The reign of henry III

During the half-century of his personal rule, Western Europe experienced, on the whole, a state of peace compared with times before and times to come.

French was still the official language of court and law in England. Latin was the international language of learning, diplomacy and liturgy. The English language had no official status. A resident of England, asked to define his identity at this time, would have done so in terms of who his lord was, or perhaps, in terms of his parish or village. Fully three-quarters of the English people were still of the villein class, in a state of semi-servitude, their opportunities and movements restricted to the places where they had been born and by the dictates of the lord of the manor. The change in thinking was brought about by a number of separate elements, which did not have much to do with one another. In England the sea barrier round so much of the country helped to promote a sense of separateness. The emergence of a university at Oxford, first founded in 1167 by scholars who had come from Paris, followed by that of Cambridge in 1209, among Europe's earliest, helped to create a social group of 'clerks', educated men who were greatly influenced by the part-secular, part-religious communities in which their formative years were spent (the student community of Oxford numbered around 1,300 in the 1330s – a considerable figure).

The duties of the king and the power of the law

The two great formative forces in the emergence of a distinctively English nation were the kingship and the law. A king was expected to rule and govern, to levy specific tolls and taxes, to wage war, to ensure that justice was done, to keep civil peace, to reward his servants, and to be seen to do all these things, as well as to maintain the splendid lifestyle that went with such supremacy and responsibility. A king who failed in these respects might eventually be challenged, as John had been and Henry III was to be, without any urge to destroy or replace kingship itself. To achieve this, without appearing to be merely rebellious and disloyal, it was vital to show in what respects the king had failed, and in what respects he should act differently This was the importance of Magna Carta and such later agreements as the Provisions of Oxford, enforced on Henry III by Simon de Montfort and other barons in 1258. They made it possible to judge the king by his performance.

A State Built on Wool welsh annexation and scottish resistance

Under pressure from certain barons, chief among them the energetic and unbending Simon de Montfort, Earl of Leicester, however, Henry died and another lengthy reign began, of a very different stamp, under his son Edward I. He was first to take over the title of Prince of Wales for his eldest son.

A heavy reverse came with the French invasion of Edward's duchy of Aquitaine in 1294. The costs of war in France meant a severe extra tax burden for the English people. Edward also strove to promote a union of England and Scotland through the marriage of his son and the girl heir to the Scottish crown; when she died in 1290, he set out to impose himself as overlord of the Scottish realm, with considerable success until the Scots found a leader in William Wallace, and after Wallace's capture and execution in London, the guerrilla-style campaigns of Robert Bruce gradually won the country back. It was on yet another expedition to subdue the Scots that Edward died in 1307.

The reverse of the Great Seal of Edward I