Erik Visits a (Non)-American Grave, Part 2,153
By This is the grave of King Edward I of England.
Born in 1239 in Westminster Palace in London, Edward was the son of King Henry III and Eleanor of Provence. The reason Edward was brought into the royal line as a name is that Henry III was obsessed with Edward the Confessor and so named his heir after him. Henry III had a lot of political machinations and Edward was central to them from the very beginning. In 1259, Edward supported the Oxford Parliament over his father, bringing greater noble control to the English monarchy. This didn’t go well, Henry refused to abide by the Provisions of Oxford and there was a war that Henry won. By this time, Edward was back on his father’s side so he came away unscathed.
Like a lot of these idiotic Christian elites, Edward was obsessed with “freeing” Palestine from the Muslims. Henry was too and wanted to Crusade so bad but he couldn’t make it happen. Edward went instead. So he was on the Ninth Crusade, beginning in 1270. He started heading back to England in 1272. On his way back, he heard that Henry had died and he was the new king once he got back for his coronation. He was in no hurry. He didn’t get back until 1274.
Of course Edward loved his wars, who among these people didn’t. Edward’s most notable action was conquering Wales, which started in 1277 and concluded in 1283. He tried to take over Scotland too, after having been invited in to moderate a succession dispute. He figured that it should be him. A very Dick Cheney move. A war erupted that was on and off between 1296 and 1328, though mostly the Scots had secured their independence by 1314 and would retain it for several centuries.
Other than the wars, Edward was a surprisingly active king on domestic matters, the kind of things kings rarely cared about since it didn’t bring much glory. Like his father, Henry III, some of that was anti-Semitism. His father had instituted all sorts of horrible new laws on the Jews. Edward inherited not only the laws but the Jew hate. So, in 1290. he issued the Edict of Expulsion. This is the first time any European state had expelled all Jews from its borders. The Edict allowed them to leave with what they could carry, including cash and gold. But the king got to keep all their property and take over the loans they had given out to whoever. And of course that was the service that Jews had provided in England–loans in a land where usury was technically illegal. It seems that Edward ensured that the Jews would face no actual violence on their way out, except of course for the violence of being expelled from your home, but obviously pirates were waiting just offshore. The Edict remained in force until 1656, when Oliver Cromwell of all people, in what is probably the only good thing he ever did, rescinded it.
Edward also had a lot of interest in royal authority. Since his father’s reign, although long, had been so tumultuous and so threatened to bring down the monarchy, Edward wanted to reinforce the power of the throne. So he basically purged everyone in administration, replacing them with his own men. He then set out to conduct a thorough census of the nation. One big reason for that is to figure out just what property the monarchy had lost under. Henry III’s reign and the wars that roiled it. This created the Hundred Rolls and the surviving documents in them are of enormous value for historians trying to understand this period. It basically forced people with claims of land and liberties to prove that they actually had said claim with some kind of documentation. Without that, the crown was taking it back. Of course the aristocracy was outraged. Some of that anger was legit–who had documents in the early 14th century? And some was their lies being exposed. So a deal was made–the crown wouldn’t take it back if said aristocrat’s family had been using the liberty in 1189, when Richard the Lionhearted took the crown. But it did demonstrate that the king was in charge, not the nobles. The other thing about Edward’s rule is to regularize Parliament. Reestablishing royal authority was super important to him, but that also required coming to some kind of permanent deal with the nobles. But what this also did was make the raising of taxes regular, with a process people who mattered bought into. That was a pretty smart move.
Edward really wanted to crusade again. Killing Muslims is so much fun after all. In 1287, he announced his intentions to do so, but he never actually did. Because the House of Anjou, then running southern Italy, and the Spanish were at war, the path to actually get there was closed. Edward tried to get it reopened, but unsuccessfully. Then, in 1291, Acre fell to the Egyptians and the last Christian stronghold was taken. It would be awhile before the Christians could again dominate the Middle East.
One problem that Edward had–and it was the problem with almost all these kings, who were of course assholes by definition–is that all of these wars cost a lot of money and that meant raising taxes and you know the king wasn’t going to be paying those taxes. Beginning in 1294, the tax rates went way up and among the taxed items was wool, a major industry in England. He told the church that he wanted one-half of clerical revenues and you can imagine how church leaders felt about that. The Pope tried to intervene there but mostly backed off in the face of Edward’s aggression. When he started taxing the nobles, as well as demand increased military service, resistance hardened. Parliament could only go so far in raising the revenue Edward required. The kind of tensions he inherited could not be eliminated overnight, especially not so long as kings thought they had the right to do whatever they wanted.
The other thing about Edward is that he thought Ireland should be dominated by England. He saw Ireland not as some place where the English would actually do anything for the Irish. No, no, Ireland existed to provide him resources for his wars and foreign policy. Ireland was ruled as a colony, which meant that Ireland itself was in terrible shape. There was no money to keep up the infrastructure and of course no one cared about the everyday Irish person. All of this made the Irish pretty unhappy.
Edward’s later reign saw him weakening. He tried to get out of upholding the Charter of the Forest, but the nobles made him reassess the noble forests. His campaigns in Scotland angered a lot of the nobles because of the taxes and infuriated the Scots because of its murderous brutality.
In fact, when engaging with war in Scotland, in 1307, Edward came down with dysentery and died, right at the site of Hadrian’s Wall in fact. He was already unhealthy and not able to lead the troops himself. He was 68 years old. Edward II took over. Edward II was Edward I’s 14th child, but most died young or were girls.
Edward I is buried in Westminster Abbey, London, England.
If you would like this series to visit some American Edwards, you can donate to cover the required expenses here. Edward Baker is in San Francisco and Edward Stanley Kellogg is in Arlington. Previous posts in this series are archived here and here.
Also, please donate on the last day of this interminable fundraiser!