EDWARD HI. 



EDWARD IIL 



relapse into the same fatal fatuity a few yean after, whan he fell into 

 the hands of his second favourite Despenoer. 



To the reign of Edward II. belong* the memorable event of the 

 oppression in England, as in the other countries of Europe, of the 

 great order of the Knights-Templars. Their property was seized all 

 over England in 1308; but the suppression of the order in this 

 country was not accompanied by any of that cruel treatment of the 

 persons of the members which they had experienced in France. In 

 1384 Abe lands which bad belonged to the Templars were bestowed 

 upon the order of St John of Jerusalem. 



The most important legal innovation of this reign was that made 

 by the statute of sheriffs (9 Edward II., st 2), by which the right of 

 appointing those officers was taken from the people and committed to 

 the chancellor, the treasurer, and the judges. Several of the royal 

 prerogatives, relating principally to tenures, were also defined by the 

 Mute entitled 'Prcrogativa Regis' (17 Edward II., st, 1). The 

 statutes down to the end of the reign of Edward II. are commonly 

 iBt t; ng" i **'* J as the ' Vetera Statuta.' Pleading now began to assume 

 scientific form. The series of year-books, or reports by authority of 

 adjudged cases, is nearly perfect from the commencement of this 

 reign. The only law treatise belonging, or supposed to belong, to the 

 reign of Edward II. is Home's 'Miroir des Justices.' 



The circumstances of the reign were as little favourable to litera- 

 ture as to commerce and the arts. Warton observes that though 

 much poetry now began to be written, he has found only one 

 English poet of the period whose name has descended to posterity ; 

 Adam Davy or Davie, the author of various poems of a religious cast, 

 which have never been printed. Among these however is not to be 

 reckoned the long work entitled ' The Life of Alexander,' which is 

 erroneously attributed to him by Warton, but which has since been 

 conclusively shown not to be his. There is still, extant a curious 

 Latin poem on the battle of Bannockburn, written in rhyming 

 hexameters by Robert Baston, a Carmelite friar, whom Edward carried 

 along with him to celebrate his anticipated victory, but who, being 

 taken prisoner, was compelled by the Scotch to ping the defeat of his 

 countrymen in this jingling effusion. Bale speaks of this Bastou as a 

 writer of tragedies and comedies, some of which appear to have been 

 English ; but none 6f them are now know to exist. 



I.DWAKD III., King of England, the eldest son of Edward II. and 

 Isabella of France, was born at Windsor (whence he took his surname) 

 on the 13th of November 1312. In the first negociations with the 

 court of France after the breaking out of the quarrel about Ooienne 

 in 1324, a proposal seems to have been made by the French king, 

 Charles IV., for n marriage between a daughter of bis uncle, the Count 

 de Valois. and the young Prince of Wales, as Edward was styled ; but 

 it was coolly received by the king of England, and ended in nothing. 

 In September of the year following Prince Edward proceeded to Paris, 

 where his mother then was, and did homage to his uncle, King Charles, 

 for the duchy of Ouienne and the earldom of Ponthien, which hia 

 father had previously resigned to him. lie was induced by his mother 

 to remain with her at the French court, notwithstanding the most 

 pressing letters from bis father (Uymer, iv.), begging and commanding 

 him to return. Meanwhile Isabella, having previously solicited from 

 the pope a dispensation (which however xhe did not obtain), to permit 

 her to marry her son without his father's knowledge, had arranged a 

 compact with William carl of Hainault, by which the prince was 

 affianced to Philippa. the second of the earl's four daughters. Edward 

 was soon after carried by his mother to Valenciennes, the residence ol 

 the Earl of Hainault, where he met Philippa, and it is said fell ardently 

 in love with her. He landed with his mother in England in Septem- 

 ber 1326, was declared guardian or regent of the kingdom about a 

 month after, and was proclaimed king on the deposition of his father, 

 January 25th, 1327. [EDWARD II.] He was crowned at Westminster 

 the following day. 



The government of the kingdom during the king's minority was 

 placed by the parliament in the hands of a regency consisting of twelve 

 noblemen and bishops, with Henry earl of Lancaster (the brother o 

 Thomas, executed in the preceding reign) at their head. The queen 

 however and Mortimer (now created Earl of March) from the firs 

 assumed the chief management of affairs, and soon monopolised al 

 power. They must be considered as having been the real authors o 

 the murd. r of the deposed king. Their authority seemed for the 

 moment to be rather strengthened than otherwise by the failure of a 

 confederacy formed among the nobility to effect their overthrow in 

 the winter of 1323-29. In March 1829 signal proof was given o 

 their determination and daring in the maintenance of their position 

 by the fate of the king's uncle, the Earl of Kent, who having become 

 involved in what was construed to be a plot against the government, 

 was put to drath on that charge. 



Meanwhile the king, young as be was, and although thus excluded 

 from the government, had nt panned his time in inactivity. Ho was 

 married to Philippa of Hainanlt on the 24th of January 1828. A few 

 months after bis accession he had marched at the head of a numerou 

 army again.t the S-cotn, who had attain invaded and ravage,! th 

 northern counties ; but they eluded all his attempts to come up wit; 

 them, and afur a campaign of three weeks this expedition ended i 

 nothing. Soon after this a treaty of peace wiw concluded between 

 wo kingdomi, on the bis of the recognition of the complet 



ndependence of Scotland. This important treaty was signed at 



ulinburgh on the 17th of March 1328, and confirmed in a parliament 



eld at Northampton on the 4th of May following. One of the 



articles was, that a marriage should take place between Prince David, 



le only son of the king of Scotland, anil the sitter of the king of 



.iigland, the Princess Joanna ; and, although the bride was only in 



er seventh, and the bridegroom in bit fifth year, the marriage was 



celebrated accordingly at Berwick on the 12th of July. The illus- 



rious Bruce just lived to see this truly epic consummation of his 



eroic labours. He was able to_receive the youthful pair on their 



arrival at Edinburgh after the nuptials ; but he was now worn out by 



disease which had for some time preyed upon him, and he expired 



n the following June. 



The settlement of the dispute between the two countries which 

 bus seemed to be effected, proved of very short duration. In a few 

 months a concurrence of important events altogether changed both, 

 lie domestic condition and the external relations of England. In 

 be close of the year 1330, Edward at length determined to make a 

 x>ld effort to throw off the government of Mortimer. The uoceasary 

 arrangements having been made, the earl and the queen-mother were 

 seized in the castle of Nottingham on the 19th of October; the execu- 

 ion of Mortimer followed at London on the 29th of November; 

 many of his adherent* were also put to death ; Isabella was placed 

 in confinement in her house at Risings (where she was detained for 

 he remaining twenty-seven years of her life) ; and the king took the 

 overnment into his own hands. In the course of the following year 

 Mward seems to have formed the design of resuming the grand 

 iroject of his father and his grandfather the conquest of Scotland, 

 ''or this design he found an instrument in Edward lialliul, the son of 

 he late King John, who, in April 1332, landed with a small force at 

 iinghorn, in Fife, and succeeded so far, in the disorganised state of 

 ihe Scottish kingdom under the incompetent regency of the Earl of 

 ilar, and by the suddenness and unexpectedness of his attack, as to 

 get himself crowned at Scone on the 24th of September. Edward, 

 on this, immediately came to York ; and on the 23rd of November 

 ialliol rant him at Roxburgh, and there made a solemn surrender to 

 lim of the liberties of Scotland, and acknowledged him as hU liege 

 ord. The violation of his late solemn engagements committed by 

 vlward in this affair was rendered still more dishonourable by the 

 caution and elaborate duplicity with which he had muked his design. 

 Duly a few weeks after doing his homage, Balliol found himself obliged 

 o fly from his kingdom ; he took refuge in England ; various military 

 operations followed ; but at last Edward advanced into Scotland at 

 the head of a numerous army. On the 19th of July 1333, a great 

 defeat was sustained by the Scotch at the battle of Halidon Hill, 

 near Berwick ; the regent Douglas himself was mortally wounded and 

 :aken prisoner ; and everything was once more subjected to Edward 

 ii:illiol. King David and his queen were conveyed in safety to I-' 

 On the 12th of June 1334, at Newcastle, Balliol, by a solemn instru- 

 ment, made an absolute surrender to Edward of the greater part of 

 Scotland to the south of the Forth. But within three or four months 

 Balliol was again compelled to take flight to England. Two invasions 

 of Scotland by Edward followed ; the first in November of this year ; 

 the second in July 1386 ; in the course of which he wasted the country 

 with fire and sword almost to its extreme northern coufin>-, bir n.l 

 not succeed in bringing about an engagement with the native forces, 

 which notwithstanding still kept the field. In the summer of 1336 

 lie took his devastating course for the third time through the northern 

 counties, with as little permanent effect. On now retiring to England 

 he left the command to his brother John, styled earl of Cornwall, who 

 soon after died at Perth. 



From this time however the efforts of the English king were in 

 great part drawn off from Scotland by a new object. This was the 

 claim which he had first advanced some years before to the crown of 

 France, but which he only now proceeded seriously to prosecute, 

 determined probably by the more open manner in which the French king 

 bad lately begun to exert himself in favour of the Scots, whom, after 

 repeated endeavours to serve them by mediation and intercession, he 

 had at length ventured to assist by supplies of money and warlike 

 stores. Charles IV. of France had died in February 1323, leaving a 

 daughter who was acknowledged on all hands to have no claim to the 

 crown, which it was agreed did not descend to females. In these 

 circumstances Philip of Valois mounted the throne, taking the title 

 of Philip VI. He was without dispute the next in the line of the 

 succession if both females and the descendant* of females were to be 

 excluded. Kd ward's claim rested on the position that although his 

 mother, Isabella, as a female, was herself excluded, he, as her son, 

 was not. If this position bad been assented to he would undoubtedly 

 have had a better claim than Philip, who was only descended from 

 the younger brother of Isabella's father. But the principle assumed 

 was, we believe, altogether new and unheard of and would besides, 

 if it had been admitted, have excluded both Philip and Edward, 

 seeing that the true heir in that case would have been the son of 

 Joanna Countess d'Kvrenx, who was the daughter of Ixmis X.. 

 Isabella's brother. It would also have followed that the two last 

 kingn, Philip V. and Charles IV., must have been usurpers as well as 

 Philip VI. ; tbe son of Joanna, the daughter of their predecessor and 

 elder brother, would, upon the scheme of succession alleged by the 



