they had been wont to dispose of the whole or parts of their
estates while maintaining their feudal rights over it, so that the
ultimate landlord could not deal directly with the new occupant,
whose reliefs, wardship, &c., fell to the intermediate holder who
had sold away the land. The main result of this was that, when
a baron parted with any one of his estates, the acquirer became
a tenant-in-chief directly dependent on the king, instead of being
left a vassal of the person who had passed over the land to him.
Subinfeudation came to a complete stop, and whenever great
family estates broke up the king obtained new tenants-in-chief.
The number of persons holding immediately of the crown began
at once to multiply by leaps and bounds. As the process of the
partition of lands continued, the fractions grew smaller and
smaller, and many of the tenants-in-chief were ere long very
small and unimportant persons. These, of course, would not
form part of the baronial interest, and could not be distinguished
from any other subjects of the crown.
The Statute of Winchester, the other great legislative act of 1285, was mainly concerned with the keeping of the peace of the realm. It revised the arming and organization of the national militia, the lineal descendent of the old fyrd, and provided a useful police force Statute of Winchester. for the repression of disorder and robbery by the reorganization of watch and ward. This was, of course, one more device for strengthening the power of the crown.
In the intervals of the legislation which formed the main
feature of the first half of his reign, Edward was often distracted
by external matters. He was, on the whole, on very
good terms with his first cousin, Philip III. of France;
the trouble did not come from this direction, though
Welsh
wars.
there was the usual crop of feudal rebellions in Gascony. Nor
did Edward’s relations with the more remote states of the continent
lead to any important results, though he had many
treaties and alliances in hand. It was with Wales that his most
troublesome relations occurred. Llewelyn-ap-Gruffydd, the old
ally of de Montfort, had come with profit out of the civil wars of
1263–66, and having won much land and more influence during
the evil days of Henry III., was reluctant to see that his time
of prosperity had come to an end, now that a king of a very
different character sat on the English throne.
Friction had begun the moment that Edward returned to his
kingdom from the crusade. Llewelyn would not deign to appear
before him to render the customary homage due from Wales to
the English crown, but sent a series of futile excuses lasting over
three years. In 1277, however, the king grew tired of waiting,
invaded the principality and drove his recalcitrant vassal up
into the fastnesses of Snowdon, where famine compelled him
to surrender as winter was beginning. Llewelyn was pardoned,
but deprived of all the lands he had gained during the days of
the civil war, and restricted to his old North Welsh dominions.
He remained quiescent for five years, but busied himself in
knitting up secret alliances with the Welsh of the South, who
were resenting the introduction of English laws and customs
by the strong-handed king. In 1282 there was a sudden and
well-planned rising, which extended from the gates of Chester
to those of Carmarthen; several castles were captured by the
insurgents, and Edward had to come to the rescue of the lords-marchers
at the head of a very large army. After much checkered
fighting Llewelyn was slain at the skirmish of Orewyn Bridge near
Builth on the 11th of December 1282. On his death the southern
rebels submitted, but David his brother continued the struggle
for three months longer in the Snowdon district, till his last
bands were scattered and he himself taken prisoner. Edward
Conquest
of Wales.
beheaded him at Shrewsbury as a traitor, having the
excuse that David had submitted once before, had
been endowed with lands in the Marches, and had
nevertheless joined his brother in rebellion. After this the king
abode for more than a year in Wales, organizing the newly
conquered principality into a group of counties, and founding
many castles, with dependent towns, within its limits. The
“statute of Wales,” issued at Rhuddlan in 1284, provided for
the introduction of English law into the country, though a
certain amount of Celtic customs was allowed to survive. For
the next two centuries and a half the lands west of Dee and Wye
were divided between the new counties, forming the “principality”
of Wales, and the “marches” where the old feudal
franchises continued, till the marcher-lordships gradually fell
by forfeiture or marriage to the crown. Edward’s grip on the
land was strong, and it had need to be so, for in 1287 and 1294–1295
there were desperate and widespread revolts, which were
only checked by the existence of the new castles, and subdued
by the concentration of large royal armies. In 1301 the king’s
eldest surviving son Edward, who had been born at Carnarvon
in 1284, was created “prince of Wales,” and invested with the
principality, which henceforth became the regular appanage
of the heirs of the English crown. This device was apparently
intended to soothe Welsh national pride, by reviving in form,
if not in reality, the separate existence of the old Cymric state.
For four generations the land was comparatively quiet, but the
great rebellion of Owen Glendower in the reign of Henry IV.
was to show how far the spirit of particularism was from
extinction.
Some two years after his long sojourn in Wales Edward made
an even longer stay in a more remote corner of his dominions.
Gascony being, as usual, out of hand, he crossed to Bordeaux in
1286, and abode in Guienne for no less than three years, reducing
the duchy to such order as it had never known before, settling
all disputed border questions with the new king of France,
Philip IV., founding many new towns, and issuing many useful
statutes and ordinances. He returned suddenly in 1289, called
home by complaints that reached him as to the administration
of justice by his officials, who were slighting the authority of
his cousin Edmund of Cornwall, whom he had left behind as
regent. He dismissed almost the whole bench of judges, and
made other changes among his ministers. At the same time
he fell fiercely upon the great lords of the Welsh Marches, who
had been indulging in private wars; when they returned to
their evil practice he imprisoned the chief offenders, the earls
of Hereford and Gloucester, forfeited their estates, and only
gave them back when they had paid vast fines (1291). Another
Expulsion
of the
Jews.
act of this period was Edward’s celebrated expulsion
of the Jews from England (1290). This was the continuation
of a policy which he had already carried
out in Guienne. It would seem that his reasons were
partly religious, but partly economic. No earlier king could have
afforded to drive forth a race who had been so useful to the crown
as bankers and money-lenders; but by the end of the 13th
century the financial monopoly of the Jews had been broken
by the great Italian banking firms, whom Edward had been
already employing during his Welsh wars. Finding them no
less accommodating than their rivals, he gratified the prejudices
of his subjects and himself by forcing the Hebrews to quit
England. The Italians in a few years became as unpopular as
their predecessors in the trade of usury, their practices being
the same, if their creed was not.
Meanwhile in the same year that saw the expulsion of the Jews, King Edward’s good fortune began to wane, with the rise of the Scottish question, which was to overshadow the latter half of his reign. Alexander III., the last male in direct descent of the old Scottish royal house, Edward I. and Scotland. had died in 1286. His heiress was his only living descendant, a little girl, the child of his deceased daughter Margaret and Eric, king of Norway. After much discussion, for both the Scottish nobles and the Norse king were somewhat suspicious, Edward had succeeded in obtaining from them a promise that the young queen should marry his heir, Edward of Carnarvon. This wedlock would have led to a permanent union of the English and Scottish crowns, but not to an absorption of the lesser in the greater state, for the rights of Scotland were carefully guarded in the marriage-treaty. But the scheme was wrecked by the premature death of the bride, who expired by the way, while being brought over from Norway to her own kingdom, owing to privations and fatigue suffered on a tempestuous voyage.
