the Last Capetians: The Political Application of a Philosophical Maxim,” Studia Gratiana [Post Scripta], XV (1972), 565–87Google Scholar. In 1314, Philip suspended the tax on November 28, the day before he died, but no restitution was ordered until the following January when Louis X, the new King, instructed collectors to return only those monies received after the date of the suspension.

8. Strayer, , “Consent to Taxation,” Studies, pp. 56–57Google Scholar.

9. Ibid., p. 44, demonstrates briefly the adequacy of the purely French background, one that parallels that found in England, cited infra, n. 15. Because the French Chambre des Comptes was destroyed by fire in 1737, carrying with it most financial records, little evidence survives on which to judge the extent of French use of English precedent.

10. Powicke, F. M., The Thirteenth Century 1216-1307 (Oxford, 1953), p. 675Google Scholar, n. 1. For background and the bull itself, see Wood, Charles T. (ed.), Philip the Fair and Boniface VIII (2nd ed.; New York, 1971), pp. 19–32Google Scholar.

11. Powicke, , Thirteenth Century, pp. 665–66Google Scholar.

12. Stubbs, , Constitutional History, II, 145Google Scholar and n. 1.

13. Powicke, , Thirteenth Century, p. 666Google Scholar.

14. Palgrave, Francis (ed.), Parliamentary Writs (London, 1827–1834), I, 282–83, 290Google Scholar.

15. Powicke, , Thirteenth Century, pp. 541–53Google Scholar.

16. Ibid., p. 680. Wilkinson, argues (Constitutional History, I, 192–97)Google Scholar that the Monstraunces were drawn up at this point, probably by the so-called knights, and I agree, adding only that the emphasis on the military issue in this document demonstrates the extent to which its author did not fully understand either the nature of the situation or Edward's plans.

17. Graham, Rose (ed.), Registrum Roberti Winchelsey Cantuariensis Archiepiscopi A. D. 1294-1313 (Oxford, 1952–1956), I, 179–80Google Scholar; Powicke, , Thirteenth Century, p. 676Google Scholar.

18. Ibid., p. 680; Stubbs, , Constitutional History, II, 147Google Scholar. It should be noted also that Philip the Fair used remarkably similar appeals to the emotions in 1302: Wood, , Philip and Boniface, p. 44Google Scholar.

19. Graham, , Registrum, I, 189–90Google Scholar; Stubbs, , Constitutional History, II, 148Google Scholar; Powicke, , Thirteenth Century, pp. 676, 680Google Scholar.

20. Ibid., pp. 680-81 and 680, n. 3.

21. Ibid., pp. 676-77.

22. Rymer, Thomas (ed.), Foedera (London, 1704–1735), I, 872–73Google Scholar.

23. In general, for this passage I accept the reconstruction of Wilkinson, , Constitutional History, I, 199–204Google Scholar.

24. Powicke, , Thirteenth Century, p. 683Google Scholar.

25. Ibid.

26. Ibid., pp. 677, n. 2, 683.

27. Strayer, , “Consent to Taxation,” Studies, pp. 91–94Google Scholar; Henneman, John Bell, Royal Taxation in Fourteenth Century France: The Development of War Financing 1322-1356 (Princeton, 1971)Google Scholar; Henneman, John Bell, Royal Taxation in Fourteenth-Century France: The Captivity and Ransom of John II, 1356-1370 (Philadelphia, 1976)Google Scholar. The French need (and willingness) to enter into individual negotiations shows up clearly in secret instructions to collectors in 1302 which first specify the rate and then suggest that officials should, in effect, settle for anything they canget: de Laurière, M.et al (eds.), Ordonnances des Rois de France (Paris, 1723–1849), I, 350–51Google Scholar, n. (b).

28. See above, n. 19.

29. Wilkinson, Powicke, and Kaeuper are only three of the many who have subscribed in varying degrees to this general view within the last generation.

30. The charge in this particular form is from Richardson, H. G. and Sayles, G. O., The Governance of Medieval England from the Conquest to Magna Carta (Edinburgh, 1963), pp. 16–21Google Scholar, esp. 21, n. 1.

31. Stubbs, , Constitutional History, II, 160–69Google Scholar. J. R. Strayer informs me that in the Scheide Collection of Princeton University there is a roll from around 1300 that illustrates Stubbs' point perfectly in so far as the recto lists a series of specific grievances relating to the forests while the verso contains the results of an actual perambulation of the forest of Wychwood. (Personal communication of 15 Feb. 1976.) Because the evidence contained in this roll seemed unnecessary for this article and its limited scope, I have not yet examined the manuscript personally. Strayer sums up the burden of the recto side as follows: “What was wanted was immediate remedy of concrete grievances, not constitutional theory.”

32. Luders, A.et al (eds.), Statutes of the Realm (London, 1818–1828), I, 189Google Scholar.

33. Foedera, I, 978Google Scholar; translation from Wilkinson, , Constitutional History, I, 230, 231Google Scholar.

34. Powicke, , Thirteenth Century, pp. 699–704Google Scholar. That the forests continued to be a bone of contention between the Kins and his barons is suggested by the frequency with which clauses relating to them appear in the Ordinances of 1311: Statutes of the Realm, I, 157Google Scholar; see, for example, articles 18, 19, 31, 38.

35. What one fears will be the final statement of these views, and only reviewed generally by Richardson, is to be found in Sayles, G. O., The King's Parliament of England (London, 1975)Google Scholar.