the 20th of January 1327, his fourteen-year old son being proclaimed
king in his stead. He was allowed to survive in close
prison some eight months longer, but when his robust constitution
defied all attempts to kill him by privations, he was
murdered by the orders of the queen and Mortimer at Berkeley
Castle on the 21st of September.
The three years regency of Isabella, during the minority of Edward III., formed a disgraceful episode in the history of England. She was as much the tool of Mortimer as her husband had been the tool of the Despensers, and their relations became gradually evident to the whole Regency of Isabella and Mortimer. nation. All posts of dignity and emolument were kept for their personal adherents, and a new and formidable dignity was conferred on Mortimer himself, when he was made both justiciar of the principality of Wales, and also earl of March, in which lay both his own broad lands and the estates of Despenser and Arundel, which he had shamelessly appropriated. It is surprising that the adulterous pair succeeded in maintaining themselves in power for so long, since the ignominy of the situation was evident. They were even able to quell the first attempt at a reaction, by seizing and beheading Edmund, earl of Kent, the late king’s half-brother, who was betrayed while organizing a plot for their destruction. The one politic act of Mortimer’s administration, the conclusion of a permanent peace with Scotland by acknowledging Bruce as king (1328), was not one which made him more popular. The people called it “the shameful peace of Northampton,” and firmly believed that he had been bribed by the Scots.
Yet Isabella and her paramour held on to power for two years after the peace, and were only overthrown by a blow from an unexpected quarter. When the young king had reached the age of eighteen he began to understand the disgraceful nature of his own situation. Having Edward III. secured promise of aid from Henry of Lancaster, his cousin, and other barons, he executed a coup de main, and seized Mortimer in his chamber at midnight. The queen was also put under guard till a parliament could be called. It met, and at the king’s demand passed sentence on the earl for the murder of Edward II. and other crimes. He was hanged at Tyburn (Nov. 1330); the queen suffered nothing worse than complete exclusion from power, and lived for more than twenty years in retirement on the manors of her dowry.
Edward III., who thus commenced his reign ere he was out of his boyhood, was, as might have been foretold from his prompt action against Mortimer, a prince of great vigour and enterprise. He showed none of his father’s weakness and much of his grandfather’s capacity. He fell short of Edward I. in steadiness of character and organizing power, but possessed all his military capacity and his love of work. Unfortunately for England his ambition was to be the mirror of chivalry rather than a model administrator. He took up and abandoned great enterprises with equal levity; he was reckless in the spending of money; and in times of trouble he was careless of constitutional precedent, and apt to push his prerogative to extremes. Yet like Edward I. he was popular with his subjects, who pardoned him much in consideration of his knightly virtues, his courage, his ready courtesy and his love of adventure. In most respects he was a perfect exponent of the ideals and foibles of his age, and when he broke a promise or repudiated a debt he was but displaying the less satisfactory side of the habitual morality of the 14th century the chivalry of which was often deficient in the less showy virtues. With all his faults Edward during his prime was a capable and vigorous ruler; and it was not without reason that not England only but all western Europe looked up to him as the greatest king of his generation.
His early years were specially fortunate, as his rule contrasted in the most favourable way with that of his infamous mother and his contemptible father. The ministers whom he substituted for the creatures of Mortimer were capable, if not talented administrators. He did much to Edward III. invades Scotland. restore the internal peace of the realm, and put down the local disorders which had been endemic for the last twenty years. Moreover, when the war with Scotland recommenced he gave the English a taste of victory such as they had not enjoyed since Falkirk. Robert Bruce was now dead and his throne was occupied by the young David II., whose factious nobles were occupied in civil strife when, in 1332, a pretender made a snatch at the Scottish throne. This was Edward, the son of John Baliol, an adventurous baron who collected all the “disinherited” Scots lords, the members of the old English faction who had been expelled by Bruce, and invaded the realm at their head. He beat the regent Mar at the battle of Dupplin, seized Perth and Edinburgh, and crowned himself at Scone. But knowing that his seat was precarious he did homage to the English king, and made him all the promises that his father had given to Edward I. The temptation was too great for the young king to refuse; he accepted the homage, and offered the aid of his arms. It was soon required, for Baliol was ere long expelled from Scotland. Edward won the battle of Halidon Hill (July 19, 1333)—where he displayed considerable tactical skill—captured Berwick, and reconquered a considerable portion of Scotland for his vassal. Unfortunately for himself he made the mistake of requiring too much from Baliol—forcing him to cede Lothian, Tweeddale and the larger part of Galloway, and to promise a tribute. These terms so irritated the Scots, who had shown signs of submission up to this moment, that they refused to accept the pretender, and kept up a long guerilla warfare which ended in his final expulsion. But the fighting was all on Scottish ground, and Edward repeatedly made incursions, showy if not effective, into the very heart of the northern realm; on one occasion he reached Inverness unopposed. He held Perth till 1339, Edinburgh till 1341, and was actually in possession of much Scottish territory when his attention was called off from this minor war to the greater question of the struggle with France. Meanwhile he had acquired no small military reputation, had collected a large body of professional soldiers whose experience was to be invaluable to him in the continental war, and had taught his army the new tactics which were to win Creçy and Poitiers. For the devices employed against the Scottish “schiltrons” of pikemen at Dupplin and Halidon, were the same as those which won all the great battles of the Hundred Years’ War—the combination of archery, not with cavalry (the old system of Hastings and Falkirk), but with dismounted men-at-arms. The nation, meanwhile prosperous, not vexed by overmuch taxation, and proud of its young king, was ready and willing to follow him into any adventure that he might indicate.
IV. The Hundred Years’ War (1337–1453)
Wars between England and France had been many, since William the Conqueror first linked their fortunes together by adding his English kingdom to his Norman duchy. They were bound to recur as long as the kings who ruled on this side of the Channel were possessed of Causes of the Hundred Years’ War. continental dominions, which lay as near, or nearer, to their hearts than their insular realm. While the kingdom of France was weak, monarchs like Henry II. and Richard I. might dream of extending their transmarine possessions to the detriment of their suzerain at Paris. When France had grown strong, under Philip Augustus, the house of Plantagenet still retained a broad territory in Gascony and Guienne, and the house of Capet could not but covet the possession of the largest surviving feudal appanage which marred the solidarity of their kingdom. There had been a long interval of peace in the 13th century, because Henry III. of England was weak, and Louis IX. of France an idealist, much more set on forwarding the welfare of Christendom than the expansion of France. But the inevitable struggle had recommenced with the accession of the unscrupulous Philip IV. Its cause was simple; France was incomplete as long as the English king ruled at Bordeaux and Bayonne, and far up the valleys of the Garonne and the Adour. From 1293 onward Philip and his sons had been striving to make an end of the power of the Plantagenets in Aquitaine, sometimes by the simple argument of war, more frequently by the insidious process of encroaching on ducal rights, summoning
