Edwards Quarrel with the Papacy

Edward was now ready to face the troubles on the Continent. A double expedition was planned: one part under Edward himself, to land in Flanders and to cooperate with the count of Flanders, who next to Edward, himself duke of Guienne, was Philip IV's chief feudal enemy; the other, under Roger Bigod, Earl of Norfolk, to go directly to Gascony in southern France.

But money was still wanting. Edward summoned a parliament in November, 1296, which made a grant of a twelfth of their goods ; but when he demanded a grant from the clergy, the latter, headed by Archbishop Winchelsey, refused to vote a penny. It was evident that a new obstacle had arisen. What this was soon appeared. In February, 1296, Boniface VIII had issued a famous bull, Clericis Laicos, directed to the clergy of both France and England, forbidding them to make any grant whatsoever to the state without the authority of the Holy See. Philip had replied by decreeing that no subject of his should send any gold, silver, or jewels out of his kingdom to Rome. Edward's reply was even more startling. As the pope had threatened to excommunicate any one who disobeyed the command of the spiritual father, so Edward declared that he would outlaw any one who disobeyed the command of the temporal lord. If the church could, by excommunication, place any of the faithful beyond the pale of her protection, so the state could by outlawry place any of its members outside the limits of its own tribunals. An outlawed clerk was helpless. The king's courts would not protect him, the church courts could not. The English clergy had cause to be frightened; and though as a body they refused to yield, as individuals they finally promised to pay their quota, and actually paid in the end double the amount that Edward had originally demanded. The state had become stronger than the church in England .

Trouble with the Barons: Statute of Quia Emptores

Edward's war with France had thus far brought little fighting, but much trouble. Wales, Scotland, and the clergy had taken advantage of the occasion and had resisted the king, only in the end to suffer for their temerity. And now the earls and barons were to try their hand at resistance. Ever since the quo warranto inquiry of 1278-1279 the great lords had struggled to retain as many of their privileges as possible ; and in obtaining the Statute of Entails in 1285 had in part gained their object. In 1290 another attempt to preserve their lands and their revenues had been made.

Tenants-in-chief had been accustomed to subinfeudate or alienate portions of their land for the purpose of obtaining knights to meet their military obligations; but they did not expect that the tenants who received the land from them would subinfeudate portions of these lands to others without gaining their consent. This, however, had been done in a great many cases, and as a result the tenants-in-chief had frequently lost the feudal dues arising from these lands, because their tenants and the new sub-tenants could never agree as to which should pay them. The royal courts had rather favored the practice of subinfeudation, because the conditions of trade and commerce demanded easy and frequent transfers of land. It would never do in a growing state for land to be tied up in the hands of a few. The barons, caring more about their feudal dues than about the needs of the people at large, tried to stop the practice, and in the parliament of 1290 had requested the king to promulgate a statute forbidding subinfeudation.

The king consented, but caused the new statute to be so worded as wholly to alter the intent of the barons' request. Quia Emptores, or the Third Statute of Westminster, recognized the hardships of subinfeudation, and said that the tenant who alienated or sold the land he held of another should resign all rights over the land thus sold. This meant that in case B sold to C land which he held of A, C became the tenant not of B, but of A. The barons thought at first that they had gained their point; but when the statute went into operation, they discovered that it worked both ways, and that what affected their tenants affected also themselves as tenants of the king. Over lands that they themselves alienated, they lost all their feudal rights. This application of the statute might not have affected them so seriously had they been able to avoid selling their lands. But with the decay of feudalism and the decrease in the value of land, the alienation or sale of their unentailed lands became almost an economic necessity. As agriculture became less profitable, they could no longer afford to hold together their great estates, and had often to sell them outright. The purchasers became at once the tenants of the king.

Two results followed: the number of those who held directly of the king increased rapidly, and this increase lowered the social and political importance of the tenants-in-chief as a class; at the same time, as more and more land came to be held directly of the king, the matter of buying and selling land was simplified and made easy. This condition tended to break down the whole mediaeval land system, and so hastened the destruction of feudalism.

The discontent of the barons increased as they saw in the years following 1290 the actual bearing of the statute Quia Emptores. In 1297 they believed that the opportunity had come for revenge. When Edward announced in that year that those who owed him military service must go to Gascony, the two men whom he designated as the leaders of the expedition, the earl of Norfolk, the marshal, and the earl of Hereford, the constable, refused, saying that their service was only about the person of the king, and that they would not go to Gascony without him. Edward in anger turned on the Earl Marshal, saying, with an oath, Sir Earl, thou shalt go or hang!" To which the earl replied, By the same oath, I will neither go nor hang," and both earls withdrew from the royal presence with the design of raising an army to war against the king. In this, perhaps the most dangerous crisis in his career as king, Edward appealed to the remaining barons, the clergy, and the citizens of London. Before a great gathering at Westminster, July 14, 1297, he pleaded his cause and showed that he was acting for the public good. The men in the assembly stood loyally by him; and he, trusting in the oath they then took to support him to the death, set out for Flanders, scornful of what the earls might do.