had been merely parts of the royal household dealing with administrative and financial affairs. By the middle of the 13th century they had moved out and become separate departments, the barons were suspicious and wanted to have a say in the choice of the chancellor and the treasurer. Their means of achieving such control was through meetings of the Great Council which included all the lay and clerical leaders of the nation, but whose composition wasn’t fixed. The king however made use of his own Royal Council consisting of men of his choice. The barons objected. Henry would have survived these challenges to his rule if his choices had been wiser and his government more effective. But it wasn’t the case. So, for almost ten years, between 1257 and 1265, the king and barons were locked in a succession of crises in a struggle for control. The eventual result was civil war. At the battle of Lewes the king was defeated and, a year later, in 1265, Simon de Montfort, the leader of the opposition, was not only defeated but killed. The king had seemingly won, but this was not altogether true, for during these years the Great Council met more and more often. Added to it now were knights to represent the shires and burgesses to represent the towns. Never before had the meetings of the Council included so many different classes. The meetings were called parliaments from the French word ‘parler’, ‘to speak’, because they were conferences between the king and his subjects. Gradually the idea that the king should consult representatives of the kingdom on certain subjects like taxation became something to be expected. No one in 1272, when Henry III died, could have foreseen that these conferences would lead to modern parliament.
The Decorated Style is more ornate, with ever-larger windows, stained glass and window tracery. Examples of this style are the cathedrals of Lichfield [29], Hereford and Exeter.
In the Perpendicular style the walls, windows and roof were unified in an uninterrupted pattern of vertical lines. The most remarkable features of this style are the magnificent hammer beam roof (roof of complex open-timber construction), and the fan vaulting that appeared in the late 15th century. The finest examples of the Perpendicular style are Gloucester Cathedral, the nave of York Minster and the interior of King’s College Chapel, Cambridge.
Castles continued to become more elegant and less martial. At Kenilworth Castle, for example, one can see both a strong earlier keep [16] and the Great Hall of the 14th century with its oriel window, tall windows and the remains of a hammer beam roof. The Great Hall was for meetings, meals and sometimes sleeping, with the service rooms at one end and the private apartments at the other. Peaceable conditions in the late Middle Ages often led to the abandonment of strongholds, and the gentry used their increased wealth to build fine manor houses with only a hint of martial purpose. These were Gothic houses built mainly in the Perpendicular style. A great hall remained the centre of the house. A typical medieval manor house is Penshurst Place, built in the middle of the 14th century. [22] It has two wings joined by a great central hall, now known as the Baron’s Hall. Haddon Hall in Derbyshire is another example of late 14th century architecture. [23–25] At that time it had the central banqueting hall, kitchens, a parlour and a chapel. Originally the banqueting hall was the main dwelling space in the house, and housed between forty and fifty people both day and night.
Surprisingly, in 1272 the realm of England didn’t embrace the natural boundaries of the island. No attempt had been made either by William the Conqueror or his successors to subjugate the Celtic lands of Wales, Scotland and Cumberland. Had it been done the history of Britain would probably have been very different. As it was, the people living on these lands had had two centuries in which to develop and strengthen their sense of individual identity and political as well as cultural independence, so that when Edward I set out to bring them under his rule there was resistance, and his attack only increased the sense of regional loyalty.
Edward I (1272–1307), named after his father’s favourite saint Edward the Confessor, was a popular king and a brave soldier, who, though sharing his father’s strong belief in the sanctity of kings, cooperated actively with Parliament. He liked to discuss taxes with the knights and borough representatives and depended on them to explain his royal policies to the people. His consultations with parliamentary representatives were embodied in what were called statutes, which became a new means of making law, eventually leading to modern statute law. By means of these statutes the king was able to settle grievances over land ownership and preserve law and order in the land. Yet his major policies aimed at uniting the island under one sovereign by conquering first Wales and then Scotland.
Unlike England, Wales was a very poor, backward country divided into several princedoms which only occasionally came together under one single ruler. The Welsh proved no match for the English. As a result, by 1295, the principality of Wales had ceased to exist. New counties were created on the Welsh territory and English administration was introduced. English people were encouraged to settle in Wales. Edward also built a series of castles in Wales, ten in all, most of which still stand. These castles were unrivalled in their time as marvels of military engineering, and the grandest of them all was Caernarfon.
Scotland was to be a very different story. By the close of the 13th century it had already developed a kingdom of its own, directly modelled on the Anglo-Norman one. Consequently, Edward’s plan to make Scotland part of his kingdom, to build castles and introduce English officials, administration and law met with resistance. At first the Scots were defeated (1296), but they didn’t give up and a major campaign was fought every summer, so that eventually Edward I died still fighting for control. The task of subjugating the Scots wasn’t fulfilled.
Edward II (1307–1327) was a weak and lazy king who left the work of government to incompetent favourites. Soon a party of lords was formed against him. Parliament approved of their plans, which demanded the public appointment of all the king’s household as well as of the state officials. The king was soon in trouble in other ways too. His father-in-law, the French king, attacked the lands around Bordeaux. When Edward led a campaign against the Scots, his army was routed at Bannockburn. Finally even his queen, Isabella, turned against him. She and her lover, Roger Mortimer, seized Edward with the help of foreign soldiers, and Parliament forced him to hand over the crown to his son. A few months later he was murdered in Berkeley Castle.
Legend has it that the founding of the Order of the Garter is a direct result of the king’s passion for chivalrous behaviour. Edward is said to have picked up a garter dropped by a court lady at a ball and tied it round his leg saying ‘Honi soi qui mal y pense.’ However, the most plausible theory of why the garter was chosen as the emblem of the new Order is that it was a badge which the English knights adopted during the French campaign. The colours of the new Knights, deep blue and gold, were the colours of the French royal arms. From the start the Order included 26 Knights Companion, including the king. Many of them took part in the king’s French campaigns. Their patron saint, as of England itself, was St. George, a supposed officer of the Roman army. The original Knights were all young warriors, the military companions of the king and his son. Over subsequent centuries, however, the character of the knights changed, and they came to be drawn from the ranks of the leading nobles and statesmen, as well as foreign monarchs. The ceremonies of the Order increased in splendour, with glorious music, procession of heralds
