Dozen Lessons From British History. Reader

Henry II (1154–1189)

He became king of England in 1154 replacing King Stephen. The reign of King Henry II began well. The king had great possessions on the continent: Normandy, Aquitaine, Gascony and Anjou. Anjou and Normandy were held through paternal heritance and Aquitaine/Gascony through wedding with Eleanor of Aquitaine on 18 May 1152. He thus effectively became more powerful than his nominal lord, the king of France. As king, he would make Ireland a part of his vast domain.

His first task was to re-establish royal authority in England. He began by tackling the problem of castles, demanding the immediate surrender of all those belonging to the crown. At the same time he began building or strengthening other castles. By 1159, scutage, a fee paid by vassals instead of military service, had become a central feature of the king’s military system. Record keeping improved dramatically in order to streamline this taxation.

King Henry II was particularly interested in law and order, and played an outstanding part in the development of the legal system. He understood better than his predecessors that a single system of justice for the whole land under the control of the king would not only help to unify the country, but give him great power. He studied how best to achieve this.

Henry set the foundations of ‘professional’ judges, members of the clergy or laymen ‘learned in law’ upon whom he could depend to uphold his laws. There were then eighteen judges in the country. He ordered five of them to remain in London and take over from him the task of deciding cases. This resulted in the King’s Bench of judges, who sat at Westminster.

In 1166 Henry issued a Declaration at the Assize of Clarendon (an assize was an early form of King’s Council; it later became a ‘sitting’ or session of the court) that the remaining judges should be sent out of circuits to travel to different parts of the country. When they did so they had to apply the laws that had been made by the judges at Westminster. In this way many local customary laws were replaced by new national laws. As these national laws would apply to everyone, they would be ‘common to all’. These laws therefore became known as the common law. Although the judges, when travelling on assize, would wherever possible put into force the same laws as were being applied at Westminster, they would not altogether ignore the customs of the region. They would learn from them, and if they approved of them they would be pre-

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pared to accept them as the law, sometimes even carrying them on to other parts of the country, and back to Westminster itself.

By 1166 trial by jury became the norm. It replaced the outmoded methods of trial, by ordeal and the Norman-introduced trial by battle. Originally, jurors were always men who lived in the area where a crime had been committed. They had to decide whether a prisoner would stand trial by ordeal. This was done by summoning them to appear before justices to swear an oath to give an honest opinion about whether the prisoner was properly suspected of having committed a crime. Henry II was particularly interested in getting local people involved in the administration of justice. He believed that those who knew both the accuser and the accused would be best qualified to say whether there was likely to be truth in the allegation (accusation).

As a consequence of the improvements in the legal system, the power of church courts waned. The church naturally opposed this and found its most vehement spokesman in Thomas Becket, the Archbishop of Canterbury, formerly a close friend of Henry’s and his Chancellor.

The conflict with Becket effectively began with a dispute over whether the secular courts could try clergy who had committed a secular offence. In 1164 Becket left England for France to get the support of King Louis VII of France and of Pope Alexander III, who was in exile in France. Becket remained in exile under the protection of Louis and Pope Alexander until 1170. After reconciliation between Henry and Thomas in Normandy in 1170, Becket returned to England. He again confronted Henry, this time over the coronation of Prince Henry. Henry II flew into one of his fits of rage and said: “What cowards have I brought up in my court! No one will deliver me from this low-born priest!” This time four of his knights took their king literally and travelled immediately to England, where they assassinated Becket in Canterbury Cathedral on 29 December 1170.

The murder made the king very unpopular, and in an effort to make amends, and avoid a rebellion, Henry accepted the punishment of a public whipping — perhaps one of the first very dramatic illustrations of the principle that even the kings are not above the law. He was horror-stricken and cleared himself with the Pope and made oath that he had no share in the murder. As part of his self-punishment for the death of Becket, Henry made a pilgrimage in sackcloth to his tomb, and agreed to send money to the Crusader states in Palestine, which the Knights Hospitaller

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and the Knights Templar would guard until Henry arrived to make use of it on pilgrimage or crusade.

Henry died on 6 July 1189, and was succeeded soon afterwards by Richard I ‘the Lionheart’. The year 1189 is a date of some legal interest, for it is the origin of the phrase ‘from time immemoral’. This is because in the reign of Edward I (Lesson 4) Parliament decided that ‘legal memory’ should run from the date of Henry’s death, and the courts would take no account of any legal transactions which had taken place before it. With the passage of time, this was also taken to mean that the courts would not recognise any laws made before 1189.

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Lesson 3

King John (1199–1216)

Like William I, King John is one of the more controversial monarchs of Medieval England and is most associated with the signing of the Magna Carta in 1215.

John was the youngest son of Henry II and his wife Eleanor of Aquitaine. As a child, John tended to be overshadowed by is elder brother Richard. John’s reputation as a leader had been severely dented as far back as 1185 when Henry II sent him to Ireland to rule. John proved to be a disaster and within six months he was sent home. Henry left no land to John when he died so John was given the nickname John Lackland. In 1189, all of Henry’s territory went to his eldest son, Richard I, better known as Richard the Lionheart.

In 1191, Richard left England to embark on the Third Crusade. He left John in charge of the country. In 1192, Richard was imprisoned by Duke Leopold of Austria as he returned from the Crusades. John tried to seize the crown from his brother but failed. In 1194, when Richard finally returned to England, John was forgiven by his brother.

In 1199, Richard was killed in France and John became the king of England. His reign started in an unfortunate way. First he had a conflict with his young nephew, Arthur of Brittany, over the throne of England. Two years after the conflict had been settled the war broke out between England and France where the French king was supported by Arthur of Brittany. In 1202, John’s nephew was captured and probably murdered. Many in Brittany believed that John was responsible for his murder and they rebelled against John. In 1204, John’s army was defeated in Brittany and John had no choice but to retreat. His military standing among the nobles fell and he was given a new nickname — John Softsword. The defeat in north France was a major blow for John and a costly one. To pay for the defeat, John increased taxes which was not popular with anybody other than John and his treasurers.

John also succeeded in falling out with the pope in 1207. John quarrelled with the Pope over who should be Archbishop of Can-

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terbury. The Pope sided with the monks, and had them elect Stephen Langston, an Englishman who then lived in Rome, and the first scholar of his day. John named someone else for the place, and refused to receive Langston. The Pope excommunicated John and put England under a Church law that stated that no christening or marriage would be legal until the time the pope said that they would be. Church law said that only christened people could get to Heaven while children born out of marriage were doomed to Hell. This placed people in England under a terrible strain and they blamed one person for this — John.

In 1213, John had to give in and swear fealty to the Pope. However, the Pope never fully trusted John and in 1214, the pope proclaimed that anybody who tried to overthrow John would be legally entitled to do so. In the same year, John lost another battle to the French at Bouvines. This defeat resulted in England losing all her possessions in France.

King John’s poor and arbitrary government, very heavy tax demands to pay for wars in France and crusades in the Holy Land, quarrels with the Pope and a defeat by the French in 1214, had led the barons and bishops to revolt. The rising started in the north and spread south and east. The barons withdrew their allegiance to the King, with whom their negotiations and demand for the grant of a charter confirming the ancient ‘liberties’ of the realm had got nowhere. Armies were raised. Civil war was close. London (the capital where John’s Exchequer was based) was captured by the barons.

The barons’ demands were incorporated in a document known as “The Articles of the Barons”. On Monday 15 June 1215 the two sides met ‘in the meadow which is called Runnymede’, and John, setting his seal the ‘the Articles’ agreed to the issue of the Great Charter of Freedoms (Magna Carta). Magna Carta guaranteed the people of England rights that the king could not go back on. Twenty-five barons were chosen to enforce the charter’s agreement.

In 1216, John tried to go back on the Magna Carta but this only provoked the barons into declaring war on him. By 1216, John was ill. During the war, he suffered from dysentery. He also lost all of his treasure, including some Crown jewels, when he tried to take a shortcut across a stretch of water in the Wash, Lincolnshire. As the tide rose faster than he expected, his baggage train was engulfed. Just a few days later, John died and was succeeded by Henry III.

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Magna Carta

Magna Carta (Latin for «the Great Charter», literally «the Great Paper»), also called Magna Carta Libertatum («Great Charter of Freedoms»), was designed to rebalance the power between the King and the barons. It has come to be the symbol of the rule of law in England, protecting the rights of the individual. Its basic principles have been used in the constitutions of the USA, Japan, Germany and many Commonwealth and other countries.

The Magna Carta was a detailed expansion of the 49 main heads contained in ‘the Articles of the Barons’. A large part of the Magna Carta was copied, nearly word for word, from the Charter of Liberties of Henry I, issued when Henry I ascended to the throne in 1100, which bound the king to certain laws regarding the treatment of church officials and nobles, effectively granting certain civil liberties to the church and the English nobility.

The 63 clauses, written in Latin on vellum (calf-skin), containing about 3,500 abbreviated Latin words, include the fundamental principles of a fair trial before one’s equals, a recognition that the King is not above the law, the freedom of the Church to govern its own affairs, and the righting of many abuses — for example, widows were no longer to be remarried against their will, weights and measures were standardised and ‘to no-one will we sell, to no-one will we deny or delay right or justice’. John agreed to release all hostages, expell his foreign favourites, and give back land illegally taken. Clause 24 states that crown officials (such as sheriffs) may not try a crime in place of a judge. By clauses 39 and 40 King John promised that no freeman should be imprisoned without a fair trial according to law, and that no one should be denied justice.

The Magna Carta also established:

•A person could not be tried more than once for the same offence

•Every free man had the right to own property and it could not be taken without due process of law.

•The right not to be fined so heavily as to have livelihood destroyed.

•Punishment had to fit the crime.

•Taxation when ‘the common counsel of the realm’ had been obtained (an early form of taxation with representation). In addition, only reasonable taxes ('aids') were to be taken by the knights from their free tenants.

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Lesson 4

Edward I (1272–1307)

Edward was in many ways the ideal medieval king. He was a good fighter, and was a man who enjoyed both war and statecraft. His crusading reputation gave him prestige, and his chivalric qualities were admired. Although he had a gift for leadership, he lacked sympathy for others and had an obstinacy that led to inflexibility.

Law and government

In the 13th century the development of law became a dominant concern, as is shown by the great treatise On the Laws and Customs of England, attributed to the royal judge Bracton but probably put together in the 1220s and ’30s under one of his predecessors on the King’s Bench. Soon after Edward’s return to England in 1274, a major inquiry into government in the localities took place that yielded the so-called Hundred Rolls, a heterogeneous group of records, and brought home the need for changes in the law. In 1275 the First Statute of Westminster was issued. A succession of other statutes followed in later years, providing a kind of supplement to the common law. Some measures protected the king’s rights; others remedied the grievances of his subjects. In the quo warranto proceedings set up under the Statute of Gloucester of 1278 the magnates were asked by what warrant they claimed rights of jurisdiction and other franchises. This created much argument, which was resolved in the Statute of Quo Warranto of 1290. By the Statute of Mortmain of 1279 it was provided that no more land was to be given to the church without royal license. The Statute of Quia Emptores of 1290 had the effect of preventing further subinfeudation of land. In the first and second statutes of Westminster, of 1275 and 1285, many deficiencies in the law were corrected, such as those concerning the relationship between lords and tenants and the way in which the system of distraint was operated. Merchants benefited from the Statute of Acton Burnell of

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1283 and the Statute of Merchants of 1285, which facilitated debt collection. Problems of law and order were tackled in the Statute of Winchester of 1285.

During the reign of Edward I there were three main royal courts which had grown out of Сuria Regis. They dealt with cases involving the royal revenue and the collection of taxes (Court of the Exchequer), criminal and civil cases in which the king was concerned (Court of King’s Bench), and cases which concerned disputes between private individuals (Court of Common Pleas). In addition to these three main courts, yet more courts were created to deal with many other aspects of local life, and courts of one kind or another gradually became a focal point in the everyday life of most citizens.

Finance

Edward began his reign with heavy debts incurred on crusade, and his various wars also were costly. In 1275 Edward gained a secure financial basis when he negotiated a grant of export duties on wool, woolfells, and hides that brought in an average of 10,000 a year. He borrowed extensively from Italian bankers on the security of these customs revenues. The system of levying taxes on an assessment of the value of movable goods was also of great value. Successive profitable taxes were granted, mostly in Parliament. It was partly in return for one such tax, in 1290, that Edward expelled the Jews from England. Their moneylending activities had made them unpopular, and royal exploitation had so impoverished the Jews that there was no longer an advantage for Edward in keeping them in England.

The growth of Parliament

Edward was not the first to call a parliament. In 1265 the first true English parliament to include elected representatives was summoned by Simon de Montfort. Edward I fostered the concept of the community of the realm and the practice of calling representative knights of the shire and burgesses from the towns to Parliament. In 1275 he commanded each shire and each town to send two representatives to his parliament. Representatives were needed to give consent to taxation, as well as to enhance communication between the king and his subjects. The process of petitioning the

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king and his council in Parliament was greatly encouraged. Historians have argued much about the nature of Edward’s Parliament. Some of them see Edward as responding to the dictates of Roman law, while others interpret the development of Parliament in terms of the practical solution of financial and political problems. Historians used to refer to the 1295 assembly as the Model Parliament because it contained all the elements later associated with the word parliament, but in fact these can all be found earlier. The writs to the sheriffs asking them to call knights and burgesses did, however, reach a more or less final form in 1295. Representatives of the lower clergy were also summoned. This Parliament was fully representative of local communities and of the whole community of the realm, but many Parliaments were attended solely by the magnates with no representatives present.

Edward’s wars

In the first half of his reign Edward was thoroughly successful in Wales. Llywelyn ap Gruffudd, prince of Gwynedd, had taken advantage of the Barons’ War to try to expand his authority throughout Wales. He refused to do homage to Edward, and in 1277 the English king conducted a short and methodical campaign against him. Using a partly feudal, partly paid army, the core of which was provided by the royal household knights, and a fleet from the Cinque Ports, Edward won a quick victory and exacted from Llywelyn the Treaty of Conway. Llywelyn agreed to perform fealty and homage, to pay a large indemnity (from which he was soon excused), and to surrender certain districts of North Wales. There was considerable Welsh resentment after 1277 at the manner in which Edward imposed his jurisdiction in Wales.

David, Llywelyn’s younger brother, was responsible for a renewal of war in 1282. He was soon joined by Llywelyn, who was killed in battle late in the year. David was captured and executed as a traitor in 1283. This second Welsh war proved much longer, more costly, and more difficult for the English than the first. In the succeeding peace North Wales was organized into counties, and law was revised along English lines. Merchant settlements, colonized with English craftsmen and merchants, were founded. Archbishop Pecham reorganized the Welsh church and brought it more fully under the sway of Canterbury. A brief revolt in 1287 was soon quelled, but Edward faced a major rebellion in 1294–95,

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