this was, it is not strange that it was so. It is always long before the full consequences of a change are understood even by those who do most to bring it about. Old habits of thought cling long about the mind, however incompatible they may be with the new habits which are beginning to be formed.

Whatever might be the result of Edward's enterprises abroad, it was certain that they could not be carried out without considerable expense. At a loss for money, and doubting the readiness of the nation to grant him all that he needed, the king fell back upon the old methods of arbitrary taxation, as if the newly completed parliamentary institutions had no binding force against himself. Even those who opposed him did not perceive at once the value of those institutions, as offering them a new standing-ground against the king, and they too fell back upon an equally obsolete line of defence. First came the clergy. The ruling pope, Boniface VIII., was to Innocent III. what Innocent III. had been to Gregory VII. He looked on the papacy, and upon the clerical order of which it was the head, far more as a divinely privileged institution than as a body charged with the duty of rendering services to mankind. The Bull which he issued under the title of Clericis laicos directed that on no account should the clergy pay taxes to the lay authorities. Edward's answer to the assumption was complete. If the clergy bore no part in the burdens of the state, they could have no part in its protection. The days were gone by when their mere character sufficed to guard them from violence. The English clergy were soon compelled to acknowledge the vitality of the national principle, and to strive for immunity from unfair burdens as standing inside and not outside the nation to which they belonged. As it was with the clergy, so it was with the baronage. The two great

СНАР.

IV.

§ 22. The Dispute with the Clergy and

the Baron

age.

CHAP.

IV.

$23. Confirmatio Cartarum.

earls, Bohun and Bigod, began their resistance on a purely technical ground, derived from a narrow interpretation of their feudal relations with the crown. They were bidden to conduct an English force to Gascony, whilst Edward conducted another to Flanders. They refused, on the ground that though they were bound to follow the king they were not bound to go to war without him. The strife soon enlarged itself beyond such narrow limits. Edward had been stripping the merchants as well as the clergy of their property, and if the barons were to have the support of the clergy and the merchants in their resistance, they must place it upon some better chosen ground than a mere refusal of military duty. In this way all special grievances were quickly blended in one. The king was asked to renounce his whole claim to arbitrary taxation.

Reluctantly the king yielded, if not all that was asked, at least the greater part of it. In 1295, Parliament had assumed the complete form which it has never since lost, comprising lords spiritual and temporal, knights of the shire, and representatives of the cities and boroughs. By the Confirmatio Cartarum of 1297, an end was put to the long question of organisation which had been the subject of dispute ever since the reign of John. It is true that there was no general enunciation of principle. The Great Charter was confirmed as it stood in the reign of Henry III., without the constitutional clauses. There was no general condemnation of arbitrary taxation, but only of such aids, tasks, and prises as had recently been taken, and of the special toll upon wool which had recently been exacted. One grievance too remained entirely unredressed. The Crown had hitherto assumed the right of exacting special payments from the inhabitants of its own demesne lands under the name of tallages, and nothing was said to restrict its exercise of this right.

But such details are comparatively of little importance. The great fact is that the best and wisest of the kings since the Conquest gave way, and consented to limit his own functions in the presence of the national assembly which he had done more than any one else to bring into being. From that moment it was plain that the government of England would rest, not on the king alone, but on the king in co-operation with parliament. Such a co-operation was only possible because parliament had at its back a united nation, which could strengthen the king's hands to keep in check the presumption of any single class, but which would be strong enough to resist the king himself if he attempted to use for the oppression of all the powers entrusted to him for the good of all.

CHAP.

IV.

Edward II.

Two factors were needed for the maintenance of § 24. the now established constitution; a king strong enough Reign of to hold his own at the head of the nation, and a nation possessed of sufficient cohesion to avoid splitting up again into the separate classes of which it was composed. In both these points the constitution was severely tested in the reign of Edward II. The young king, utterly given up to pleasure, and entirely neglectful of the first duties of his office, could in no sense stand at the head of England as his father had stood at its head. It is impossible to remove one part of a complicated piece of machinery without affecting the others, and as Edward was simply inefficient and not tyrannical, he was opposed by the forces of the baronage without the immediate intervention of the other classes. The victory of the baronage was followed by the institution of a provisional government under the name of the Lords Ordainers, consisting solely of barons and prelates, who paid little more than a formal homage to parliament. The government by a class failed to secure respect, and when

G

IV.

CHAP. Edward recovered power he was enabled to proclaim the principles of his father's government even more strongly than his father had been inclined to do. The matters' he declared, which are to be established for the estate of our lord the king and of his heirs, and for the estate of the realm and of the people, shall be treated, awarded and established in parliaments by our lord the king, and by the consent of the prelates, earls and barons, and the commonwealth of the realm, according as hath been heretofore accustomed.' Edward II. could not fulfil his part of the contract even if he had wished to do so, and it was not long before the nation witnessed with satisfaction the domestic broil which swept away the occupant of the throne, and which placed upon it another Edward, who, in spite of many defects, had at least some notion that the kingly office entailed upon its holder duties as well as pleasures. In principle, at least, the theory of the constitution propounded by his father when he overcame the barons, was admitted by Edward II. From henceforth England was only concerned with its practical application.

83

CHAPTER V.

CONSTITUTIONAL KINGSHIP.

AT the beginning of the fourteenth century the work of the Middle Ages was nearly accomplished. The rude Teutons who poured over the surface of the Roman Empire in its earliest years needed increase of discipline, not increase of liberty, the growth of a sense of the worth of self-renunciation and obedience rather than the growth of a sense of independence and self-reliance. On Roman soil they had met with two institutions, the state and the church, which offered to give them the training which they required. They shattered the state, but they accepted the teaching of the church. When at last the idea of a state discipline revived, it slowly made its way in organising the scattered tribes into a nation, and in compelling individuals to submit to a rule often harsh and tyrannical, but wholesome in the main. It found the church idea already in possession of the field. Not only were the limits of church rule wider than the limits of the rule of any single state, but its ideal was purer, its notions of morality more lofty, whilst its demand of utter self-renunciation in its most devoted followers gave it a hold upon the individual heart and conscience which no external institutions of government could hope to rival. The great men of the Middle Ages were ecclesiastics rather than statesmen. Yet the very causes which led to growth of ecclesiastical authority for a time pre