Edward I of England (Longshanks and the Hammer of the Scots)

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Edward I[a] (17/18 June 1239 – 7 July 1307), also known as Edward Longshanks and the Hammer of the Scots, was King of England from 1272 to 1307. Concurrently, he was Lord of Ireland, and from 1254 to 1306 he ruled Gascony as Duke of Aquitaine in his capacity as a vassal of the French king. Before his accession to the throne, he was commonly referred to as the Lord Edward. The eldest son of Henry III, Edward was involved from an early age in the political intrigues of his father's reign. In 1259, he briefly sided with a baronial reform movement, supporting the Provisions of Oxford. After reconciliation with his father, he remained loyal throughout the subsequent armed conflict, known as the Second Barons' War. After the Battle of Lewes, Edward was held hostage by the rebellious barons, but escaped after a few months and defeated the baronial leader Simon de Montfort at the Battle of Evesham in 1265. Within two years, the rebellion was extinguished and, with England pacified, Edward left to join the Ninth Crusade to the Holy Land in 1270. He was on his way home in 1272 when he was informed of his father's death. Making a slow return, he reached England in 1274 and was crowned at Westminster Abbey.


Crusade and accession

Edward pledged himself to undertake a crusade in an elaborate ceremony on 24 June 1268, with his brother Edmund Crouchback and cousin Henry of Almain. Some of Edward's former adversaries, such as John de Vescy and the 7th Earl of Gloucester, similarly committed themselves, although some, like Gloucester, did not ultimately participate.[61] With the country pacified, the greatest impediment to the project was acquiring sufficient finances.[62] King Louis IX of France, who was the leader of the crusade, provided a loan of about £17,500.[63] This was not enough, and the rest had to be raised through a direct tax on the laity, which had not been levied since 1237.[63] In May 1270, Parliament granted a tax of one-twentieth of all movable property; in exchange the King agreed to reconfirm the Magna Carta, and to impose restrictions on Jewish money lending.[64][f] On 20 August Edward sailed from Dover for France.[66] Historians have not determined the size of his accompanying force with any certainty, but it was probably fewer than 1000 men, including around 225 knights.[62]

Originally, the Crusaders intended to relieve the beleaguered Christian stronghold of Acre in Palestine, but King Louis and his brother Charles of Anjou, the king of Sicily, decided to attack the emirate of Tunis to establish a stronghold in North Africa.[67] The plans failed when the French forces were struck by an epidemic which, on 25 August, killed Louis himself.[g] By the time Edward arrived at Tunis, Charles had already signed a treaty with the Emir, and there was little to do but return to Sicily.[69] Further military action was postponed until the following spring, but a devastating storm off the coast of Sicily dissuaded both Charles and Philip III, Louis's successor, from any further campaigning.[70] Edward decided to continue alone, and on 9 May 1271 he finally landed at Acre.[71]

The Christian situation in the Holy Land was precarious. Jerusalem had been reconquered by the Muslims in 1244, and Acre was now the centre of the Kingdom of Jerusalem.[72] The Muslim states were on the offensive under the Mamluk leadership of Baibars, and were threatening Acre. Though Edward's men were an important addition to the garrison, they stood little chance against Baibars's superior forces, and an initial raid at nearby St Georges-de-Lebeyne in June was largely futile. An embassy to the Ilkhan Abaqa of the Mongols helped bring about an attack on Aleppo in the north, which distracted Baibars's forces.[74] The Mongol invasion ultimately failed. In November, Edward led a raid on Qaqun, which could have served as a bridgehead to Jerusalem, but this was unsuccessful. The situation in Acre grew desperate, and in May 1272 Hugh III of Cyprus, who was the nominal king of Jerusalem, signed a ten-year truce with Baibars.[75] Edward was initially defiant, but in June 1272 he was the victim of an assassination attempt by a member of the Syrian Order of Assassins, supposedly ordered by Baibars. Although he managed to kill the assassin, he was struck in the arm by a dagger feared to be poisoned, and was severely weakened over the following months. This finally persuaded Edward to abandon the campaign.

It was not until 24 September 1272 that Edward left Acre. Shortly after arriving in Sicily, he was met with the news that his father had died on 16 November.[78] Edward was deeply saddened by this news,[79] but rather than hurrying home at once, he made a leisurely journey northwards. This was due partly to his still-poor health, but also to a lack of urgency.[81] The political situation in England was stable after the mid-century upheavals, and Edward was proclaimed king after his father's death, rather than at his own coronation, as had until then been customary. In Edward's absence, the country was governed by a royal council, led by Robert Burnell.[83] Edward passed through Italy and France, visiting Pope Gregory X and paying homage to Philip III in Paris for his French domains. Edward travelled by way of Savoy to receive homage from his uncle Count Philip I for castles in the Alps held by a treaty of 1246.

Another source of political conflict was Edward's policy towards the English Jews, which dominated his financial relations with Parliament until 1290. Jews, unlike Christians, were allowed to charge interest on loans, know as usury. Edward faced pressure from the church, who were increasingly intolerant of Judaism and usury.

The Jews were the King's personal property, and he was free to tax them at will. Over-taxation of the Jews forced them to sell their debt bonds at cut prices, which was exploited by the crown to transfer vast land wealth from indebted landholders to courtiers and particularly his wife, Eleanor of Provence, causing widespread resentment. In 1275, facing the resulting discontent in Parliament, Edward issued the Statute of the Jewry, which outlawed loans with interest and encouraged the Jews to take up other professions. In 1279, in the context of a supposed crack-down on coin-clippers, he organised the arrest of all the heads of Jewish households in England. Approximately a tenth of the Jewish population, around 300 people, were executed. Others were allowed to pay fines. At least £16,000 was raised through fines and the seizure of property from the dead.

In 1280, he ordered all Jews to attend special sermons, preached by Dominican friars, with the hope of persuading them to convert, but unsurprisingly these exhortations were not followed.[233] By 1280, the Jews had been exploited to a level at which they were no longer of much financial use to the crown,[234] but they could still be used in political bargaining.

The final attack on the Jews in England came in the Edict of Expulsion in 1290, whereby Edward formally expelled all Jews from England.[t] As they crossed the channel to France, some became victims to piracy, but many more were disposessed or died in the storms of October. The Crown disposed of their property, through sales and 85 grants made to courtiers and family.[238][u] The Edict appears to have been issued as part of a deal to secure a lay subsidy of £110,000 from Parliament, the largest granted in the medieval period.[240] Although expulsions had taken place on a local, temporary basis,[v] the English expulsion was regarded as unprecedented because it was permanent.[241] It was eventually reversed in the 1650s.

Edward claimed the Expulsion was done "in honour of the Crucified" and blamed the Jews for their treachery and criminality. He helped pay for the renovation of the tomb of Little Saint Hugh, a child falsely claimed to have been ritually crucified by Jews, in the same style as the Eleanor crosses, to take political credit for his actions. As Richard Stacey notes, "a more explicit identification of the crown with the ritual crucifixion charge can hardly be imagined