On his return to England in 1274 major reforms were
instituted. A massive inquiry that yielded the Hundred
Rolls demonstrated that the king was committed to at
least some of the concepts that had inspired the baro-
nial reform movement of 1258. Yet there was no single
principle providing consistency to the new statutes.
Individual measures were devised to deal with particular
problems; some favored the magnates, some their ten-
ants, and some the merchants. A concerted campaign
of quo warranto inquiries (“by what warrant”) into
baronial rights over jurisdiction lacked proper direction
from above and became bogged down in technicalities,
until a compromise was eventually worked out in 1290.
The extent to which Edward was himself responsible for
the legal measures is hard to assess; it seems probable
that he left the details of drafting to his experts. In his
personal conduct he was certainly not above manipulat-
ing the law in a cynical fashion. His desire to acquire
suffi cient lands with which to endow his children led
him into some highly suspect dealing, such as defraud-
ing the rightful heir to the Forz inheritance.
Edward was jealous of his own rights and privileges,
and insensitive to those of others. He took an exalted
view of his feudal rights of suzerainty in Wales and
Scotland, and in both cases this led him into war. An
autocratic determination to enforce his interpretation of
his rights drove both Welsh and Scots to take up arms
against him. Failure to reward his allies, such as the
Welsh prince Dafydd and the Scottish magnate Robert
Bruce, led to serious rebellions. He met his match,
however, in Philip IV of France, and in 1294 English
diplomacy suffered a serious reverse when the king’s
brother, Edmund of Lancaster, was duped into handing
over the duchy of Gascony to the French without receiv-
ing adequate guarantees that it would be returned.
Edward’s successes in war were not achieved by any
brilliant strokes of generalship. Rather, effi cient admin-
istration mustered the resources of the realm, in terms
of men, money, and materials, on an unprecedented
scale. This had severe political consequences; succes-
sive years of heavy taxation, after 1294, led to the major
political crisis in 1297. The determination of Archbishop
Winchelsey to follow the papal line, set out in the bull
Clericis laicos, of not paying taxes to the lay power,
added to the problems. Though civil war threatened,
Edward persisted in his plans for a campaign in the
Low Countries, for which he did not have an adequate
army. He was fortunate in that the French king failed to
appreciate the weakness of the English position, while a
defeat in Scotland at Stirling Bridge brought the English
baronage back to a sense of patriotic duty. The politi-
cal crisis was settled with the issue of the Confi rmatio
cartarum (Confi rmation of the Charters).
Edward’s reign was important for the evolution of
parliament. The hearing of petitions and determination
of cases have been stressed by some historians, but
parliament was also the occasion for the discussion
of great affairs of state. Representatives of shire and
borough, and of lower clergy, attended only a minority
of parliaments, but the concept that they should come
with full power (plena potestas) to consent on behalf
of their communities was established. How far the
king considered himself bound by such ideas as “What
touches all should be approved by all” (quod omnes
tangit) is open to doubt; that phrase was used only once
in a parliamentary summons and is likely to have been
inserted by a clerk, not the king himself. Examination
of the limited nature of royal patronage does not sug-
gest that Edward was a man who believed in the subtle
arts of political management; his style was brusque,
autocratic, and effective.
Edward was a conventionally religious man who
founded the Abbey of Vale Royal in fulfi llment of a
vow taken when he thought he was about to be ship-
wrecked. The work on the abbey, however, was abruptly
terminated in 1290. His piety did not lead him into any
subservience to the church. He faced considerable dif-
fi culties from archbishops Pecham and “Winchelsey,
two of the few able to stand up to the masterful king. He
was clearly fond of his fi rst queen, Eleanor of Castile,
in whose honor he had a fi ne series of commemorative
crosses built. He also seems to have been fond of his
daughters, but his relationship with his heir, the unsat-
isfactory Edward II, was a stormy one.
The fi nal years of the reign were diffi cult. There
were fi nancial problems, with a debt increasing to about
£200,000. Public order was poorly maintained as a
result of the government’s singleminded concentration
on war. English forces proved incapable of dealing with
the Scots under Robert Bruce. The legacy Edward left
his son was an impossible one.See also Philip IV the FairFurther Reading
Gransden, Antonia. Historical Writing in England. Vol. 1: c.
550 to c. 1307. London: Routledge & Kegan Paul, 1974, pp.
439–86 [on the contemporary chronicles].
Parsons, John Carmi. Eleanor of Castile Queen and Society in
Thirteenth-Century England New York: St. Martins, 1995.
Powicke, EM. The Thirteenth Century, 1216–1307. 2d ed. Ox-
ford: Clarendon, 1962 [this study; originally published in
1953, dominated thinking on the period for many years].
Prestwich, Michael. Edward I. London: Methuen, 1988 [the most
recent full study].
Rothwell, Harry, ed. English Historical Documents. Vol. 3:
1189–1327. London: Eyre & Spottiswoode, 1975 [translated
texts].
Michael PrestwichEDWARD I