when circumstances necessitated it, war was not his element. A continuation of it placed his feudatories almost on a level with himself, and this he did not like. His predilections and pastime were indeed the exercise of his judicial rights as king, by means of parliament, and of the supremacy which he attributed to it; his favourites were the band of lawyers who animated that parliament, and inspired the councils of the crown. A similar taste and similar predilections were remarkable in the good St. Louis, who, of all characters, preferred that of the paternal judge, deciding quarrels and making awards. It was by this love and labour of jurisprudence that Philip Augustus had laid the foundation of monarchic despotism, and that St. Louis had reared the edifice. For it was St. Louis more than any other monarch who dispensed with the concurrence of any assembly of his subjects or of his barons in legislation. The legists, under Philip the Hardy, continued their work as actively as before, though with little use of the king's edicts or name. Philip the Fair did but make use of the powers which St. Louis had procured or bequeathed him. At the period of his accession the anomaly was, that whilst the monarch had grasped and used an uncontrolled power of judging, administering, and legislating, this was paralysed, and in a great measure rendered futile, by an inadequate amount of military force. The domain of the first monarchs had sufficed for the maintenance of their household. War waged by military feudatories paid itself. By degrees, as kingly power increased, royal functionaries multiplied. Having no funds wherewith to pay these, they were first allowed to reimburse themselves out of the proceeds of judicial courts. The Provost of Paris was salaried by the sums or fines which artizans paid for the liberty of exercising their trades. This led to abuse, and St. Louis gave the provost a fixed salary out of the treasury. No doubt the СНАР. VIII. CHAP. same principle was extended to other functionaries, and a large amount soon was consequently required for the salaries of civil officers. The produce of the domain, of the tailles from towns, of relief and aid from feudal tenants, was not sufficient to meet the increased expenditure, which monarchs had no means of explaining to their subjects. And thus Philip the Fair and Edward the First obtained the character of rapacious sovereigns, whereas, in reality, they were always in want, and always grasping money, for the necessities of the State. M. Guizot, in his history of French civilisation, distinguishes between those who became despots with a great, disinterested, and progressive aim, and those who were despots from mere personal gratification. He presents St. Louis as a sample of the first, and Philip the Fair as an exemplification of the second. But this monarch does not appear to have been actuated by movements of caprice or vindictiveness, so much as by the marked disparity between his authority and his means. All the enterprises of Philip the Fair were conceived with the view of increasing his revenues, or procuring ready money. Hence he gave up the war of Aragon as impossible. He endeavoured to seize Guienne, and get rid of all English claims, north of the Garonne, which were chiefly pecuniary. For the same reason he attacked Flanders, in order to be able to mulct its rich cities. His destruction of the Templars, and his crusade against the Church, had their rise in the same feeling and the same necessity, the procuring for the crown of wealth in some proportion to its power. Edward the First obeyed the same necessities, and made similar attempts. But he was met on every occasion by determined and yet temperate resistance, which enforced in England the indispensable conjunction of crown and people, and the control of one by the other. In France, chiefly owing to that prostration of feudal rights, and that undermining of the nobler class, of which national writers are so proud, Philip the Fair encountered no resistance worth recording. The classes of society, jealous of each other, were exultant in each other's downfal; the citizens applauded the humbling of the noblesse; the noblesse aided in the lowering of the clergy; whilst the crown with impunity pillaged all of property and rights, and threatened to reduce the country to Oriental servitude. There in time ensued a reaction, which prevented this from being so soon or at once accomplished. The aristocracy again sprung up to influence and power. But the legal and constitutional path was lost, and with it the possibility of reconciling in a practical constitution the conflicting claims and rights of different orders. The result was a century of anarchy to be followed by centuries of resuscitated despotism. With respect to Guienne, the encroachment of the parliament of Paris upon its judicial independence began in the reign of St. Louis, and was most actively pushed in that of Philip the Hardy. Whoever was aggrieved in Guienne, whether feudal chief or convent or prelate, appealed to Paris, for they found it too often useless to apply to London. It was one of these appeals which compelled Edward, on his first accession, to crush the Count of Bearn. In 1275, the clerics of Aquæ in Gascony complained that Edward had sequestered their property. In the following year, Edward acquainted Philip that he might do what he pleased in the disputed matter of Fronsac. The French parliament proceeded further, and demanded a right of legislation over Guienne. A custom prevailed there of nobles, when accused of murder, being permitted to clear themselves by an oath of compurgation. Edward consented to reform this, whilst the Gascons protested against being delivered over to French jurisdiction. The Parisian legists poured in their summonses, wherever there were appeals. To these the English authorities or СПАР. VIII. CHAP. VIII. Gascons did not always pay attention, and the result was, sentences against them in the Paris Court, condemning them to fines, and even forfeiture. This abuse reached such a height, that in 1283, when Philip the Hardy was entering upon his war with Aragon, and felt the necessity of listening to Edward's complaints, he issued an edict or letter of discharge, ordering that in any case of appeals to the French courts from Guienne, no penalty or forfeiture should ensue to the seneschals or officers of England, as long as Edward lived. This evidently was done for the sake of establishing the right, and enforcing it in the ensuing reign. It is astonishing that a spirited prince like Edward should have suffered this. But in the same year Philip made some concessions respecting the lands or annuities which St. Louis had promised to restore. He, for instance, gave 3000 livres annual, in lieu of the claim on Cahors. Edward, on his side, continued to exert himself to bring about peace between France and the Spanish monarchs of Castille and Aragon. And as long as the war lasted, Philip did not disturb the accord between himself and the English monarch. When the French king had extricated himself from the Aragonese war, and when the dispute with Sicily began to smoulder and die out, then indeed he seized the first opportunity of quarrelling with Edward, and robbing him of Guienne. The circumstances which enabled him to proceed in the enforcement of such claims, first arose in a quarrel which took place in 1293, between some English and French sailors at Bayonne. A French pilot was killed in the fray: his comrades avenged him by seizing an English pilot and hanging him, suspending a dog at the same time by his side in derision. These acts of violence were no sooner known in England, than all the sailors of the Cinque Ports resolved to avenge their countryman. They fitted out a fleet, and the Normans another. A naval battle ensued betwixt them, in VIII. which the French were beaten, their vessels destroyed, CHAP. and their sailors killed. The French legists, the law militant, instantly took up the quarrel of their countrymen. Philip's seneschals on the frontier summoned the Gascon sailors to answer before them, and seizing some, put them in the king's prison at Perigord. The Paris court summoned Edward himself. There being no answer to such summons, the parliament in the capital, and its officers in the provinces, thundered forth decrees of forfeiture against the English king, precisely according to the law and practice of the Roman Court in fulminating forth excommunications. The French officers found no difficulty in sequestrating the English monarch's property in Perigord and Anjou; they also threatened Bordeaux and the towns of Guienne. Edward was sorely annoyed on receiving intelligence of these events. He was at the time completely absorbed in the Scottish war, directing to it all his resources and his energies; so that being called upon to defend Guienne, or go to war with France, was, as foreign to his thoughts as injurious to his interest. He sent his brother Edmund to France to settle the matter, but this prince had evidently no knowledge or suspicion of the court and the legists with whom he had to deal. Edmund had married Blanche of Artois, the mother of the French queen, and of course was received as one of the family. The proposal with respect to the difference was, that Edward should espouse Philip's sister Margaret, and that Guienne should be settled on their issue. Edward knew the small value of Guienne, its distance from England rendering it indefensible, and he had no desire but to be rid of it honourably. The two queens, amongst themselves, charged by Philip to conduct the negotiation, approved of the arrangement that Edmund proposed, and there took place an exchange of papers tantamount to a solemn treaty between them. Previous to the conclusion of the treaty, Philip had |