Gone Medieval - King Edward I: Hammer of the Scots

Episode Date: August 29, 2025

From his early years marked by an assassination attempt on his father that coincided with Edward's conception, to his brutal campaigns against the Welsh and Scots, Edward I's reign is completely thrilling.Matt Lewis and Dr. Andrew Spencer delve into the life and legacy of this medieval warrior, reformer and conqueror, who threw himself into a Crusade, survived an assassin's blade and poison and transformed English governance.More:Henry IIIOrigins of Scottish IndependenceGone Medieval is presented by Matt Lewis. It was edited by Amy Haddow, the producer is Joseph Knight. The senior producer is Anne-Marie Luff.All music used is courtesy of Epidemic Sounds.Gone Medieval is a History Hit podcast.Sign up to History Hit for hundreds of hours of original documentaries, with a new release every week and ad-free podcasts. Sign up at https://www.historyhit.com/subscribe. You can take part in our listener survey here: https://uk.surveymonkey.com/r/6FFT7MK Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

From long-loss Viking ships and kings buried in unexpected places to tales of murder, power, faith, and the lives of ordinary people across medieval Europe and beyond. Join me, Matt Lewis, Dr. Eleanor Jarniger, and some of the world's leading historians as we bring history's most fascinating stories to life only on history hit. With your subscription, you'll unlock hundreds of hours of exclusive documentaries with a brand-new release every week exploring everything from the ancient world,

to World War II. Just visit historyhit.com forward slash subscribe. Hello, I'm Matt Lewis. Welcome to Gone Medieval from History Hit, the podcast that delves into the greatest millennium in human history. We've got the most intriguing mysteries, the gobsmacking details and latest groundbreaking research from the Vikings to the printing press, from kings to popes to the crusades. We cross centuries and continents to delve into rebellions, plots and murders to find the stories big and small that tell us how we got here. Find out who we really were with Gone Medieval. Welcome to this episode of Gone Medieval. I'm Matt Lewis. We've never done an episode on

this particular King of England before. Partly it turns out because there's just so much to say about him and such a long career to cover. Edward I was 33 when he became king and he packed a lot into the early part of his life, let alone the numerous aspects of his reign that demand attention. For me, he's a tough circle to square, a brutal martial reputation, but a man who saved his father and the kingdom. A crusader and a persecutor, but a man with a deep and thoughtful interest in the law and in Arthurian legend. Thankfully, to help me try to sift through all of this and find the man at the core of the story, I'm joined by Dr Andrew Spencer and a senior tutor and fellow at Gonville and Kaias College, Cambridge,

whose publications include the 2014 Nobility and Kingship in Medieval England, the Earls and Edward I, 1772 to 1307. Welcome back to Gone Medieval, Andrew. Thank you very much, Matt. It's good to be here. You say that now, we've given you an incredibly tricky task here. We're going to try and deal with one of the most significant medieval kings of England in under an hour, and there is so much to pack in that we're going to try and fly through the whole of his life

and try and give people a picture of the whole of Edward I. So if you're up for the challenge, we're going to strap ourselves in and we're going to see how far we can get through the life of Edward I guess. First of all, to give us a little bit of context, can you just tell us who Edward is, who are his parents, where does he sit in the line of medieval kings, what kind of time are we talking about for his life?

So Edward is born in 1239. So roughly 20 years into his father's reign. His father is Henry III. Henry the third, Henry the third, is the son of King John. So we're talking 13th century and Edward dies in 1307, so at the beginning of the 14th century. So really his life covers most of the 13th century in particular, in an English context, the aftermath of Magna Carta. And much of Edward's kingship and life is really a the monarchy adapting to a Magna Carta kingship. His father, as I said, is Henry III, who came to the throne in 1216 at the age of nine, and by the mid-1230s he's looking around for a wife. He has some difficulty in actually securing one until finally he manages to secure Eleanor of Provence,

who is from the province region in what is now France, but at the time was in the Holy Roman Empire. And she marries Henry in 1236 at a relatively young age. There is then a three-year gap and there is some talk, gossip, that maybe she's not going to produce a child. And Edward's birth is conception. It's actually very dramatic.

Nine months before he was born, someone breaks into the royal apartments with the attention of killing Henry III, but he's not there. He's in the Queen's apartments. And so historians tend to think that this was actually the moment at which Edward I was conceived. Maybe, maybe not. But yes, so he's born in 18th of June, 1239 and grows up in the 1240s and 1250s, an important time in his father's reign, the what's known as the personal rule of Henry III. And by the mid-1250s, the future of England is,

Edward is coming to embody that and there starts to be a battle in Henry's court over control of the future Edward I. Of course, it's a very strange name. We should perhaps focus on that, Edward. Yeah, I was going to pick up on the name because it's not a Norman name at all, is it? It's not a Norman name. Of course, it's an English name. and would have sounded very strange to people around court, other than, of course, Edward the

confessor, and that is whom Edward I was named after. It's slightly weird that we call him Edward I first when he's actually Edward VIII, I think. But he's named after the confessor who is his father's patron saint. Henry is very devoted to Edward the Confessor, starts to rebuild Westminster Abbey around the time in which Edward is born. Henry's. second son, Edward's younger brother is called Edmund, named after another Anglo-Saxon Saint, Edmund of East Anglia. So these are two very odd names, but as is common, once the king chooses the names Edward and Edmund, you start to see that those names appearing amongst the aristocracy. And indeed, even across the channel in France, Eduardo becomes quite a, not a

common name, but not unknown, probably Edward the first time. Yeah, it's interesting that Henry chooses that, and that Edward then is growing up with I mean, some pressure. His dad's named him after his favourite saint. He's also named him after what we would consider to be more

kind of English, Anglo-Saxon, pre-Norman. Is there any nationalism involved here? Is it simply Henry's worship of Edward the confessor, or is there a little bit of a signal here of a more emergent sense of Englishness in naming his son Edward? I think that's a tricky one to answer. I think there is, I suspect it's more to do with, to do with his devotion towards Edward the Confessor and Edmund. Now, does that have an English national element to, I think maybe a little bit? I mean, Henry's in lots of ways a contradiction. He names his children after English saints. And one could argue and say, well, this is a consequence of the English monarchy now. being based in England, really, after the loss of Normandy and the loss of the French

lands under King John, the English king, having spent roughly two-thirds of his time outside of England in the 12th century, is now based in England nearly all of the time. So one could see this as part of a recognition and acceptance of that and a desire to sort of promote that. But then on the other hand, Henry spends much of the 1230s, 1240s and 1250s trying either to restore his lands in France or seeking to expand elsewhere with his attempts to get his younger son, Edmund, as made as King of Sicily. So it's difficult, it's always difficult to see into the minds of medieval actors. So I think one could take it in either way. Yeah, especially Henry III. Do we get any sense of what Edward was like in terms of either his personality

or physically? You know, we know he will earn the nickname Longshanks to do with his height. Do we have a sense of what he looks like and also, you know, does he inherit that famous plantagenet temper? Do we know much about his personality as he grows up? Yeah, so great questions. So let's start with what he looks like. Yeah, long shanks. He has, you know, very long legs. When his tomb is opened in the 18th century in Westminster Abbey, he's measured at six foot two. He was 67 when he died. And I always remember my grandfather shrinking as he got. older. So I reckon he was probably more like six foot four when he was in the prime of life. Chronicle describes him as having sort of almost silver hair when he was a boy, it turns to golden,

and then it turns to black when he is mature and then to sort of snow white by the time, you know, he's an old man. He was supposed to be a, you know, very great wielder of the sword. He clearly stood, yeah, at six foot two, six foot four, whatever we're going to call. it, he's head and shoulders above everybody else. He looks and feels like a king. With perhaps two exceptions. One is he inherits from his father, who's a man of middle height. Nobody says Henry is particularly tall or anything. He inherits a drooping eye. So one eye is sort of droops down slightly and also a list, a slight list. So in some ways, he might not sound like a king. Although the chronicler

Trevert says, you know, although he has this list, it didn't stop him from being very eloquent in argument. And also given his size, it would be a brave person who would point out his list to him. I think that's right. And he absolutely inherited the plantagenet temper. It's a very famous story in the 1290s where

Edward is taxing the church very heavily. And the Dean of St. Paul's is designated by the convocation to come and talk to Edward to ask him to to reduce the tax. And he approaches Edwin and is so frightened about what's going to happen that he has a heart attack and dies. So Edward's sort of reputation of fierceness and fierceness sort of goes abroad. I mean, as a young man, he gets in with a sort of fast set. And there are some sort of dark stories. The chronicler Matthew Paris, who dies in 1259 is writing in the late 1250s about Edward and his friends. sort of running about the country, behaving quite poorly,

a sort of, you know, Bullenden set type, trashing places and, you know, attacking people and this one. And he laments and thinks, gosh, you know, if this is what,

if this is what the youth is going to be like, what's it going to be like when he grows up? So there is, and at the time of Henry III's civil war, the Barron's war in the 1260s, there's a fair amount of sort of negative commentary about Edward's, personality by some of Henry's opponents, which we might want to touch upon a bit later.

Yeah, definitely. It's interesting. And Edward has a really long apprenticeship before he becomes king. He packs an awful lot in before he even becomes King Edward I. Do you think that has a significant impact on his experiences as Prince Edward, for want of a better term, we'll call him Prince Edward, do you think that has an impact on him? Because I'm struck that quite often we see, people who are born and raised to be king and become kings sort of into their adult lives, it's not always a good recipe,

it can lead to bad kings. Does his apprenticeship serve him well? Yeah, I think it does. And I think for it's, I mean, I would sort of put it the other way in that it tends to be the young kings that do badly.

I think Edward doesn't, doesn't, I mean, becomes king at 33 and doesn't return to England until he's 35. So really, he's not sort of acting in England as king until the age of 35, which, as you say, is really rather old for a medieval king. So he has had this very long apprenticeship. And I think it is very useful for him in a few ways. One is it allows him to make mistakes when he's not king.

Young people, you know, I work at the university with young people, and lots of research shows that young people, take lots of risks and make lots of mistakes between the ages of sort of, you know, 14 and 25. And Edward makes a fair number of mistakes between the ages 14 and 25. But he's not the king when he makes those mistakes. So they matter slightly less than they do for, let's say, Richard the second when he's making mistakes in his teens and early 20s. So that's helpful for him. It's also helpful for him, I think, in that he gets to know everybody. So he starts to develop his own relationships, both with the sort of older generation,

but also with the generation that is going to come through of nobles and household knights. And so there are people that he feels that he comes to learn that he can trust. And I think that that is really helpful for him when he becomes king. And then I think also in lots of ways the disasters of Henry III's, and the 1260s are helpful for Edward when he becomes king because things have gone so badly wrong and England has turned really vicious and violent in the 1260s. In a way, it hadn't really done before, really, well, not since the anarchy in King Stephen's reign, really. I think it's the most serious and prolonged pieces of violence in England. And I think there is a sense

that when Edward comes to the throne, actually, we're going to cut him a bit more slack than we don't want to return to, you know, we know where opposing the king and, you know, violence leads. And we really don't want that. And one of Edward's great achievements as king is that he's the first king since the Norman conquest, not to face an armed rebellion from his English subjects. So I think the apprenticeship really helps. One can see, you know, another very good example of an apprentice king,

who makes his mistakes early and benefits from them when he becomes king is Henry V. So I think there are some advantages to that. And I think Edward takes full advantage of that long period to learn the craft of kingship, to learn what his father was good at and might not have taken that long, and to learn what he was bad at and what he wanted to do differently. I was going to say that's a bit of a burn on Henry III, but it's probably fair. Edward is also married when he becomes king. So could you tell us a little bit about when he gets married, who he marries,

and kind of why this bride, is there a political motivation or a romantic one to the choice of his marriage? Yeah, there's no romance whatsoever at the start. He is in classic medieval marriage. It's designed to stop a war from happening. So he marries Eleanor of Castile. So a Spanish princess, she's the sister of the King of Castile, and her brother, Alfonso, has designs on Gascany. He is descended from one of Henry II's daughters, and so has a residual claim upon the Duchy of Aquitaine, or what remains of the Duchy of Aquitaine in southwest France, which is the only bit of the Plantagenet Empire, the Angeon Empire that survives in the hands of the English kings. and in the early 1250s, Simon de Montfort has been governor of Akritaine, of Gascany, has stirred up a lot of resentment amongst the Gascon nobles,

and they start to look across the Pyrenees to Castile and suggest that maybe Alfonso might want to activate his claim. Henry heads this off at the past by offering a marriage between Eleanor and Edward. Alfonso makes sure that Edward and his sister gets as much out of it as possible. So Edward is given control of Gascony. He's given the royal lands in Wales. He's given the Oldham of Chester. He's given Ireland.

He's given huge estates across the Plantagenet Dominions. To such an extent that Matthew Paris says, Oh, Henry has mutilated himself as a king by giving away so many lands. Now, these are given away in name only, and that's part of Edward's frustration, actually. Henry and Eleanor of Provence, his mother, really continue to run the estates for a number of years after Edward's marriage in 1254. Now, having said that there's no romance in the relationship, romance clearly develops between Edward and Eleanor. They have 1214 children. She accompanies him everywhere, including on Crusade.

They are an immensely close and loving couple. And it is one of the, in many ways, one of the great sort of medieval romance stories. And when she dies, the series of Eleanor crosses that Edward creates for her from marking the journey from her death place in Lincolnshire down to Westminster, the last of which is Charing Cross in London. are a fitting monument to the love that does grow within medieval marriages. We tend to be sort of quite cynical about medieval marriages, but they think about marriage in a different way to the way that we do.

We fall in love and get married, they get married, and then hopefully fall in love. And that's clearly what happened with Edward O'Lena. Yeah, I do think the Eleanor Crosses might be an episode all of their own, hadn't they? It is a beautiful story. When do we see Edward become more kind of political, active in his father's kingdom. So, I mean, I guess one of the first things that he does is the 1258 provisions of Oxford. He backs those sort of against his father. So is that a bid to strike out on his own, or does he genuinely oppose his father's policies at this point?

Yeah. So, I mean, Edward's positioning during what becomes a period of reform and rebellion, or later the Baron's Wars is complex and is a sort of combination of Edward's own needs as a magnate. Let's call him the greatest magnate in the realm, which is probably what he is at this point. And he's developing political ideas. So in some ways it comes about because of the situation in Wales. Edward, as I said, was given the royal lands in Wales, and in 1257, the most powerful remaining native prince of Wales, Hloyenne, Ab Griffith of Gwyneth, crosses into English lands in what are known as the four cantrifts, which are sort of between Cheshire and Gwyneth, Flintcher and that sort of

area around there. In northeast, Wales defeats Edward's forces, and Edward is left in a very sort of difficult situation. His father isn't really able to support him and in many ways it's that rebellion in 1257 in Wales that precipitates the crisis of 1258 which leads to the provisions of Oxford and Henry's power being taken away.

Initially Edward opposes that because he's allied himself with one particular group at Henry's court which is the Lucignans which are Henry's half-brothers from Poitou in southern France but then elies himself with Simon de Montfort in late 1258, 1259, and starts, I think he's influenced by Montfort's thoughts about what about reform, but also he is seeking independence. Gradually as the reform period develops, Edward can see that what Montfort and the reformers are

doing is taking away power from the crown. And when he becomes king, he does not want that situation to continue. He can see many of their ideas about reform are important and need to be pursued. But he wants the keen to pursue them rather than them being pursued by a virennial council. I guess for Edward, it's a slightly delicate balance, isn't it? Because he might believe that those reforms are necessary or required, but he can't strip power from the crown that he's hoping to inherit one day because that's that's his own future power that he's allowing to be taken away. Exactly. And he feels that the best vehicle for delivering reform and a reform that's going to last is going to be through the crown. And so I think that that's where he comes

to in about 1261. When Henry regains power temporarily in 1261, Edward is very much on his side by that point and remains on his side throughout. It's complicated by the fact that many of Edward's friends are enemies of his mother, or at least in tension with his mother. And so that takes another couple of years to sort of work out so that by the time we get to 1263, the sides are drawn, basically, and Edward is very firmly on the royalist side, along with his close friends. And, I mean, actually, there are many more royalists in 1263 than there are barrenual supporters, at least among the magnates. But, you know, one of Simon Dian for the sort of great achievements is a militarily, he outmaneuvers both Henry and Edward in 1264, but also he has significant

support from some of the lesser landowners, what we would later call the gentry, but also from significant towns, including London. I want to talk a little bit about Edward's role in that period of the Second Barron's War. We have covered this in a bit more depth in episodes on Henry the Third reign, but from Edward's kind of point of view, what is his role? Because it always strikes me that he gets captured at Lewis and I feel like he's tricked by Simon at Lewis and maybe feels a bit embarrassed and enraged and that Evesham is almost just about revenge for Lewis as much as it is about you freeing Henry and everything else. What do you think are Edwards kind of motivations in

the second Baron's War? What is what is driving him and what is he hoping to get out of the end of it? Yeah, good question. So, I think at Lewis, it's a close-run thing. Edward makes a classic battlefield mistake. He is leading one wing of the Royalist Army. He breaks the Londoners, chases them off the field. By the time he gets back, Simon has won the battle against his father. Now, Edward at that point, has a decision to make,

and it's a really interesting decision that he takes at Lewis when he comes back to the battlefield, in that he doesn't have to surrender. he could have done what many of the royalist barons do, which is essentially fly to the coast, go over to France where his mother is and where his younger brother are, and develop a force there and reinvent. What he does, and it's one of the sort of, I think, lesser known and more endearing things about Edward is that what he does is he feels he needs to be with his father. So he rides to Lewis Prairie, which is where Henry has sort of taken refuge, and he goes there to be with Henry and they surrender together. And I think that's a very honorable act. And what it does in some ways is it's, it has some political access to it in that Henry, they surrender to, actually they don't surrender to Simon. They surrender to Gilbert de Claire, the Earl of Gloucester.

So they are thinking quite politically, I think, in that... It's quite a neat tactic, isn't it, to undermine Simon just a little bit. Exactly so. And I think that they feel, well, by doing this in this way, then perhaps rather more royal power can be preserved. It doesn't really work out like that. Simon gradually over the course of the next year really strips both Henry and Edward of any power and influence that they have. and in January, the January Parliament of 1265, which is a very famous parliament

where the commons and burgesses are summoned. Edward is a huge piece of daylight robbery. Edward's estates are essentially stripped from him and handed over to Simon and his sons, and Henry and Edward in front of everybody are forced to swear that they will agree with this arrangement of government that Simon has come up with and that if they ever try to undermine it,

then people are able to rebel against them. It is one of the most humiliating moments for the crown at any point in the Middle Ages. Far more humiliating than Magna Carta in that under Magna Carta, John is still king, he still has power. It's just that he's being monitored in how he's doing it. In this, Henry and Edward have no power. It's all been taken away. The royal estates are being taken away from them. It's massively humiliating.

And I think that it's revenge for that as much as for anything else, that what happens at Evesham happens. I think it is also, though, it's a political recognition that we will not be able to move forward unless Simon Demontford is dead. At this point, there has not been an execution of an English earl since 1076, 1075. You don't execute people at this point. So what happens at Evesham is essentially what happens at Hastings, which is that Edward, echoing William the Conqueror, develops a death squad, led by Roger Mortimer of Wigmore, with the sole purpose of killing Simon de Montfort. And Moffat is killed, along with many of those around him. One chronicler describes it as the murder of Isham for battle.

It was none. And I think, yeah, there is both a personal and a political motive going on there. And it does bring to a, you know, not quite immediately to a close, but it does tidy things up somewhat, in a rather grisly way. And after the end of the Baron's War, so Simon de Montfort is done away with, and we enter this period of kind of relative peace, Henry is sort of back in control. It seems to me that he's leaning on Edward a little bit more during this period, but then also Edward goes off on Crusade.

It's so hard to do Edward's life in a nutshell, isn't it? Because he's done all of that already. And now he's going to head off to the Holy Land, which, again, is a massive episode in any medieval person's life. And for a future King of England to be heading off on Crusade is absolutely massive news. Why do you think that Edward chooses to go, given that his father is ageing,

doesn't have the best track record as a ruler, has been, I think, leaning on Edward a fair bit during this period of his reign. Why does Edward pick this moment to head off to the Holy Land? Right. Okay. So I think again there are a number of factors involved. I think one is Edward's own devotion. The Holy Land is regarded as the ultimate crusade is the ultimate destination for a knight. You know, it is the best way to act in a knightly manner is to go on crusade. I think Henry himself had taken a crusading vow and had been criticized for not fulfilling it or then for intending to fulfil it by going to Sicily and fighting fellow Christians in Sicily rather than

going and fighting the Muslims in the Holy Land. So I think perhaps there is a sense of unfinished business, family business. And it's also an interesting connection to his father again. Like you said, he goes to Lewis Priory to be with his father and Edward is almost willing to fulfil his father's crusading vow, which he knows Henry can't. So Edward is sort of stepping in and supporting his thing again. I think that's right. There is also the role of Louis the Ninth of France. So this is not an English crusade. It is a French crusade designed to be led by Louis the Ninth. Louis the ninth is has emerged and France has emerged under Louis the ninth as the premier kingdom in Europe. Taking over really from the Holy Roman Empire, which sort of falls into a

period of dispute and civil war under Frederick II and his successors. So France emerges, Louis emerges as the preeminent monarch in Europe to the extent that actually in trying to resolve the baron's wars, Henry and the barons appeal to Louis to adjudicate, which he does, supports Henry and the barons don't mind that, of course. So Louis has his own desire after his disastrous first crusade to put things right. And so this is the big European adventure, and I think Edward doesn't want to miss out on that. I think he's reasonably confident that by this point, England will be peaceful. It's notable he doesn't take his oath until 1268, at which point really the aftermath of the Barron's Wall,

a rather messy aftermath of the Barron's War has been settled, both amongst the English rebels and the situation in Wales has been temporarily settled as well by the Treaty of Montgomery. So I think that there is this breathing space, this moment when he can go aboard. And I think he's relatively confident that the men who will be left behind, to support Henry and then to take things on if he were to be away and I say men

and we should include in that Eleanor of Provence and Henry's wife and Edward's mother that actually England will be in safe hands while he is away and that does actually

turn out to be the case so it's yeah a number of combinations I think bring things together to make Edward feel that he wants to go on crusade and it I mean it turns out

to be a bit of a damp squib. By the time he arrives, he wants to go to the Holy Land, Louis has been persuaded that actually the crusade should go to Tunis. By the time Edward arrives in Tunis, Louis is dead. And all the French contingent decide they want to go home. But Edward decides, no, I'm going to go on. I'm going to fulfill my vow. I'm going to go to the whole land. He goes to Acre. The last remaining Christian stronghold in Utremer doesn't do very much. there launches a couple of raids, and then the Christians agree a long truce with the Sultan, which Edward doesn't really agree with, so the Sultan tries to have him murdered. There is a famous assassination attempt, which Edward survives, single-handedly kills

that the assassin who's been sent to murder him, but is poisoned in the process. And we should say it's an assassination attempt by the actual assassins. Yeah, that's right. So they're engaged by the Sultan to attack Edward, And he sort of poses as a messenger, basically, and wants to talk to Edward one-on-one, gets him one-on-one and attacks him with a poisoned dagger. Edward overpowers him and kills him, but is poisoned in the process. One of the sort of apocryphal later stories is that his wife, Eleanor, sucks the poison out of the wound. A more contemporary one says that she was in tears and was led away.

And actually, it was a man called Otto de Granderson, who was one of Edward's knights who does the deed. I mean, an incredible life to this point already, and he's just about to become King of England as well, while he's not even in England. Yeah, that's right. So he learns his father dies in November, 1272. Edward leaves on crusade in the late summer of 1270. He takes a long time to come back. He goes through Italy, visits the Pope, wants to chase down two of Simon Demontfort's sons, who are in Italy, and have murdered his cousin and their cousin. Henry of Almain is famously murdered in the Turbo Cathedral. And then spends, goes to Gascony, and is the last English monarch to visit Gascony whilst king, and spends time there ordering the estate, going off to do homage to the King of France, and finally doesn't get back to England until August, 1274.

So more than 18 months after he's actually become... That in itself is quite a bold decision, isn't it? Given the history, you mentioned the anarchy a little bit earlier, that is essentially borne out of this idea that someone will jump into the breach when the throne is vacant. Does Edward not worry that he ought to get back quicker? Well, I mean, it is a really interesting point. His succession is the first undisputed succession,

really, gosh, since, again, since whenever, before the conquest, really. one could go back to, oh gosh, Ethel Red the Unready, maybe, arguably in the 10th century. So in one way, it's a gamble. But in another way, I think it speaks to Edward's success and Henry's success at the end of the reign in sort of creating a sense of peace and obvious continuity. I mean, there isn't another obvious person who's going to try and seize the throne. This is the advantage that the antagonists have developed by the under Henry III. and for generations afterwards of, it is clear who the king is, which is not the case before

and not the case afterwards once we get into the 15th century. There are potential kings hanging about, whereas in the 13th and 14th century, it's obvious who the king is and nobody's really going to argue with it. So I think there is that sort of sense of just, well, yeah. And also just everyone knows. Don't want any more war, thank you. Edward's going to be a good king. So, yeah, let's not mess about.

And Henry has, his dad has slightly tweaked the law, hasn't he, to try and close that loophole of the kind of interregnum on the death of a king. So Edward is the first king to succeed immediately on his father's death without having to wait for his coronation. So he does have that kind of security blanket around him as well. Absolutely. And, you know, when Henry dies, you know, a number of the nobles and churchmen, you know, they swear an oath, you know, that the government is now in the name.

of Edward. And I mean, it's quite, it's an interesting fiction. There's a great sort of exchange between the regents and Tluallin at Griffith in Wales, where they write a letter to Tluwalin, essentially telling him to stop fighting the March of Lords. And they write it in Edward's name. So this is coming from Edward. And Llewelen writes back and sort of says, well, I know this isn't really from Edrit,

because he's not here. And he wouldn't write in this way to me. because he's got obligations to me. So there is this sort of delicate fiction being played out that actually Edward is fully in control, whereas actually it's the men that he had appointed in contingency knowing that his father might die to have to carry on. And one of the things I think Edward is very good at

is picking good administrators to run things for him. I think as King, there are probably two things that people will most associate with Edward I first. there's the conquest of Wales and the war with Scotland. Before we get to those, I just want to try and deal with a few things that there won't be things that people don't know about, but are perhaps the things we talk about a bit less during his reign.

So one of those is his reforms to the legal system because Edward is the one who starts to kind of properly codify in Parliament, create statutes for law that will apply across the whole of England. Why do you think Edward is keen to do that? Why the focus on the English law? That's another really good question. And it's a really important part of Edwards' kingship. As you say, we tend to focus on Wales and Scotland.

But Edward's greatest achievement, I think, is as King of England and his development of the legal system. I think, you know, how much of it is coming from Edward? I think, you know, a lot of it is coming from the generation of lawyer. that are developing in the 13th century. The statutes are, you know, Edward's not sitting down writing the statutes himself. You know, these are being written by his justices.

But he is very conscious and has become conscious of the need to bring these reforms in. And I think it's part of what is really the thread of Edward I first kingship throughout. And we can see it in his dealings with Wales and we can see it in his dealings with Scotland just as much as in England.

His intention is to restore the power, prestige, and importantly, the rights of the monarchy, which he feels have been introduced during Henry's reign, and particularly, of course, in the 1250s and 1260s. And Parliament is a key vehicle in which for doing this. And Edward is a parliamentary king. which, again, is something we wouldn't necessarily think about in terms of Edward. We tend to think about Edward as this great domineering figure who imposes his rule upon others reluctantly.

But Parliament has been developing during Henry the Third's reign, but it's very often a place of conflict and discussion and tension in Henry the Third's reign. What Edward does is to see that Parliament is a great vehicle for the development, of royal authority. And if you pass a law in Parliament by bringing together the community of the realm, whether that is just the magnates and the lawyers, or very often in Edward's reign, the magnates, the lawyers, the churchmen, and the commons, that has a lot more force to it. You can't sort of turn around in Yorkshire and say, oh, well, this doesn't apply to me because I didn't agree to it. It was agreed in Parliament.

Parliament in Edward I reign really starts to develop its functions and those functions are in many ways similar to the functions it still has today, which is legislation, passing of laws. Counsel, Edward takes counsel from those who come together in Parliament. Petitioning, the idea of petitioning the king, petitioning the crown in Parliament. We see that still today. the petitions is an important part of parliamentary history and parliament today. The granting of taxation is another. And finally, Parliament as the highest court in the land. So what Edward really successfully does in the law and in politics is to make Parliament the centre of political discussion, but Parliament under the King's terms, whereby he listens to the concerns and then

he acts upon them. And the opening words of the preamble to the first great parliamentary statute of Edwards, reign, the statute of Westminster 1 in 1275 is a perfect sort of example of this. Edward says, at the beginning, he says, I've heard of all of these difficulties and problems, I've consulted broadly and these are my solutions. And I think looking at the preamble of those statutes gives a really good insight into the mind of Edward I. He is prepared to listen to what experts, to listen to what his people are saying about the way in which he is being governed. And then he will consult and decide what to do about it. And then that will be pushed through in Parliament and then out into the country more broadly.

It feels like a really smart move in terms of the fact that, as you say, Parliament has, is there now, it doesn't look like it's going anywhere. It has been a place of tension, and he has seen what tension between the Crown and the Barons did during his father's reign. So he embraces it, but he embraces it, as you say, very much on his term, so that it becomes a king's vehicle, rather than being something that is butting into the king all of the time, it becomes a way for the king to deliver what he wants, and the king kind of flows through it, but has a grip on. it, which he might not otherwise have had, if another king had chosen to go head to head with Parliament. Absolutely. And so for the first 25 years or so of Edward's reign, really, the Parliament and the king work in consort with each other in a very effective way.

And this is, you know, in many ways, you know, we tend to think of Edward as a great war leader, warmonger, depending on where you're sitting. But actually, you know, the period from sort of 1275, 1274 when Edward returns to 1294 when the war starts with, first of all, with France and then with Scotland, is one of the most peaceful and effective periods of government in English history, really. Yeah, yeah. The second thing I wanted to deal with outside of the biggies that we're going to get to is the 1290 kind of expulsion of the Jewish population from England. This is something that lots of people will know Edward for.

It remains illegal to be a Jew in England essentially for almost 400 years after Edward does this. I wonder if you give us an idea of kind of why Edward chooses to do this. Is it part of a wider anti-Semitism or is there something very particular about Edward that leads him to do this? I don't think there's anything particular about Edward. Ed, you know, I think we have to, we have to accept that medieval Europe is anti-Semitic. Everybody is. And so, you know, it's not that, you know, Edward is more, more anti-Jewish than any other king that comes to control. Everybody essentially is anti-Semitic.

The Jews are characterized as Christ killers, as, you know, enemies of the faith. And it's quite, you know, I think there are, there are. are two approaches that in the 13th century in England and more broadly within Europe, and this is not just an English phenomenon, Jews are expelled from all sorts of other polities within Europe at a similar time. But there are two basic approaches that one can take. One is, well, three actually. One is ghettoization, so isolating them within England because the Jews perform a useful function from Christian society, which is money lending, essentially. They are a key way of raising money. And the other is conversion. The idea that actually what

you really want to do in order to bring about the second coming is to get the Jews together and convert them to Christianity. Henry III wants to convert them. And the old National Archives, the old public record office, was on the site in Chancellery Lane of Henry III's House of conversion. It doesn't work. The Jews don't want to be converted. But Henry uses the Jews in the 1240s and 1250s as a convenient way of raising money. The Jews are the king's personal property, which means he can tax them any time he likes without having to get permission from anybody else, i.e. Parliament. So Henry taxes the Jews very, very heavily and essentially uses up their wealth. So by the time we get to Edgar I reign, the Jews are no longer really an effective

economic weapon for the king in the way that they had been earlier in the 13th century and in the 12th century. So there isn't as much reason to keep them around for the king. And the Jews are very unpopular, in part because of their money lending. Lots of people are in debt to the Jews and also various members of the world family have bought up Jewish debts. and then are using them to foreclose on landowners. And there's various sort of political debates about, sorry, historical debates about the extent to which the gentry feel under pressure in the 13th century, in part because of the debts that they owe to the Jews.

So in many ways, the pressure for the expulsion of the juice actually comes from below. And in 1290, there is a series of political, and legislative compromises that come together in the Parliament of 1290, in order for Edward the first to get the biggest tax of his reign over £100,000, which is four times the annual revenue of the Crown. Edward has a great incentive to persuade Parliament to grant this tax, and part of the deal is that actually the Jews will be expelled. So I think Edward is not opposed to expelling the Jews.

I'm not trying to create in any way the idea that Edward was some saviour of the Jews. He was not. He was quite happy to sacrifice them in order to gain the support of his subjects for a large grant of taxation. And essentially that's what happens. And that's why the Jews are expelled in 1290. Yeah. So obviously something we would consider incredibly wrong and horrible, but we don't need to think of Edward.

being excessive or unique in his approach to this? No, no. As I say, it's something, you know, we've seen Jews expelled from individual towns in England. Simon De Montfort expels the Jews from Lester when he arrives. Edward's mother expels the Jews from her, from her lands. The Jews by the late 1300s, that's 1200s, are concentrated in very small number of areas compared to where they had been a century before. And elsewhere in Europe,

Philip the 4th, for instance, in France expels the Jews from France temporarily. What's different about England is the length of time actually that they are expelled for, is that it's Edward who expels them and we remember that. What we forget is that all of the subsequent kings of England don't allow Jews to cut back. And it's not until Oliver Cromwell in the 1650s that the Jews returned to England. Yeah, yeah. The third thing that I wanted to cover before we just finally get to Wales and Scotland is Edward's relationship with with Gascany, with France and perhaps on the wider stage.

How does Edward deal with his foreign policy? What is his relationship particularly with France like? So in many ways Edward wouldn't see it as foreign policy. He sees it. These are his lands in France. They are as important to him as his lands in England. He spends three years in the late 1280s in Gascony, helping to sort things out there. What is difficult for Edward is that his English subjects do think of it as foreign

and are less willing to spend their time and money defending Gascony than Edward would like. What Edward is dealing with, though, in the 1270s and 1280s, is a relatively peaceful period in Anglo-French relations in the aftermath of the Treaty of Paris, which should sort of brings to an end King John and Henry III wars. So Edward is able to develop a relatively stable and peaceful Gascony for much of the 1270s and 1280s, actually to expand the territories within Gascony as through another treaty in 1279. And it's not really until the early 1290s that the Gascon question becomes open again. And in many ways, I think it's I mean, it's really interesting how it becomes a live question once again.

Part of it is structural. We talked about lawyers earlier on. Both the English and French monarchies are developing their own legal expertise, and lawyers don't like loose ends, and Gaskini is a loose end, both from the English perspective and from the French perspective. For the French, they don't like the idea of another monarch having lands in France. that's dangerous. The English have always managed, have always used their position within France to stir up other French nobles against the French king, particularly their relations with the

Dukes of Brittany and the Counts of Flanders and the areas in the low countries. And for the English, they don't like the idea of their king doing homage to another king. So, you're two obvious extremes and this sort of develops really by the time we get to the Hundred Years' War in the 14th century. One is the idea of Gascany should be held in sovereignty by the English crown, and the other is that the English should just be out of France altogether. And you can work out which side takes those two different views. So that's the structural part. And then I think there is a personal element to it as well, which is Edward by the early 1290s,

is in his 50s. He is the most famous, most well-respected monarch in Europe. He is called upon as a peacemaker when the kings of Aragon and Sicily fall out with each other. He is, everybody knows if there's going to be another crusade. Edward is going to be the person to lead it. So he has this sort of very strong reputation. And then we have a young, frusting, ambitious king of France who is in his late team's early 20s and resents the fact that one of his subjects, as he sees it,

is more prestigious, more respected than he is. And I think that there is always this faction at the French court that is anti-English, want to see the English pushed out of France, and they sort of get control or get closest to Philip and start telling him the things that he wants to hear. And we start to see tension developing in the early 1290s over disputes in the channel between English, Gascon and Norman sailors. and Philip and those around him in the French court use this as an excuse to summon Edward to the Parliament, Paris

and to put pressure on the English position in Gascony. Edward is keen to avoid a war, A, because he doesn't want to fight the French France is much bigger and more powerful than England, and B, because he wants to go on crusade. Aker falls in 1291, Edward has taken the cross in the late 1280s, is determined to go on crusade again, wants to avoid anything that stops. So he gets into a position where essentially he gives Gascany away temporarily to Philip in agreement for a marriage. Edward's wife has died at this point, a new marriage with a French princess, and he's hoodwinked, or rather his younger brother is hoodwinked in the negotiations in France. And Edward hands over Gaskini. and then Philip doesn't return it and declares it confiscated.

And we really need to understand that in order to be able to understand the Scottish wars because much of why Edward goes to war in Scotland is to do with actually the fact that he's at war in France trying to regain Gascany, which he eventually does

after a huge amount of effort and money that is expended. I always find it a fascinating, it's kind of that, you know, square peg in a round hole, isn't it? How does a king do homage to another king for lands that he wants? And how, from the king of France's point of view, how does he recognise the ownership of a piece of land in his kingdom by someone else he also recognises as a king,

who is therefore his equal in a different way? And nobody ever, I don't know. Does anyone ever manage to make that square peg fit in the round hole? It seems to be the cause of so much contention throughout this whole period. Yeah. And it involves a lot of mental gymnastics and goodwill essentially. And I think that's why Henry and Louis eventually come to an agreement that actually goodwill will get us through this. And that continues long into Edward the first reign. But when goodwill goes, then actually, yes, those inherent tensions come to the fore. And really they can't be resolved in a European setting of national monarchies that are starting to develop in England, in Scotland, in France, in Spain, and elsewhere. It's one of those interesting medieval issues that you need to make it work.

They need to look at it with their glasses off and allow it to be a bit blurry, because as soon as you try and bring it all into sharp focus, or you see the problems you can't resolve. Right, we ought to get on to the two biggies, I guess, and I'm conscious, you know, I'm going to have to ask you to do this relatively quickly, which is unfair because there's another huge chunk of Edward's life that we could spend an immense amount of time talking about. So we've got a conquest of Wales. I mean, Wales is somewhere that kings of England have been trying to get a proper grip on ever since, I know, 1066, if not before. You know, Athelstan is quite keen to get the homage of all of the rulers in Wales as well. no one has ever really managed to do it until Edward.

Why does he decide to tackle this apparently unachievable goal? So I think part of it again comes back to the 1250s and 1260s. So much of Edward's life really can be explained through the prism of those early experiences. So Wales has always been difficult to conquer because it is so diverse politically. You can't just have a Hastings-type event where you kill the king and you take over. Wales is great weakness, but also its strength in terms of all it is politically divided. So it's difficult to conquer as well, of course, as the territory itself is difficult to campaign in. And frankly, the English kings, while they would like to be recognised as overlords of Wales,

for the most part have been more interested in defending their lands in France than in Wales and not least because the Crown for most of the time doesn't have lands

in Wales up until the 13th century it's the Martial Lords who pushed into Wales there aren't really any crown estates up until Henry III and Edward I first

so Edward of course is involved in Wales that is part of his growing up is this dispute with Cluelin Cluelin gets what he wants in 1266 which is recognition of the title of Prince of Wales.

He's the only Welsh ruler to do homage to the King of England. All the other native Welsh rulers then do homage to Hulennon. So what we are seeing in the 1250s and 1260s and stretching back to the beginning of the 13th century is Gwyneth emerging as the predominant native Welsh power. And that creates difficulties. for the English, but also difficulties for the princes of Gwyneth, in that many of the native Welsh princes don't really like the idea of doing homage to the Prince of Gwyneth. They'd much

rather do homage to the King of England. So there is tension within native Wales. There is tension between Glewellyn and the marcher lords, because the Treaty of Montgomery is at a moment of great high tide of Gwyneth power. So the marchers have lost out quite a lot and are quite keen to chip away at it. So what we see in the 1260s and early 1270s is disputes between Llewellyn and the Marcher Lords. Edward comes back from Crusade. He does not have the intention of starting a war with Wales. What he wants is for Llewelyn to do homage, as he should do under the Treaty of Montgomery. Lleyn, understandably, says, well, I'm not going to do homage until you sort out all of these issues. I've got, all of these problems within Wales of people who've been breaking the treaty.

and Edward goes, no, you do homage first and then we'll resolve your grievances. And he offers several occasions for Llewened to do it, including coming all the way to the borders of Wales so that Gwendo doesn't have to come to Westminster to do it. Gwelyn refuses to turn up. And I think what Hlewelen has done is overestimate his own strength and underestimate both Edward's own capabilities

as somebody he defeated when he was a teenager, but also actually the power of the English monarchy and the English state when it is united. And the first war in 1777 is a relatively easy victory for the English. They capture Anglesi and Llewelen is strangled into submission. Edward strips away many of Llewens' territorial gains but leaves him with the title of Prince of Wales, but he's got much less power and authority

than he had. One of the things that Edward is not very good at is seeing things from other people's point of view. And through the period between 1277 and 1282, when the next Welsh rebellion happens, we see both Glewellyn, his younger brother Davith, and other Welsh lords suffering at the hands of English officials who are interpreting the law, interpreting things in a way that suits Edward and suits the English rather than the Welsh. So naturally, the Welsh rebel in 1282. And at that point, Edward essentially feels that what Llewellyn has done has gone back on his word, he's Edward's vassal, and he is now a consummacious vassal, a rebellious vassal, and therefore any claims to his lands are forfeit. And so it's only the war of 1282-83 that turns into a war of conquest.

So by that point, I think Edward has come to the conclusion that what needs to happen in Wales is the end of the Gwyneth dynasty and the English taking over. But in order to do that, it takes a lot of time, a lot of effort, a lot of money, both to defeat the Welsh initially, but then to make sure that they are kept down. And that's where the castles come in, the famous castles of Harleck and Conway and Canavan, etc. Yeah, yeah. It's interesting, though, for someone that we associate, particularly when it comes to Wales and Scotland, as a maybe a war-mongering conqueror that Edward is so slow to go to war with Wales.

He says he makes all of that effort to go to the border of Wales to receive the homage. He is moving towards Llewellyn. It's Llewellyn who's refusing to move back. To move back, that's right. So it's, you know, again, no one's saying, I'm not trying to say in this, Edward is blameless. He has his interests and he wants to see them fulfilled. and on his terms, but it didn't have to work out in the way that it did. And I don't think that Edward has this grand plan at the start of his reign that he's going

to conquer Britain, conquer Wales, conquer Scotland. He would quite happily have accepted a position where Llewellyn was one of his, one of his facels. But on his terms, Lleyn, as I say, I think, overestimates his own position and ultimately pays for that with both his life and in the end. with Welsh independent. Yeah, yeah. And, you know, for Edward as King of England,

he's achieved something that none of his forebears have managed to do. His predecessors have done. In bringing Wales fully under the control of the Crown of England. It's a significant achievement for a King of England. It is. Rightly or wrongly, it is, absolutely. Maybe not the best thing for Wales, but for Edward, it is an achievement.

It is. And, yeah, it's, you know, Wales has always been an issue from, you know, back from, well, since the same. since the Saxons arrived in England, dealing with the Welsh has been an issue. And Edward achieved something that, yeah, none of his predecessors have done. And that is a significant achievement, whatever one thinks about the rightness or wrongness. Yeah, yeah. And we're going to have to fly up to Scotland now, having seen him take control of Wales.

Essentially what happens in Scotland is a succession crisis that for some reason they choose to go to Edward to mediate. Do you think that's something that immediately activates something in Edward's mind about this long-standing idea of English overlordship of the British Isles, which he's making a reality in Wales? Do you think Edward ever intended to invade Scotland, or is it their appeal to him that makes him think, oh, there's maybe something in this for me? So Anglo-Scottish-Squettys relations in the 13th century had generally been good, moments of tension, but generally good. There's a Scottish contingent, for instance, fighting for Henry the 3rd at Lewis, including the Bruce's and the Comins and the Baylil's. They're all fighting for Henry the 3rd at Lewis. So Anglo-Scottish relations generally good. There is this tension, though, about the nature of the relationship between the King of England and the King of Scotland. And as in France, there are different viewpoints. So the English viewpoint is that the King of Scots should do homage to the King of England. for Scotland. The Scottish viewpoint is that they should do homage to the King of England for their lands in England. And there are many, not just the King of Scots, but many lords have lands on both sides of the border. And in 1778, when Alexander comes to do homage, Alexander III

comes to do homage, there's an argument, but essentially they agree to disagree. They do homage and they do it essentially, you know, it means different things to different people. Take their glasses off and just allow it to be a bit blurry for a while. It'd be a bit blurry. Absolutely. That's right. And that suits everybody. Alexander dies in 1286. And this, I think, is really important for people to know when we're thinking about Edward's mentality. Edward is in France when Alexander dies.

His heir is Margaret, the maid of Norway. She's a child in Norway. If Edward had this grand design to take over Scotland, he would have come back immediately and implemented this great moment of weakness in Scottish history. He doesn't. in France for three years. That's how little Scotland is a priority for Edward at this point. He comes back and one of the great sort of what-ifs of medieval British history plays out, which is he arranges a marriage between the future Edward II and Margaret the maid of Norway,

which had it happened, there would have been no hundred years war, there would have been no Anglo-Scottish wars. the England would have developed in Britain would have developed in a very different way. Margaret dies unfortunately and that's where we get the succession crisis that you were referencing. Now, you said for some reason they turned to Edward. He's the obvious person to turn to for all sorts of reasons. One is, as I said earlier, he's got this reputation as a peacemaker and there's a real danger that Scotland is going to descend into civil war between the various claimants. There are lots of potential claimants, three major ones, Hastings, Bruce and Balliol.

And there's a real danger that Scotland will descend into civil war. But worse than that, from Edward's perspective, is that it will start to drag the English into it, in that all of these lords have lands on both sides of the border, but also they are married into English, barrenual and comical families. So the brusses are married into the declares, the ears of Gloucester. the Earl of Surrey is the father-in-law of John Balliol so it would drag the English into a dispute

so Edward needs to intervene but also the Scots recognise that anyone who they choose anyone who is going to become King of Scots has to have the acceptance of the King of King. Now what Edward does is to use this moment to maximise his opportunity He's an opportunist.

He's an opportunist in Wales. He's an opportunist in Scotland as well. And so he sees this as, well, now I can tidy up, I can put the flasses on and tidy things up. So that we no longer have to have this blurry situation. It's going to be clear from now on that the King of Scots owes homage to the King of England. And all of the Scottish claimants to the throne have to, before Edward will judge them, have to agree. And they all do. Everybody agrees that Edward actually.

makes the right choice. The man who he chooses is the man with the best claim. One of the really interesting things when we think about Scotland afterwards is that the Bruce claim, Robert the Bruce's grandfather, so-called Robert the Bruce the competitor, he's arguing that Scotland isn't a kingdom at all. It should be split up into three amongst the claimants. But Edward agrees no, Scotland is a kingdom and it should be held by John Balliol. The difficulty for Balliol, and for the Scots more broadly, is that Edward starts, well, now I'm overlord of Scotland. Anyone who's unhappy with anything that the King of Scots does can appeal to me. And of course, that's an impossible situation for Balliol to be left in.

And Edward seems to see no irony in the situation that he's created in Scotland, which is exactly the situation that he resents in France. But what precipitates for war in Scotland, again, is not Edward invading Scotland. it's Edward demanding military service from the Scots as allies against the French. And the Scots go, no way are we going to do that. The Welsh say the same, actually. First of all, there's a rebellion in Wales. Then there's a rebellion. Well, then the Scots say no, and they agree a treaty with the French.

So from Edward's perspective, his vassals have literally just signed a treaty, military alliance, with his great enemy, the person he's at war with. And then they invade England. So from Edward's perspective, this is, you know, this is obvious, contumacious, rebellious behaviour by the Scots. Now, he doesn't see it from their perspective, of course. He sees it from his perspective, from a feudal perspective of his vassals have rebelled against him, and therefore their lands and the kingdom is forfeit.

And that is his attitude towards Scotland throughout. The difficulty that he has is that he defeats Balliol, but there are these different claimants within Scotland. There is as much a civil war going on in Scotland between the Bruce's and the Baleals as the English of the sort of third wheel in it. So it's very messy because the moment you defeat one faction within Scotland,

the other faction sort of rise up and take over. So there is the great thing that the Scottish kings have achieved before Edwards, the War of Independence, is this idea of Scotland as a kingdom, Scotland as a people with a king that never seemed to disappear. And you get, Edward twice conquers Scotland. And in 1304, there's a famous moment where he's besieging Stirling Stirling Castle, which is the last castle in Scotland. It's held by a man called William Oliphant, who is a member of the Bayliel coming faction.

But Balliol is in exile in France at this point. And the English negotiators say to him, What are you doing? Why are you holding out here? Your king is gone. In fact, there's nothing to hold, you know, in whose name are you holding Stirling Castle? An Oliphant says to the, to the negation, says, I'm holding it in the name of the lion, i.e. in the name of Scotland, rather than any particular king. One of the interesting things about this and the sort of, again, the complicating factor in it all is that a few years later, we find William Oliphant fighting for the English against Robert Bruce because he hates Bruce more than he hates the English. And, you know, that's part of what makes it so difficult for Edward. The Bruce is, you know, they fight with Edward in

1296, against him in 1297, with him in 1303, 4, and then finally against him in 1306, 7. And it's at that point when Bruce seizes the throne, again, Edward, I think, feels that he's been betrayed. Robert Bruce had been a household knight of Edward I, he'd broken bread, taken his salt in 19th century parlance, and betrays him. And that's where Edward really starts getting vindictive towards the Scots in a way that he had been also vindictive towards Davith, Glellan's younger brother in Wales. Those whom Edward feels he has betrayed him, he behaves harshly towards. It's interesting to wonder how much that goes back to, or at least is, shown early in his relationship with Simon DeMontford, you know, that targeting of

DeMontford for effective battlefield execution is a result of a sense of betrayal. And we see it again with Lleyn and we see it again with Robert the Bruce. If you cross him, if you lose his trust, then it's a very uncomfortable place to be. And we start to see executions, execution of Davith, Clorlin's younger brother, an execution of an English knight called Tom's Turbaville, who is a household knight, who sends secrets to the French, the execution of William Wallace, who ironically is one of the very, the few Scots never to actually do homage to Edward. But he's regarded as a great rebel and his execution. And then those who are around Bruce, the members of the Bruce family that Edward gets his hands on, essentially. He, yeah, he treats, he treats pretty harshly. Yeah, yeah. I mean, Edward will die in 307 on his way back to Scotland to pursue this war even further. It's something that he never quite gets over the line, the conquest of Scotland. Is it an irony then that he's most often remembered as the Hammer of the Scots, that he has Hammer of the Scots paint.

It will be painted later on his tomb. This idea of him as the Hammer of the Scots, it's a conquest that he never complete. Hammer of the Welsh, maybe. Why Hammer of the Scots? Well, I think that is, you know, it's painted on the tomb in the 16th century during another series of Anglo-Scottish wars. So I think it's very much a product of the 16th century rather than of the 14th century.

One of the interesting things, when it thinks about Edward's tomb is how bare it is, you go to a Westminster Abbey, and you see it compared to Henry III's tomb, or Edward the Third's tomb, or Henry the 5th or Richard the 2nd, there's no, you know, and even Eleanor of Castile,

you know, Edward's wife, there's no effigy. It's this big black marble block with nothing on it. Edwardus, Primus, Hick, Est, Pactam server. That's the original sort of thing that's there. But why Hammer of the Scots? Well, yeah, I mean, I think, as you say, he never quite gets it over the line,

but what one sees in the Scottish War is Edward's sense of determination. He is, both his great strengths and his great weaknesses are revealed in the Scottish wars, this sense of his own rights, the determination to pursue his own rights at the cost of everything, this stubbornness, but also determination to, again, year after year, come back and do it again and again and again, and nearly, as I say, he conquers Scotland twice. Bruce is almost defeated in 13-086. Had, you know, Ken, historians tend to sort of talk about

the Scottish war as unwinnable. I don't think it is unwinnable. I think that had Edward lived longer, I think he would have, he would have captured Bruce and he would have executed him. It would have been pretty unpleasant. But I think he would have succeeded. What Bruce benefits from is Edward II's failure to follow up.

Bruce gets three years of respite to solve things in Scotland. Edward then second goes on campaign in 309, 10 doesn't really achieve very much. And then gives Bruce another three years before finally we get to Banachburn. Scottish mythology is that Banachburn is the moment when Scottish independence is won. It's not. it's the moment when Scottish independence is confirmed. It's already been one in the seven years between Edward I's death and Banachburn. And I think that idea of Hemmer of the Scots is that Edward I first came so close to achieving it.

And Scotland is, throughout the remainder of the Middle Ages, is much more of a threat to England and its ambitions, particularly, of course, in France, than Wales is, with the exception of the rising of O. England, endured in the beginning of the 15th century. The fear of either the Scots coming in through the back door or them letting the French in through the back door is a constant fear. And this idea that Edward was the man who came closest to resolving that problem, I think, is very alive in 14th, 15th and 16th century English mind. Fascinating. I'm conscious we've kept you for a very long time, Andrew, and you've done us an incredible service leading us through this,

this fascinating and long and complex life. I mean, we've met an Edward who is a crusader, a great warrior king, a politician, a man who is interested in law and legal reform, a statesman, also someone who is often viewed as a kind of ruthless imperialist and an opportunist, as you've said as well. How should we judge Edward the first reign? In medieval terms, is he a good king or a bad king? It depends on you sit, I think, but I think from the perspective of the English, Edward is one of the great kings. I think he's a king that you might find uncomfortable at times. He's very demanding and demands a great deal of his subjects,

but he offers a great deal as well. And I think it's one of those where it's almost like you don't quite realize what you had until it was gone. and I think that that's one of his great achievements. I mean, I tend to sort of think that what Edward, if we think about Edward I think about Edward I wrote my book on Edward and his relations with the nobility, is it's not really clear amongst historians whether Edward is a sort of last of the central Middle Ages kings or the first of the late Middle Ages kings.

And I think that what Edward does is solve the structural problems of the 13th century monarchy. He solves the idea of, yes, we're going to work with Parliament, we're going to work with Magna Carta, we're going to deal with Wales. So many of these, we're going to reform the law and deal with many of the problems that have emerged. We're going to deal with the Jews, not necessarily in a way that we would approve of, but in a way that they approved off at the time. So Edward, I think, solves many of the structural problems of the 13th century, but his reign reveals or sets up the problems of the later. medieval monarchy of the war with Scotland, the situation, ongoing situation with France and essentially, eventually what's going to be war with, war with France. How does, how does the English monarchy pay for these wars? We moved to a period from 1294 to the middle of the 15,

1450s where England is basically at war all of the time, with a few exceptions. And that starts in Edward the First reign. It needs to a huge expansion in, in, in the Middle, government, in law, in the power of the state, which opens up a whole series of other questions that English monarchs in the 14th and 15th century tackle with varying degrees of success or failure, but they are all dealing essentially with the legacy of Edward I first. Yeah, yeah. I quite like the idea that people would not enjoy Edward being king until Edward was no longer king and then they'd immediately say, oh, I wish Edward was king again. When it's king again. Yeah, absolutely.

Well, thank you so much for joining us, Andrew. And thank you for taking us through this fascinating king, who we have somehow managed to overlook in gone medieval's efforts so far. But it's good to have tried to do justice to the story of King Edward I. Thank you so much for your time and for leading us through that. And my pleasure. Thanks, Matt. Thank you. I hope you've enjoyed this episode.

You can find out more in Andrew's book, Nobility and Kingship in Medieval England, The Earls and Edward I, 1272 to 1307. You can explore the reign of Edward's father, Henry III, in two episodes with the inimitable David Carpenter, and there's also one about the Declaration of Our Broth as part of the Scottish Wars of Independence that you might find interesting. There are new instalments of Gone Medieval every Tuesday and Friday, so please come back to join Eleanor and I for more from the greatest millennium in human history.

Don't forget to also subscribe or follow us on Spotify or wherever you get your podcasts and tell all of your friends and family that you've gone medieval. You can sign up to History Hit to access hundreds of hours of original documentaries with a new release every week and all of History Hits podcasts add free. Head over to historyhit.com forward slash subscribe right now. Anyway, I'd better let you go. I've been Matt Lewis and we've just gone medieval with history hits.