of the extracts should be lively in style—that is, personal, or descriptive, or rhetorical, or even strongly partisan—and should not so much profess to give the truth as supply data for inference. We aim at the greatest possible variety, and lay under contribution letters, biographies, ballads and poems, diaries, debates, and newspaper accounts. Economics, London, municipal, and social life generally, and local history, are represented in these pages.
The order of the extracts is strictly chronological, each being numbered, titled, and dated, and its authority given. The text is modernised, where necessary, to the extent of leaving no difficulties in reading.
We shall be most grateful to teachers and students who may send us suggestions for improvement.
S.E. WINBOLT.
KENNETH BELL.
NOTE TO THIS VOLUME
I have to thank Sir E. Maunde Thompson and the Council of the Royal Society of Literature for permission to quote from Sir E. Maunde Thompson's translation of Adam of Usk's Chronicle. The sources used in this book are for the most part contemporary.
A.A.L.
BILL OF ARTICLES PRESENTED TO EDWARD II
BY THE BARONS IN THE PARLIAMENT OF 1310.
Source.—Annales Londonienses in Chronicles of the Reigns of Edward I. and Edward II. (Rolls Series), ed. Stubbs, i. 169.
To our lord the King showing the great perils and damages which from day to day will appear, unless there is some hasty redress, both destruction of the freedom of holy Church and the disinheritance and dishonour of yourself and your royal power, and the disinheritance of your crown and the damage of all the people of your kingdom both rich and poor: from which perils neither you nor the good men of your kingdom may escape unless some immediate remedy be ordained by the advice of the prelates, earls and barons and the most wise of your realm:—
To begin with, while you are ruler of this land and sworn to maintain peace in your land, you are led by unworthy and bad council and are held in great slander in all lands; and so poor are you and so devoid of all manner of treasure that you have nothing wherewith either to defend your land or keep up your household, except by extortions, which your officers make from the goods of holy Church and your poor people, without paying anything, against the form of the great charter; which charter they pray may be held and maintained in all its force.
Further, Sire, whereas our lord the King your father, whom God assoil, left you all your lands entire, England, Ireland and all Scotland, in good peace, you have lost Scotland and grievously dismembered your crown in England and Ireland etc. without the assent of your baronage and without pretext.
Again, Sire, showing you that whereas the commonalty of your realm give you the 20th penny from their goods in aid of your Scotch war and the 24th penny, in order to be freed of prises and other grievances; the which pennies are all levied and foolishly spent and wasted by unworthy counsel, and your wars do not advance, nor are your poor people freed from prises and other grievances, but they are more oppressed from day to day, than before. For which cause, Sire, your said good people pray you humbly, for the salvation of yourself and of them and of the crown, which they are bound to maintain, by virtue of their allegiance, that you will consent to this, that these and other perils may be wiped out and redressed by ordinances of your baronage.
[This bill was followed by the appointment of the Lords Ordainers.]
THE SUCCESSES OF KING ROBERT BRUCE (1311).
Source.—The Book of Pluscarden in Historians of Scotland, x. 182.
In the year 1311, after having routed and vanquished all his foes everywhere he went, and, for the most part, taken and levelled to the ground the castles and forts which offered him resistance, King Robert Bruce twice invaded and ravaged England, making great havoc with fire and sword, and bringing untold plunder back to Scotland. And thus, by the power of God, that faithless English nation, which had again and again unjustly tortured many a man, was now by God's righteous judgment made to undergo scourgings; and whereas it had once been victorious over other kingdoms, it now sank vanquished and groaning and became a gazing stock to others. The following year, in 1312, the then very strong walled town of Perth was taken, and all in it were put to the sword, some drawn, some beheaded, some slain in the fight, and the rest hanged on the gallows. But the King was moved to compassion for the guiltless rabble, and forgave them and received their submission. And thus:
"Did England drink the gall itself had brewed."
And the same year Edward, called of Windsor, the eldest son of the King of England, was born at Windsor, of the daughter of Philip, King of France; and he was the source of many wars. Through this Edward, that most cruel and most heinous war with France broke out.
PETER GAVESTON AND THE FRIARS PREACHERS (1312).
Source.—Adam Murimuth, Continuatio Chronicarum (Rolls Series), 17–18.
This year, about the feast of St. John the Baptist [June 24], the King desired Peter Gaveston for his safety's sake to be brought to him by Adomar de Valence, Earl of Pembroke. When they were at Danyntone (Deddington), near Banbury, the said Earl left him in the night and went on to another place, for no apparent reason. And on the morrow at dawn came Guy, Earl of Warwick, with a small, noisy following, and surprised the said Peter, and carried him off with him to his Castle of Warwick. There, having held counsel with the chief men of the kingdom, especially with Thomas, Earl of Lancaster, he finally dismissed him from prison to go where he would. And when he had gone out of the town of Warwick and had come to a place called, as though prophetically, Gaveressich (Gaversike), he found there many men raising hue and cry after him with voices and horns, as they would after one of the enemies of the King and kingdom lawfully outlawed or exiled; and finally they beheaded him, as though he were one of these, on the 19th day of June. And one of the Friars Preachers carried away Gaveston's head in his hood (and brought it to the King). Afterwards the friars of the same order found the body[1] and kept it at Oxford with solemn vigils for a year and more. But finally it was buried at Langley, where the King founded a religious house of Friars Preachers for the salvation of his own soul; and there establishing a large number of student friars, he provided for their sufficient sustenance from his treasury in London.
FOOTNOTES:
[1] According to the Annales Londonienses in Chronicles of the Reigns of Edward I. and Edward II. (Rolls Series), i. 207, the body was carried to Warwick by four shoemakers, but the Earl of Warwick sent it back to the place where the beheading had taken place, outside his fief, and "the Jacobin Friars carried the body to Oxford, and guarded it with much honour; wherefore they were held in great odium by the aforesaid earl."
AN UNWORTHY KING (1313).
