Edward believed that, in the conquest of Wales, he was pursuing his own regal rights in the same spirit that inspired the ‘quo warranto?’ investigations. This was his land. Or so he declared. The Atlantic folk, who had lived in the territory for many thousands of years, may not have agreed with him. With a cavalry force of approximately 1,000 men Edward chased the Welsh from mountain to mountain, and from hill to hill, until the native princes finally submitted to his authority. English law, and the English system of shires, were then imposed upon them. In the safety of the shadow of the castle walls, settlements of English colonists were introduced. Towns sprang up from markets. The life of the country was being quickened. Subsequent revolts and rebellions disturbed the peace, but the settlement itself has never since been overturned. When all was complete the king held an Arthurian tournament at Nefyn, a small coastal town from where the Prophecies of Merlin were supposed to emanate.
The costs of this war of conquest had been huge. That is why Edward called so large a parliament early in his reign; the wider the net, the larger the catch. The whole country was soon enmeshed in a general system of taxation that heralded the rise of a fiscal state. It was a necessity of war that became, almost by accident, a principal element of the English administration.
The taxation on wool, also passed by the parliament, materially assisted the king’s treasury. But it had further consequences. Edward set up the system of customs that, for better or worse, has been a feature of English economic life ever since. For the first time the king was seen to be acting in concert with the merchants, to whom he now offered his protection. Foreign traders were granted certain privileges. They were allowed to come and go as they wished, were made free from interference by local officials and were immune from local taxes. The merchants of Gascony and elsewhere were given the status of citizens in all dealings with Londoners.
The king’s connection with the bankers of Lucca meant that he was now involved in questions of international finance; that is why he took great care to preserve the standard of the money supply. Debased coinage would not bolster his prestige with the brokers of Europe. A more elaborate system of credit, borrowed from the financiers of Venice and Genoa, was introduced to England. The necessities of war once more created the context for innovation.
Edward also found ingenious ways of making money. The law stated that those with property worth more than £20 a year were obliged to adopt the status of knights; but knighthood was an expensive business, with the cost of equipment alone, and many landowners were ready to pay a relatively large sum to avoid the honour. By an order known as ‘distraint of knighthood’ Edward ordered that all eligible men should bear arms, and then proceeded to collect the money from those who wished to remain exempt. It was a legal form of extortion.
Edward I was once known as the ‘English Justinian’ on the grounds that he gave shape and purpose to English law. The great jurist of the seventeenth century, Edward Coke, remarked that he enacted ‘more constant, standing, and durable laws than have been made ever since’. The ‘Statute of Westminster the First’, passed in the earliest parliament of his reign, was followed by nine other statutes ranging from matters of law and order to the debts of merchants. They were practical and specific measures to confront immediate problems. In the Statute of Winchester, for example, it was decreed that all hedges and underwood should be cleared from the sides of the highways to a distance of 200 feet (61 metres); they could not then be used to provide shelter for thieves.
The measure was timely and necessary. Parts of the countryside were beset by marauding gangs, many of them drawn from the soldiers who had fought in Edward’s wars. There were no other rewards for old soldiers. Other groups of ruffians were hired by members of the local gentry in order to pursue private feuds or to terrify their tenants. So special courts known as ‘trailbaston’, which meant the act of clenching a club or staff, were set up to deal with acts of felony and trespass. The name originally described the ruffians themselves, and then became applied to the judges who sentenced them.
The king took his share of the proceeds of justice, of course, and the judges themselves grew rich. They were despised as much as they were feared. In some of the popular verses of the period the judges are compared unfavourably to those outlaws who sought refuge in the woods. What difference between the thieves in hiding and the thieves in office? In one song the usher of the court addresses a defendant. ‘Poor man, why do you trouble yourself ? Why do you wait here? Unless you give money to everybody in this court, you labour in vain. If you have brought nothing, you will stand altogether out of doors.’ We have here a medieval paradox. Even as the law was being shaped and refined, the exponents of the law were mocked and vilified. Royal law was being condemned even as it was being extended.
Nevertheless forms and procedures had to be followed; there had developed a legal routine. In the period of Edward’s reign the number of attorneys rose from approximately 10 to 200. They became a new elite. Where there is money to be made, there are people who will wish to create privileged access to it. The phenomenon itself is of a piece with other developments of the early fourteenth century. The households of the great were being run by staffs of trained managers, and farms were organized by estate managers. War itself was being professionalized. The king no longer summoned a national host from the shires; instead he came more and more to rely upon paid troops led by full-time commanders. As the business of the realm became more complex, it became the province of full-time officers whom we might describe as a civil service; the chancery alone employed more than 100 clerks, and had a secure home at Westminster. The first proper parliamentary record, giving an account of proceedings, dates from 1316.
Yet the force of the royal will was still paramount. Two judges were once arguing a case in the king’s presence. Edward was beginning to lose patience with their lengthy deliberations. Eventually he interrupted them, saying, ‘I have nothing to do with your disputations, but God’s blood, you shall give me a good writ before you arise hence!’ He did not mean good in the sense of meritorious; he meant one that worked in his favour. The monkish author of The Song of Lewes had written of Edward, when he was a prince, that ‘whatever he wants he holds to be lawful, and he thinks that there are no legal bounds to his power’.
Edward had remained in Gascony from 1286 to 1289, seeking to control the affairs of the land that mattered as much to him as England. On his return he discovered, according to one chronicler, ‘a very real oppression hanging over the country’. One of his clerical servants, Adam de Stratton, had acquired an unsavoury reputation for various financial malpractices. He was part of a system of bribery and corruption that had flourished more than ever in the king’s absence of three years. The rage of the king was wonderful to behold. He stormed into the chambers of the man, exclaiming, ‘Adam! Adam! Where art thou?’ In Adam’s house, at Smalelane near the Fleet Prison, was found a hoard of £13,000.
Edward could trust only the advisers whom he had taken with him to Gascony, and he ordered them to find out the truth about all accusations. As a result of their enquiries many judges were found to be manifestly corrupt. One of them, the chief justice on the Bench of Common Pleas, fled for sanctuary to a Franciscan friary. From there he was forced to abjure the realm, walking barefoot to Dover with a cross in his hand. The king had returned from abroad, and had become an avenging angel. Once more he had proved his strength.
In November 1290, his queen died. Eleanor of Castile is not well known to history. She is supposed to have been devout, but her principal devotion was to her family’s interests; she speculated in land, for example, and took financial advantage of those who were heavily in debt to the Jews. One contemporary reveals that ‘day by day the said lady continues to acquire plunder and the possessions of others by these means. There is public outcry and gossip about this in every part of England.’ In this she was not very different from other members of the family who, travelling in the wake of Edward, were inclined to be rapacious and mercenary; it was one of the settled policies of his realm that his kinsmen should be granted the great earldoms of the realm. Four of his daughters were safely married to the richest magnates and were given extensive lands.