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The English Monarchs
Edward I
Edward I―one of the outstanding monarchs of the English Middle Ages―pioneered legal and parliamentary change in England, conquered Wales, and came close to conquering Scotland. A major player in European diplomacy and war, he acted as peacemaker during the 1280s but became involved in a bitter war with Philip IV a decade later. This book is the definitive account of a remarkable king and his long and significant reign. Widely praised when it was first published in 1988, it is now reissued with a new introduction and updated bibliographic guide.
Praise for the earlier
"A masterly achievement. . . . A work of enduring value and one certain to remain the standard life for many years."― Times Literary Supplement
"A fine learned, judicious, carefully thought out and skillfully presented. It is as near comprehensive as any single volume could be."― History Today
"To have died more revered than any other English monarch was an outstanding achievement; and it is worthily commemorated by this outstanding addition to the . . . corpus of royal biographies."― Times Education Supplement
Praise for the earlier
"A masterly achievement. . . . A work of enduring value and one certain to remain the standard life for many years."― Times Literary Supplement
"A fine learned, judicious, carefully thought out and skillfully presented. It is as near comprehensive as any single volume could be."― History Today
"To have died more revered than any other English monarch was an outstanding achievement; and it is worthily commemorated by this outstanding addition to the . . . corpus of royal biographies."― Times Education Supplement
640 pages, Paperback
First published January 1, 1972
About the author
Michael Prestwich
39 books14 followersMichael Charles Prestwich OBE (born 30 January 1943) is an English historian, specialising on the history of medieval England, in particular the reign of Edward I. He is retired, having been Professor of History at Durham University, and Head of the Department of History until 2007.
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November 20, 2016A wide-ranging study that is rich in details, the barrels of pennies transported to pay soldiers, Hugo FitzHey who owed the knight service of himself a bow and an arrow, and the construction of castles in Wales striped or decorated with eagles to evoke Imperial Rome.
Prestwich brings out the changes during his reign in how King Edward I would deal with Wales and Scotland, the absolute personal obedience demanded from John Balliol, or the treatment of the noble Scots and Welsh captives hung in cages (albeit cages with toilet facilities) demonstrating a new and more savage attitude to rivals for political power than hitherto seen in the relations between English Kings and their British rivals.
The Three Edwards, also by Prestwich, is recommended for putting the military and governmental changes of Edward I's reign in a broader context.
Prestwich brings out the changes during his reign in how King Edward I would deal with Wales and Scotland, the absolute personal obedience demanded from John Balliol, or the treatment of the noble Scots and Welsh captives hung in cages (albeit cages with toilet facilities) demonstrating a new and more savage attitude to rivals for political power than hitherto seen in the relations between English Kings and their British rivals.
The Three Edwards, also by Prestwich, is recommended for putting the military and governmental changes of Edward I's reign in a broader context.
April 10, 2013
Michael Preswich's Edward I is a great book with only one flaw. One the biggest questions, to me, about King Edward I is: exactly why is he called Edward 'the First' when there was not one, not two, but three Kings Edward before him. In addition to having multiple predecessors with his name, Edward Longshanks was also named after the previous King Edward, Edward the Confessor. Yet nowhere in this book does this subject even come up! When I first read this book back in college, I asked my professor, Phil Cole of the University of Southern Maine, if he knew why the Hammer of the Scots was labeled number one, and he confessed he had no idea. I assume that Edward is listed as the first of his name because of Norman Conquest; although I have never found any official statement to that fact. Apparently in England they only count the kings and queens that occurred after the Norman Conquest.
During his time as a prince, young Edward, had some sympathies with the reform movement amongst the barons of England, but he would ultimately side with his father King Henry III against the reformers led by Simon De Montfort. When England broke into civil war it looked for a while that the reformers might actually win. Edward himself was captured but he and his father would ultimately prevail and Montfort would be dead.
After helping to secure his father's throne Prince Edward left England and went on crusade. His crusade, like many of them, was a very overrated experience and although Edward was proud to have gone. The Prince was grateful for the prestige his crusade gave him and always wanted to go again, but his adventure in the East did not led any significant accomplishment. What I found most fascinating was the way children were regarded in the middle ages. Since college I have known that people in the past, emotionally, kept their young children at arm's length. This was due to the child mortality rate at the time. Nevertheless I was stuck by Edward when he found out he lost his first-born son he seemed not to care, but when he was told he had become King because his father had died he cried nonstop. When questioned by this behavior he declares that he can always have more sons but he only had one father. Some logic in that I guess but it is very cold.
As King, Edward is known for three things: the `model' parliament, the conquest of Wales and the near conquest of Scotland. All three of these things are very well covered by Prestwich. Prestwich is always fair giving Edward credit where he thinks the old king deserved it but at the same time making it clear that he was not quite the `English Justinian' that he was always made out to be.
In parliament, he did pass a great deal of important legislation such as the two Westminster Acts. However what he is most known for is the composition of parliament, making sure it was represented by all interests of the kingdom. However, Prestwich points out that the composition of parliament was something done for the King's convenience not anyone else's.
"Although there were no clear rules defining who was entitled to receive summons to parliament, it is obvious that the king was looking for men whose advice he valued, and whose local power and authority he could not ignore. There was something of a concentration of men who held estates on the borders near Wales and Scotland, a natural reflection of their military importance. If a man was sufficiently distinguished, he might be summoned even though he was not a tenant-in-chief, or particularly wealthy." (p.447)
Even though Prestwich dispels a lot of myths about this medieval king, he does not try to deny his importance to the British Constitution. It was Edward's actions that allowed the Parliament to form into what it did and history shows other actions could have sent it to a different direction.
"Although parliament had played a very significant part in the political struggles of the late 1250s and 1260s, it would have been possible in the 1270s and 1280s for it to become something much more like the French parlement. That body was a specialized legal tribunal, with its own expert, learned staff, attended only rarely by the king himself. It was far superior to the English parliament in terms of records that were kept, and the professionalism of its staff, but its importance was much less, for it could never stand for the community of the realm, as the English parliament could. Had Edward not chosen to summon large numbers of magnates to his parliaments, along with representatives on occasion; had he not chosen to receive petitions, often in considerable quantity, in parliaments; then there might have appeared in England a small, specialized parliament, little more than a legal committee of the royal council, along the French lines." (p.460)
King Edward's other far lasting contribution was the conquest of Wales. Kings of England since the days of William the Conqueror had been receiving homage from Welsh princes, although they never sought to rule Wales directly. Prestwich argues that the wars were largely provoked by the Prince of Wales himself, Llywelyn ap Gruffydd, for refusing Edward homage and openly aiding his enemies such as the allies of Simon de Montfort.
"Although it is possible to criticize much that Edward did in Wales, the fact remains that he was in the end thoroughly successful. Of course his resources were immeasurably greater than those of the Welsh, but the Welsh had succeeded in retaining a considerable degree of independence in the face of powerful English kings ever since the Norman Conquest. Edward had now taken a major step towards the eventual political unification of the British Isles, though in his later years he was to find that he could not repeat in Scotland what he had achieved in Wales." (p. 232)
Edward is probably most famous for his almost conquest of Scotland. This fame has increased since the 1990s because of Mel Gibson's Braveheart, which I acknowledge as the source of my interest in King Edward I. In that movie, Patrick McGoohan portrays King Edward and he does bring the character to life. However, it needs to be pointed out that the movie is not very historically accurate.
The war was primarily caused by Edward's bulling. Asked to oversee a succession dispute, King Edward picks the right candidate in John Balliol, but then proceeds to completely humiliate him to the point the new King cannot control his own country. Edward deposes the Scottish King John who turns out to be, unfortunately, more a loser than King Edward's grandfather the English King John*. Although it had seemed to Edward that he had conquered Scotland, he would find he would have to keep reconquering it to the point it would bankrupt his treasury, Edward would win only a Pyrrhic victory over William Wallace and Robert the Bruce. Robert would go into to become King of Scotland while Wallace would suffer a terrible death.
"From Edward's point of view, there can have been no doubt whatsoever that Wallace was a traitor who deserved to die a traitor's death. The king may appear today to have been ungenerous in failing to recognize the obvious qualities of his victim, who had shown a great capacity for leadership. Yet Wallace had not conducted his campaigns according to the chivalric code of the day, and there is no reason why Edward should have treated him with compassion or respect." (p.503)
In the end this a great book about a fascinating individual. He was a giant among men both literally** and figuratively. Historians had been fascinated by him ever since, even to the point of opening his coffin in 1774. Michael Prestwich does a very good job separating the man and the legend.
*It is interesting to point out that neither England nor Scotland ever had another king named John.
**He was well over six feet in an age where that was rare.
During his time as a prince, young Edward, had some sympathies with the reform movement amongst the barons of England, but he would ultimately side with his father King Henry III against the reformers led by Simon De Montfort. When England broke into civil war it looked for a while that the reformers might actually win. Edward himself was captured but he and his father would ultimately prevail and Montfort would be dead.
After helping to secure his father's throne Prince Edward left England and went on crusade. His crusade, like many of them, was a very overrated experience and although Edward was proud to have gone. The Prince was grateful for the prestige his crusade gave him and always wanted to go again, but his adventure in the East did not led any significant accomplishment. What I found most fascinating was the way children were regarded in the middle ages. Since college I have known that people in the past, emotionally, kept their young children at arm's length. This was due to the child mortality rate at the time. Nevertheless I was stuck by Edward when he found out he lost his first-born son he seemed not to care, but when he was told he had become King because his father had died he cried nonstop. When questioned by this behavior he declares that he can always have more sons but he only had one father. Some logic in that I guess but it is very cold.
As King, Edward is known for three things: the `model' parliament, the conquest of Wales and the near conquest of Scotland. All three of these things are very well covered by Prestwich. Prestwich is always fair giving Edward credit where he thinks the old king deserved it but at the same time making it clear that he was not quite the `English Justinian' that he was always made out to be.
In parliament, he did pass a great deal of important legislation such as the two Westminster Acts. However what he is most known for is the composition of parliament, making sure it was represented by all interests of the kingdom. However, Prestwich points out that the composition of parliament was something done for the King's convenience not anyone else's.
"Although there were no clear rules defining who was entitled to receive summons to parliament, it is obvious that the king was looking for men whose advice he valued, and whose local power and authority he could not ignore. There was something of a concentration of men who held estates on the borders near Wales and Scotland, a natural reflection of their military importance. If a man was sufficiently distinguished, he might be summoned even though he was not a tenant-in-chief, or particularly wealthy." (p.447)
Even though Prestwich dispels a lot of myths about this medieval king, he does not try to deny his importance to the British Constitution. It was Edward's actions that allowed the Parliament to form into what it did and history shows other actions could have sent it to a different direction.
"Although parliament had played a very significant part in the political struggles of the late 1250s and 1260s, it would have been possible in the 1270s and 1280s for it to become something much more like the French parlement. That body was a specialized legal tribunal, with its own expert, learned staff, attended only rarely by the king himself. It was far superior to the English parliament in terms of records that were kept, and the professionalism of its staff, but its importance was much less, for it could never stand for the community of the realm, as the English parliament could. Had Edward not chosen to summon large numbers of magnates to his parliaments, along with representatives on occasion; had he not chosen to receive petitions, often in considerable quantity, in parliaments; then there might have appeared in England a small, specialized parliament, little more than a legal committee of the royal council, along the French lines." (p.460)
King Edward's other far lasting contribution was the conquest of Wales. Kings of England since the days of William the Conqueror had been receiving homage from Welsh princes, although they never sought to rule Wales directly. Prestwich argues that the wars were largely provoked by the Prince of Wales himself, Llywelyn ap Gruffydd, for refusing Edward homage and openly aiding his enemies such as the allies of Simon de Montfort.
"Although it is possible to criticize much that Edward did in Wales, the fact remains that he was in the end thoroughly successful. Of course his resources were immeasurably greater than those of the Welsh, but the Welsh had succeeded in retaining a considerable degree of independence in the face of powerful English kings ever since the Norman Conquest. Edward had now taken a major step towards the eventual political unification of the British Isles, though in his later years he was to find that he could not repeat in Scotland what he had achieved in Wales." (p. 232)
Edward is probably most famous for his almost conquest of Scotland. This fame has increased since the 1990s because of Mel Gibson's Braveheart, which I acknowledge as the source of my interest in King Edward I. In that movie, Patrick McGoohan portrays King Edward and he does bring the character to life. However, it needs to be pointed out that the movie is not very historically accurate.
The war was primarily caused by Edward's bulling. Asked to oversee a succession dispute, King Edward picks the right candidate in John Balliol, but then proceeds to completely humiliate him to the point the new King cannot control his own country. Edward deposes the Scottish King John who turns out to be, unfortunately, more a loser than King Edward's grandfather the English King John*. Although it had seemed to Edward that he had conquered Scotland, he would find he would have to keep reconquering it to the point it would bankrupt his treasury, Edward would win only a Pyrrhic victory over William Wallace and Robert the Bruce. Robert would go into to become King of Scotland while Wallace would suffer a terrible death.
"From Edward's point of view, there can have been no doubt whatsoever that Wallace was a traitor who deserved to die a traitor's death. The king may appear today to have been ungenerous in failing to recognize the obvious qualities of his victim, who had shown a great capacity for leadership. Yet Wallace had not conducted his campaigns according to the chivalric code of the day, and there is no reason why Edward should have treated him with compassion or respect." (p.503)
In the end this a great book about a fascinating individual. He was a giant among men both literally** and figuratively. Historians had been fascinated by him ever since, even to the point of opening his coffin in 1774. Michael Prestwich does a very good job separating the man and the legend.
*It is interesting to point out that neither England nor Scotland ever had another king named John.
**He was well over six feet in an age where that was rare.
June 21, 2026
Michael Prestwich Appraises The Life & Reign Of Edward I Plantagenet, King of England & Duke Of Aquitaine.
Few monarchs can command a reputation as formidable or as longstanding as King Edward I Plantagenet of England, although his deeds as a conqueror and his talents as a statesman are arguably overshadowed by his shortcomings, amongst whose number can be counted an unjust taxation of the English clergy and a colonialist stance toward Scotland and Wales during his wars with those two remarkable countries. Edward's battlefield campaigns were undertaken for the sake of military conquest, and his political reforms and financial gains often came the expense of others, as was the case with the Edict of Expulsion and his seizure of the Riccardi banking family's assets in 1294.
Despite his flaws, Edward's true worth can be measured by the extraordinary advancements to English Common Law that occurred during his reign. He made tremendous strides in his efforts to create a centralized royal authority that reduced his nobles' power and increased his subjects' recourse to the king's justice. His most powerful legal instrument was the statute, which he utilized to effect dramatic improvements to property laws, inheritance, debt, and criminal offenses, and for this reason he is sometimes referred to as the English Justinian, after the sixth-century Byzantine emperor who famously recodified Roman Law. Edward remains the subject of numerous books and biographical studies, and Michael Prestwich's Edward I, a part of the Yale English Monarchs collection, is considered by many to be the definitive work on this controversial sovereign.
This digitally-printed, revised 1997 trade paperback edition of Michael Prestwich's 1988 monograph, Edward I, is published by Yale University Press, and features a 567-page main text that is supplemented with 25 plate illustrations depicting beautiful English and Welsh castles as well as various heraldry, artifacts, coinage and illuminated manuscript pages associated with the reign of Edward I. The book is divided into three parts - The Heir to the Throne, The King in his Prime, and The Later Years - each focuses on a specific period in Edward's life, but several of the book's 20 chapters are devoted to different aspects of the military and government, in addition to those which center upon the king's family, household, and his administrative staff. There are copious notes accompanying the main text, as well as maps, genealogical family trees and finally, a 19-page bibliography and index at the back of the volume.
In Chapter 1, The Green Tree, 1239-58, Prestwich chronicles Edward's early life and adolescence, focusing on his relationship with his father King Henry III and on his preliminary efforts at ruling and statecraft, while also introducing powerful barons such as Simon de Montefort and the influential Savoyard and Poitevin factions which were comprised of the queen's relatives and king's Lusignan half-brothers, respectively. The chapter title alludes to an excerpt from the thirteenth-century historian Matthew Paris' Chronica Majora, in regard to a young Edward inflicting an unnecessarily cruel punishment upon another boy, but the fact remains that there is a dearth of records kept for this formative period of Edward's life, and much of what is known of him during this time comes from a scant few reports which provide as many questions as they do answers.
"Was Edward a man whose personality was transformed by his accession to the throne in 1272, in the manner of Shakespeare's Henry V? In a strictly legal context it was indeed argued that as king Edward was 'as if another person' from the Edward who had been heir to the throne. The great lawgiver, the conqueror of Wales, the constructive statesman, may seem to have little in common with the unruly youth described by Matthew Paris, or with the young man compared in the 1260s to the changeable and unreliable leopard."
Edward was introduced into a substantial amount of power at a young age, primarily due to his future brother-in-law King Alphonso X of Castile's desire that Edward possess a suitably impressive collection of lands and titles before marrying his sister, Eleanor of Castile. This was achieved via a series of royal grants issued in 1254 by Edward's father, King Henry III, which included lands in Ireland, Gascony and Wales, and the author discusses the political and military statūs quo in each of these areas at the time of his assumption of power. Henry strategically awarded Edward lands in England where the crown's control was weak, so he could use his own right of sovereignty as a pretense to strengthen his position, or he endowed his son with recently purchased estates before declaring them inalienable from the royal demesne, and in this way he increased the crown's long-term authority.
In Chapter 3, The Crusader, Michael Prestwich discusses in depth the events and circumstances leading up to Lord Edward's Crusade, which was technically a part of King Louis IX of France's disastrous Eighth Crusade, and also appraises its political and financial consequences upon the young prince Edward, who became King of England throughout the course of its duration. Edward's commitment to King Louis' cause was steadfast from the start, and the author describes in detail the methods he utilized to provide his barons with incentive to join the enterprise, which ranged from monetary contracts to papal and royal protection granted for recently acquired lands resulting from the English civil war. Edward's military endeavor was enormously expensive, with an estimated overall cost of £100,000 that he financed by resorting to various measures which included the church-sponsored sale of indulgences and by floating a series of colossal loans from King Louis IX and wealthy Italian merchants, with the Order of Knights Hospitallers standing as surety.
Prestwich commences Chapter 4, Coronation and Consolidation with a detailed analysis of the Hundred Rolls, a judicial inquest that was convened in 1274-5 to investigate the alleged usurpation of the crown's legal rights throughout the realm, afterwards discussing England's trade policies concerning the import of English wool to the Flanders region, an issue of great interest to England during the 1270s. Due to diminished relations with the Duchess of Flanders and its own prerogative to control trade across the Dover Strait, in response to Edward's demands, England issued an embargo upon the sale or import of its wool to Flemish ports-of-call in 1270, a measure which was later codified into a system of customs duties to generate additional revenue.
Edward's crusade had stricken the crown with a considerable amount of debt, and to help defray his loan payments he farmed out these new taxes to the Italian banking firms such as the Ricciardi who held the notes of credit. The author also addresses several scenarios where Edward utilized landowners as proxies to purchase or otherwise acquire expansive properties, after which these individuals would render the crown as their beneficiary and the lands eventually escheated to the royal demesne upon their deaths.
In Chapter 5, The King and his Family, the author canvasses King Edward's character and those of his prolific ménage, beginning with an account of the king's appearance, personality, and interests that is compiled from various historical sources and followed by a contextual analysis which appraises him according to his era's chivalric standards of honor, largesse, loyalty and courage. He also highlights Edward's immediate family, which included his two queens, Eleanor of Castile and Margaret of France, and his 14 children, among them his son Edward of Caernarfon who became Edward II, and his 5 daughters who survived into adulthood.
Prestwich maintains that Edward showed a vested interest in English myth and folklore throughout his long reign, with two notable examples being his excavation in 1278 of the purported tomb of King Arthur and Queen Guinevere and his drastic renovation of Caernarfon Castle in Wales five years later. Caernarfon Castle was a Byzantine-inspired fortress that was based upon the Mabinogion of Maxen Wledig, a Welsh prose story chronicling the legendary deeds of the Roman emperor Magnus Maximus, who was at that time believed to have been the father of Constantine the Great. The author does a excellent job with his coverage of Edward in this chapter, providing a fascinating portrait of how the king may have viewed the world and the aspects of society which were likely dear to his heart.
Chapter 6, The King's Household is a lengthy section devoted to the discussion of Edward's household staff, a broad designation that encompassed a diverse array of personnel whom were assigned with different administrative responsibilities. Prestwich emphasizes the dominant role played by the clerks of the royal wardrobe, a financial department that was separate from the exchequer and answerable for the majority of Edward's expense accounts, and he also highlights the myriad duties of the royal household, a prodigious body accountable for various ceremonial and military functions and for ensuring the king's personal safety - this required a sizeable staff whose numbers varied according to Edward's needs and financial state, but ranged from 1-2 stewards, 2 marshals, 10-17 messengers, and 50 slots reserved for bannarets, knights, squires, sergeants and commilitiones, or companions. The household's knights and bannarets were important political assets whom could be utilized for diplomatic purposes as well as for the enforcement of the king's laws, and bannarets were also called upon to attend parliaments where they upheld Edward's cause in councils and roundtable discussions.
Edward I's military campaigns in 1277 and from 1282-3 against Llywelyn ap Gruffudd are the subjects of Chapter 7, The Conquest of Wales, with Prestwich exploring early on the background behind these wars and later examining several cases which reflect the recurrent theme of conflict between Welsh laws and customs and English feudalism. The Welsh Prince Llywelyn ap Gruffudd is established early on as Edward's primary opposition, and the author does admirable work delineating his motivations and ruling methods just as he explains the English king's own difficulties in troop recruitment and in maintaining his army's supply. Midway through the chapter he cites an interesting case during Edward's 1282-3 campaign, involving the king abruptly changing his troops' summons from paid service to unpaid feudal service during a muster in Worcester. While several possible explanations are outlined, there is simply not enough evidence to establish a definitive conclusion, and the most compelling explanation is that Edward shifted to a feudal summons under pressure from his barons, who hoped to gain greater rewards from a war of conquest than paid service would have given them.
Chapter 9, The Government of England, 1278-86 reveals how Edward was able to finance his wars and building projects during an eventful period of growth and conquest - one of its more interesting statistics appears in a summary of the crown's financial relationship with the Riccardi banking clan of Lucca. Edward relied heavily upon the Riccardi as a source of income in both peace and wartime, with their payments into the royal wardrobe amounting to £40,709 during the Welsh wars of 1277 and 1282-3, and this trend persisted until by 1292 the crown had accumulated a total debt of £392,000 to the Riccardi alone. The Riccardi were thus permitted to farm excise taxes and customs duties and use the Royal Exchequer Courts to recover these massive sums. Prestwich describes how the Statute of Rhuddlan was utilized to clear old or unrecoverable debts from the crown's accounts and how important reforms such as Kirkby's Quest helped crown debtors manage their arrears by instituting reasonable measures and annual payments. He also addresses Edward's 1279 reminting of the coinage and covers several instances when Edward's royal attorneys employed the Quo Warranto writ to investigate English magnates' franchise rights.
Chapters 12-16 address the eleven years spanning 1289-98 and focus on a variety of subjects which, while difficult to summarize, are nonetheless vital to fully understanding Edward's reign. The king's foreign policies were tied to his interests in French Gascony and those of his maternal aunt, the French Dowager Queen Margaret, in her own homeland of Provence, with the former predicated upon creating a grand alliance of allied powers which would ensure Aquitaine remained an English-held duchy, and the latter involving a marriage alliance between Edward's daughter Joan and Hartmann, son of the German King Rudolph of Habsburg, with Margaret's hopes resting on the chance that Rudolph would grant the kingdom of Arles to his son, thus reuniting the queen's bloodline with her native land, as Provence was part of Arles in those times. Despite the vast expenditure of time, effort, and financial resources (his total cost of building an alliance and fighting a war in Gascony alone is estimated to have exceeded £1,000,000), Edward's ambitious foreign policy was more than a single man, even one ruling a mighty nation such as England, could achieve in a single lifetime, and his schemes were largely unsuccessful in the end.
The context of Edward's later reign can be better understood after reading Prestich's excellent account of how the king supplied all of this war, construction, and diplomatic activity - the short answer is that a good amount of his revenue and reserves came from unscrupulous practices levied against his subjects, which included fines, forced loans, seizure of property and assets, taxes on all social classes and the clergy, food and wool prises (a prise was a forced purchase of a given commodity at an appraised price, and when this was done in a royal context it was called purveyance), and use of the Quo Warranto statute to revert the rights of tenants-in-chief to the English crown (this was when the crown assumed control of nobles' lands, real property, and franchisal jurisdiction, which is a lord's right to operate an independent court on his holdings). These crucial chapters also explain how England's national status quo became destabilized while Edward was occupied with the war in Gascony, creating instances of juridical corruption and other political unrest that made the king's financial activities more difficult.
Edward's gaze fell upon Scotland shortly before political turmoil began wracking his own kingdom, when the Earls of Norfolk and Hereford, Roger Bigod and Humphrey de Bohun, presented a series of grievances that became known as the Remonstrances of 1297, which called on the king to end his excessive taxation of the English people by demanding an end to 'aids, mises and prises' except with the consent of the realm, also petitioning for confirmation of the Forest Charter of 1217, which allowed free men access to England's royal forests. This tense scenario unfolded during the rise of the Scots patriot, William Wallace, who won a dramatic victory against the Earl of Surrey John de Warenne at Stirling Bridge, and due to the king's need to avoid civil war in the midst of the conflict with Scotland, the earls' demands were jointly granted in a document called Confirmatio Cartarum, the Confirmation of Charters, in exchange for a new tax. Braveheart, which ranks amongst my favorite films, is based upon an epic Scots poem, The Wallace, and I'm so grateful to one of my GR friends for kindly bringing this to my attention, as I had thought the events of the war were the primary inspiration.
In Chapter 17, Council and Parliament, Prestwich explains the difficulties faced by historians in studying the sparse records for these two important institutions during Edward I's reign, as contemporary chroniclers simply had not been privy to the proceedings of either body, and the latter was very much an ad hoc affair during that period, with little regularity and no permanent staff. The royal parliament during Edward's reign was not an official independent bloc such as it would become in future centuries but a contingent of legislators whose existence was wholly dependent on the king's will. The king's council almost always attended parliament, but other groups had to be issued a writ to be present at the proceedings which generally convened at different locations within Westminster Palace, but also could be, upon the king's convenience, held abroad in such locations as Gloucester, Shrewsbury, Clipstone, and Ashridge, among others. Other attendees included archbishops, bishops and members of the lower clergy, earls and other lay magnates, even knights and town delegates.
Edward retained his formidable physical stature even into his golden years, and although those decades were fraught with war and discontent, he remained steadfast in his dedication to the causes about which he felt strongly in his heart. Prestwich's closing thoughts rightly elevate Edward's outstanding legal achievements of the 1270s-80s above his unscrupulous land-grabbing activities and self-serving financial acquisitions of the 1290s-1300s. He neglects no aspect of Edward's life, even describing in detail the elaborate mass services and funerary arrangements that were held for him after his death on 7 July 1307 while offering a series of thoughtful reflections on this sometimes-chivalric, sometimes-heartless monarch who has somehow managed to remain a relevant topic of discussion even 700 years after his reign.
This study is part of the Yale English Monarchs series of monographs which are devoted to the Kings of England, and it was the reviewer's first experience with a major academic appraisal on the life of one of England's sovereigns. It is most assuredly a scholarly title with a steep learning curve, and in retrospect I probably would have read a book like Marc Morris' A Great and Terrible King with a more narrative history of his reign to better acclimate myself prior to diving into such deep water, but regardless, Michael Prestwich's Edward I is a remarkable achievement and a tremendous contribution to modern scholarship, and the Yale English Monarchs series is a collection I will certainly be returning to in the future. Thank you so very much for reading, I greatly appreciate your time and hope that you enjoyed the review!
Few monarchs can command a reputation as formidable or as longstanding as King Edward I Plantagenet of England, although his deeds as a conqueror and his talents as a statesman are arguably overshadowed by his shortcomings, amongst whose number can be counted an unjust taxation of the English clergy and a colonialist stance toward Scotland and Wales during his wars with those two remarkable countries. Edward's battlefield campaigns were undertaken for the sake of military conquest, and his political reforms and financial gains often came the expense of others, as was the case with the Edict of Expulsion and his seizure of the Riccardi banking family's assets in 1294.
Despite his flaws, Edward's true worth can be measured by the extraordinary advancements to English Common Law that occurred during his reign. He made tremendous strides in his efforts to create a centralized royal authority that reduced his nobles' power and increased his subjects' recourse to the king's justice. His most powerful legal instrument was the statute, which he utilized to effect dramatic improvements to property laws, inheritance, debt, and criminal offenses, and for this reason he is sometimes referred to as the English Justinian, after the sixth-century Byzantine emperor who famously recodified Roman Law. Edward remains the subject of numerous books and biographical studies, and Michael Prestwich's Edward I, a part of the Yale English Monarchs collection, is considered by many to be the definitive work on this controversial sovereign.
This digitally-printed, revised 1997 trade paperback edition of Michael Prestwich's 1988 monograph, Edward I, is published by Yale University Press, and features a 567-page main text that is supplemented with 25 plate illustrations depicting beautiful English and Welsh castles as well as various heraldry, artifacts, coinage and illuminated manuscript pages associated with the reign of Edward I. The book is divided into three parts - The Heir to the Throne, The King in his Prime, and The Later Years - each focuses on a specific period in Edward's life, but several of the book's 20 chapters are devoted to different aspects of the military and government, in addition to those which center upon the king's family, household, and his administrative staff. There are copious notes accompanying the main text, as well as maps, genealogical family trees and finally, a 19-page bibliography and index at the back of the volume.
In Chapter 1, The Green Tree, 1239-58, Prestwich chronicles Edward's early life and adolescence, focusing on his relationship with his father King Henry III and on his preliminary efforts at ruling and statecraft, while also introducing powerful barons such as Simon de Montefort and the influential Savoyard and Poitevin factions which were comprised of the queen's relatives and king's Lusignan half-brothers, respectively. The chapter title alludes to an excerpt from the thirteenth-century historian Matthew Paris' Chronica Majora, in regard to a young Edward inflicting an unnecessarily cruel punishment upon another boy, but the fact remains that there is a dearth of records kept for this formative period of Edward's life, and much of what is known of him during this time comes from a scant few reports which provide as many questions as they do answers.
"Was Edward a man whose personality was transformed by his accession to the throne in 1272, in the manner of Shakespeare's Henry V? In a strictly legal context it was indeed argued that as king Edward was 'as if another person' from the Edward who had been heir to the throne. The great lawgiver, the conqueror of Wales, the constructive statesman, may seem to have little in common with the unruly youth described by Matthew Paris, or with the young man compared in the 1260s to the changeable and unreliable leopard."
Edward was introduced into a substantial amount of power at a young age, primarily due to his future brother-in-law King Alphonso X of Castile's desire that Edward possess a suitably impressive collection of lands and titles before marrying his sister, Eleanor of Castile. This was achieved via a series of royal grants issued in 1254 by Edward's father, King Henry III, which included lands in Ireland, Gascony and Wales, and the author discusses the political and military statūs quo in each of these areas at the time of his assumption of power. Henry strategically awarded Edward lands in England where the crown's control was weak, so he could use his own right of sovereignty as a pretense to strengthen his position, or he endowed his son with recently purchased estates before declaring them inalienable from the royal demesne, and in this way he increased the crown's long-term authority.
In Chapter 3, The Crusader, Michael Prestwich discusses in depth the events and circumstances leading up to Lord Edward's Crusade, which was technically a part of King Louis IX of France's disastrous Eighth Crusade, and also appraises its political and financial consequences upon the young prince Edward, who became King of England throughout the course of its duration. Edward's commitment to King Louis' cause was steadfast from the start, and the author describes in detail the methods he utilized to provide his barons with incentive to join the enterprise, which ranged from monetary contracts to papal and royal protection granted for recently acquired lands resulting from the English civil war. Edward's military endeavor was enormously expensive, with an estimated overall cost of £100,000 that he financed by resorting to various measures which included the church-sponsored sale of indulgences and by floating a series of colossal loans from King Louis IX and wealthy Italian merchants, with the Order of Knights Hospitallers standing as surety.
Prestwich commences Chapter 4, Coronation and Consolidation with a detailed analysis of the Hundred Rolls, a judicial inquest that was convened in 1274-5 to investigate the alleged usurpation of the crown's legal rights throughout the realm, afterwards discussing England's trade policies concerning the import of English wool to the Flanders region, an issue of great interest to England during the 1270s. Due to diminished relations with the Duchess of Flanders and its own prerogative to control trade across the Dover Strait, in response to Edward's demands, England issued an embargo upon the sale or import of its wool to Flemish ports-of-call in 1270, a measure which was later codified into a system of customs duties to generate additional revenue.
Edward's crusade had stricken the crown with a considerable amount of debt, and to help defray his loan payments he farmed out these new taxes to the Italian banking firms such as the Ricciardi who held the notes of credit. The author also addresses several scenarios where Edward utilized landowners as proxies to purchase or otherwise acquire expansive properties, after which these individuals would render the crown as their beneficiary and the lands eventually escheated to the royal demesne upon their deaths.
In Chapter 5, The King and his Family, the author canvasses King Edward's character and those of his prolific ménage, beginning with an account of the king's appearance, personality, and interests that is compiled from various historical sources and followed by a contextual analysis which appraises him according to his era's chivalric standards of honor, largesse, loyalty and courage. He also highlights Edward's immediate family, which included his two queens, Eleanor of Castile and Margaret of France, and his 14 children, among them his son Edward of Caernarfon who became Edward II, and his 5 daughters who survived into adulthood.
Prestwich maintains that Edward showed a vested interest in English myth and folklore throughout his long reign, with two notable examples being his excavation in 1278 of the purported tomb of King Arthur and Queen Guinevere and his drastic renovation of Caernarfon Castle in Wales five years later. Caernarfon Castle was a Byzantine-inspired fortress that was based upon the Mabinogion of Maxen Wledig, a Welsh prose story chronicling the legendary deeds of the Roman emperor Magnus Maximus, who was at that time believed to have been the father of Constantine the Great. The author does a excellent job with his coverage of Edward in this chapter, providing a fascinating portrait of how the king may have viewed the world and the aspects of society which were likely dear to his heart.
Chapter 6, The King's Household is a lengthy section devoted to the discussion of Edward's household staff, a broad designation that encompassed a diverse array of personnel whom were assigned with different administrative responsibilities. Prestwich emphasizes the dominant role played by the clerks of the royal wardrobe, a financial department that was separate from the exchequer and answerable for the majority of Edward's expense accounts, and he also highlights the myriad duties of the royal household, a prodigious body accountable for various ceremonial and military functions and for ensuring the king's personal safety - this required a sizeable staff whose numbers varied according to Edward's needs and financial state, but ranged from 1-2 stewards, 2 marshals, 10-17 messengers, and 50 slots reserved for bannarets, knights, squires, sergeants and commilitiones, or companions. The household's knights and bannarets were important political assets whom could be utilized for diplomatic purposes as well as for the enforcement of the king's laws, and bannarets were also called upon to attend parliaments where they upheld Edward's cause in councils and roundtable discussions.
Edward I's military campaigns in 1277 and from 1282-3 against Llywelyn ap Gruffudd are the subjects of Chapter 7, The Conquest of Wales, with Prestwich exploring early on the background behind these wars and later examining several cases which reflect the recurrent theme of conflict between Welsh laws and customs and English feudalism. The Welsh Prince Llywelyn ap Gruffudd is established early on as Edward's primary opposition, and the author does admirable work delineating his motivations and ruling methods just as he explains the English king's own difficulties in troop recruitment and in maintaining his army's supply. Midway through the chapter he cites an interesting case during Edward's 1282-3 campaign, involving the king abruptly changing his troops' summons from paid service to unpaid feudal service during a muster in Worcester. While several possible explanations are outlined, there is simply not enough evidence to establish a definitive conclusion, and the most compelling explanation is that Edward shifted to a feudal summons under pressure from his barons, who hoped to gain greater rewards from a war of conquest than paid service would have given them.
Chapter 9, The Government of England, 1278-86 reveals how Edward was able to finance his wars and building projects during an eventful period of growth and conquest - one of its more interesting statistics appears in a summary of the crown's financial relationship with the Riccardi banking clan of Lucca. Edward relied heavily upon the Riccardi as a source of income in both peace and wartime, with their payments into the royal wardrobe amounting to £40,709 during the Welsh wars of 1277 and 1282-3, and this trend persisted until by 1292 the crown had accumulated a total debt of £392,000 to the Riccardi alone. The Riccardi were thus permitted to farm excise taxes and customs duties and use the Royal Exchequer Courts to recover these massive sums. Prestwich describes how the Statute of Rhuddlan was utilized to clear old or unrecoverable debts from the crown's accounts and how important reforms such as Kirkby's Quest helped crown debtors manage their arrears by instituting reasonable measures and annual payments. He also addresses Edward's 1279 reminting of the coinage and covers several instances when Edward's royal attorneys employed the Quo Warranto writ to investigate English magnates' franchise rights.
Chapters 12-16 address the eleven years spanning 1289-98 and focus on a variety of subjects which, while difficult to summarize, are nonetheless vital to fully understanding Edward's reign. The king's foreign policies were tied to his interests in French Gascony and those of his maternal aunt, the French Dowager Queen Margaret, in her own homeland of Provence, with the former predicated upon creating a grand alliance of allied powers which would ensure Aquitaine remained an English-held duchy, and the latter involving a marriage alliance between Edward's daughter Joan and Hartmann, son of the German King Rudolph of Habsburg, with Margaret's hopes resting on the chance that Rudolph would grant the kingdom of Arles to his son, thus reuniting the queen's bloodline with her native land, as Provence was part of Arles in those times. Despite the vast expenditure of time, effort, and financial resources (his total cost of building an alliance and fighting a war in Gascony alone is estimated to have exceeded £1,000,000), Edward's ambitious foreign policy was more than a single man, even one ruling a mighty nation such as England, could achieve in a single lifetime, and his schemes were largely unsuccessful in the end.
The context of Edward's later reign can be better understood after reading Prestich's excellent account of how the king supplied all of this war, construction, and diplomatic activity - the short answer is that a good amount of his revenue and reserves came from unscrupulous practices levied against his subjects, which included fines, forced loans, seizure of property and assets, taxes on all social classes and the clergy, food and wool prises (a prise was a forced purchase of a given commodity at an appraised price, and when this was done in a royal context it was called purveyance), and use of the Quo Warranto statute to revert the rights of tenants-in-chief to the English crown (this was when the crown assumed control of nobles' lands, real property, and franchisal jurisdiction, which is a lord's right to operate an independent court on his holdings). These crucial chapters also explain how England's national status quo became destabilized while Edward was occupied with the war in Gascony, creating instances of juridical corruption and other political unrest that made the king's financial activities more difficult.
Edward's gaze fell upon Scotland shortly before political turmoil began wracking his own kingdom, when the Earls of Norfolk and Hereford, Roger Bigod and Humphrey de Bohun, presented a series of grievances that became known as the Remonstrances of 1297, which called on the king to end his excessive taxation of the English people by demanding an end to 'aids, mises and prises' except with the consent of the realm, also petitioning for confirmation of the Forest Charter of 1217, which allowed free men access to England's royal forests. This tense scenario unfolded during the rise of the Scots patriot, William Wallace, who won a dramatic victory against the Earl of Surrey John de Warenne at Stirling Bridge, and due to the king's need to avoid civil war in the midst of the conflict with Scotland, the earls' demands were jointly granted in a document called Confirmatio Cartarum, the Confirmation of Charters, in exchange for a new tax. Braveheart, which ranks amongst my favorite films, is based upon an epic Scots poem, The Wallace, and I'm so grateful to one of my GR friends for kindly bringing this to my attention, as I had thought the events of the war were the primary inspiration.
In Chapter 17, Council and Parliament, Prestwich explains the difficulties faced by historians in studying the sparse records for these two important institutions during Edward I's reign, as contemporary chroniclers simply had not been privy to the proceedings of either body, and the latter was very much an ad hoc affair during that period, with little regularity and no permanent staff. The royal parliament during Edward's reign was not an official independent bloc such as it would become in future centuries but a contingent of legislators whose existence was wholly dependent on the king's will. The king's council almost always attended parliament, but other groups had to be issued a writ to be present at the proceedings which generally convened at different locations within Westminster Palace, but also could be, upon the king's convenience, held abroad in such locations as Gloucester, Shrewsbury, Clipstone, and Ashridge, among others. Other attendees included archbishops, bishops and members of the lower clergy, earls and other lay magnates, even knights and town delegates.
Edward retained his formidable physical stature even into his golden years, and although those decades were fraught with war and discontent, he remained steadfast in his dedication to the causes about which he felt strongly in his heart. Prestwich's closing thoughts rightly elevate Edward's outstanding legal achievements of the 1270s-80s above his unscrupulous land-grabbing activities and self-serving financial acquisitions of the 1290s-1300s. He neglects no aspect of Edward's life, even describing in detail the elaborate mass services and funerary arrangements that were held for him after his death on 7 July 1307 while offering a series of thoughtful reflections on this sometimes-chivalric, sometimes-heartless monarch who has somehow managed to remain a relevant topic of discussion even 700 years after his reign.
This study is part of the Yale English Monarchs series of monographs which are devoted to the Kings of England, and it was the reviewer's first experience with a major academic appraisal on the life of one of England's sovereigns. It is most assuredly a scholarly title with a steep learning curve, and in retrospect I probably would have read a book like Marc Morris' A Great and Terrible King with a more narrative history of his reign to better acclimate myself prior to diving into such deep water, but regardless, Michael Prestwich's Edward I is a remarkable achievement and a tremendous contribution to modern scholarship, and the Yale English Monarchs series is a collection I will certainly be returning to in the future. Thank you so very much for reading, I greatly appreciate your time and hope that you enjoyed the review!
April 19, 2021
A rich and very well-researched biography of Edward.
Prestwich does a great job explaining Edwards; importance and contributions.
The narrative is dense and, like other volumes in this series, there is a lot of discussion of Edward’s historical reputation, how it developed, and why historians have come to certain conclusions on the subject. Many readers will find these sections dull, as well as the sections on finance.
A balanced, thorough and insightful work.
Prestwich does a great job explaining Edwards; importance and contributions.
The narrative is dense and, like other volumes in this series, there is a lot of discussion of Edward’s historical reputation, how it developed, and why historians have come to certain conclusions on the subject. Many readers will find these sections dull, as well as the sections on finance.
A balanced, thorough and insightful work.
August 12, 2016
Fantastic!
May 9, 2018
If you like history's of medieval accounting this is a five star book. If you want tournaments and Edwards battles not so much. The discussion of Edwards contributions to British law are great. My biggest take away from this one is: Beauty and the Beast is actually a metaphor for the British suzerainty of French lands specifically Gascony. Later to include all the British lands held in France from Norman princes by British Kings. All this diplomatic work was a fascinating read. Over all a decent read but way to much accounting.
Read
February 12, 2013This book cannot be accused of a lack of thoroughness. It did at times read more like an administrative history of the Middle Ages. This is more a feature than a defect- even a Plantagenet king spent most of his reign looking over such details.
February 6, 2013
Very thorough and scholarly biography of Edward I. Not a quick and easy read, but it has everything you might want to know about Edward I.
Want to Read
December 30, 2016I registered a book at BookCrossing.com!
http://www.BookCrossing.com/journal/14341351
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