The History of England - Vols. 1 to 6 (118 page)

They threw him on a bed; held him down violently with a table, 21st Sept. The king

which they flung over him; thrust into his fundament a red-hot murdered.

iron, which they inserted through a horn; and though the outward marks of violence upon his person were prevented by this expedient, the horrid deed was discovered to all the guards and attendants by the screams, with which the agonizing king filled the castle, while his bowels were consuming.

Gournay and Mautravers were held in general detestation; and when the ensuing revolution in England threw their protectors from power, they found it necessary to provide for their safety by flying the kingdom. Gournay was afterwards seized at Marseilles, delivered over to the seneschal of Guienne, put on board a ship with a view of carrying him to England; but he was beheaded at sea, by secret orders, as was supposed, from some nobles and prelates in England, anxious to prevent any discovery, which he might make of his accomplices. Mautravers concealed himself for several years in Germany; but having found means of rendering some service to Edward III. he ventured to approach his person, threw himself on his knees before him, submitted to mercy, and received a pardon.
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It is not easy to imagine a man more innocent and inoffensive His character.

than the unhappy king, whose tragical death we have related; nor a prince less fitted for governing that fierce and turbulent people, subjected to his authority. He was obliged to devolve on others the weight of government, which he had neither ability nor inclination to bear: The same indolence and want of penetration led him to make choice of ministers and favourites, who were not always the best qualified for the trust committed to them: The seditious grandees, pleased with his weakness, yet complaining of it; under pretence of attacking his ministers, insulted his person and invaded his authority: And the impatient populace, mistaking the source of their grievances, threw all the blame upon the king, and encreased the public disorders by their faction and violence. It was in vain to look for protection PLL v6.0 (generated September, 2011)

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from the laws, whose voice, always feeble in those times, was not heard amidst the din of arms: What could not defend the king was less able to give shelter to any of the people: The whole machine of government was torne in pieces with fury and violence: And men, instead of regretting the manners of their age, and the form of their constitution, which required the most steady and most skilful hand to conduct them, imputed all errors to the person who had the misfortune to be entrusted with the reins of empire.

But though such mistakes are natural and almost unavoidable while the events are recent, it is a shameful delusion in modern historians, to imagine, that all the ancient princes, who were unfortunate in their government, were also tyrannical in their conduct, and that the seditions of the people always proceeded from some invasion of their privileges by the monarch. Even a great and a good king was not in that age secure against faction and rebellion, as appears in the case of Henry II.; but a great king had the best chance, as we learn from the history of the same period, for quelling and subduing them. Compare the reigns and characters of Edward I. and II. The father made several violent attempts against the liberties of the people: His barons opposed him: He was obliged, at least found it prudent, to submit: But as they dreaded his valour and abilities, they were content with reasonable satisfaction, and pushed no farther their advantages against him. The facility and weakness of the son, not his violence, threw every thing into confusion: The laws and government were overturned: An attempt to reinstate them was an unpardonable crime: And no atonement, but the deposition and tragical death of the king himself, could give those barons contentment. It is easy to see, that a constitution, which depended so much on the personal character of the prince, must necessarily, in many of its parts, be a government of will, not of laws. But always to throw, without distinction, the blame of all disorders upon the sovereign, would introduce a fatal error in politics, and serve as a perpetual apology for treason and rebellion: As if the turbulence of the great, and madness of the people, were not, equally with the tyranny of princes, evils incident to human society, and no less carefully to be guarded against in every well regulated constitution.

While these abominable scenes passed in England, the theatre of Miscellaneous France was stained with a wickedness equally barbarous, and transactions during

still more public and deliberate. The order of knights templars this reign.

had arisen during the first fervour of the Crusades; and uniting the two qualities the most popular in that age, devotion and valour, and exercising both in the most popular of all enterprizes, the defence of the Holy Land, they had made rapid advances in credit and authority, and had acquired, from the piety of the faithful, ample possessions in every country of Europe, especially in France. Their great riches, joined to the course of time, had, by degrees, relaxed the severity of these virtues; and the templars had in a great measure lost that popularity, which first raised them to honour and distinction. Acquainted from experience with the fatigues and dangers of those fruitless expeditions to the East, they rather chose to enjoy in ease their opulent revenues in Europe: And being all men of birth, educated, according to the custom of that age, without any tincture of letters, they scorned the ignoble occupations of a monastic life, and passed their time wholly in the fashionable amusements of hunting, gallantry, and the pleasures of the table. Their rival order, PLL v6.0 (generated September, 2011)

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that of St. John of Jerusalem, whose poverty had as yet preserved them from like corruptions, still distinguished themselves by their enterprizes against the Infidels, and succeeded to all the popularity, which was lost by the indolence and luxury of the templars. But though these reasons had weakened the foundations of this order, once so celebrated and revered, the immediate cause of their destruction proceeded from the cruel and vindictive spirit of Philip the Fair, who, having entertained a private disgust against some eminent templars, determined to gratify at once his avidity and revenge, by involving the whole order in an undistinguished ruin. On no better information, than that of two knights, condemned by their superiors to perpetual imprisonment for their vices and profligacy; he ordered on one day all the templars in France to be committed to prison, and imputed to them such enormous and absurd crimes, as are sufficient of themselves to destroy all the credit of the accusation.

Besides their being universally charged with murder, robbery, and vices the most shocking to nature, every one, it was pretended, whom they received into their order, was obliged to renounce his Saviour, to spit upon the cross,
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and to join to this impiety the superstition of worshipping a gilded head, which was secretly kept in one of their houses at Marseilles. They also initiated, it was said, every candidate by such infamous rites, as could serve to no other purpose, than to degrade the order in his eyes, and destroy for ever the authority of all his superiors over him.
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Above a hundred of these unhappy gentlemen were put to the question, in order to extort from them a confession of their guilt: The more obstinate perished in the hands of their tormentors. Several, to procure immediate ease in the violence of their agonies, acknowledged whatever was required of them: Forged confessions were imputed to others: And Philip, as if their guilt were now certain, proceeded to a confiscation of all their treasures. But no sooner were the templars relieved from their tortures, than, preferring the most cruel execution to a life with infamy, they disavowed their confessions, exclaimed against the forgeries, justified the innocence of their order, and appealed to all the gallant actions, performed by them in ancient or later times, as a full apology for their conduct. The tyrant, enraged at this disappointment, and thinking himself now engaged in honour to proceed to extremities, ordered fifty-four of them, whom he branded as relapsed heretics, to perish by the punishment of fire in his capital: Great numbers expired after a like manner in other parts of the kingdom: And when he found, that the perseverance of these unhappy victims, in justifying to the last their innocence, had made deep impression on the spectators, he endeavoured to overcome the constancy of the templars by new inhumanities. The grand master of the order, John de Molay, and another great officer, brother to the sovereign of Dauphiny, were conducted to a scaffold, erected before the church of Notredame, at Paris: A full pardon was offered them on the one hand: The fire, destined for their execution, was shown them on the other: These gallant nobles still persisted in the protestations of their own innocence and that of their order; and were instantly hurried into the flames by the executioner.
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In all this barbarous injustice, Clement V. who was the creature of Philip, and then resided in France, fully concurred; and without examining a witness, or making any enquiry into the truth of facts, he, summarily, by the plenitude of his apostolic power, abolished the whole order. The templars all over Europe were thrown into prison; their conduct underwent a strict scrutiny; the power of their enemies still pursued and oppressed them; but no where, except in France, were the smallest traces of their guilt PLL v6.0 (generated September, 2011)

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pretended to be found. England sent an ample testimony of their piety and morals; but as the order was now annihilated, the knights were distributed into several convents, and their possessions were, by command of the pope, transferred to the order of St.

John.
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We now proceed to relate some other detached transactions of the present period.

The kingdom of England was afflicted with a grievous famine during several years of this reign. Perpetual rains and cold weather, not only destroyed the harvest, but bred a mortality among the cattle, and raised every kind of food to an enormous price.
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The parliament, in 1315, endeavoured to fix more moderate rates to commodities; not sensible that such an attempt was impracticable, and that, were it possible to reduce the price of provisions by any other expedient than by introducing plenty, nothing could be more pernicious and destructive to the public. Where the produce of a year, for instance, falls so far short, as to afford full subsistance only for nine months, the only expedient for making it last all the twelve, is to raise the prices, to put the people by that means on short allowance, and oblige them to save their food, till a more plentiful season. But in reality, the encrease of prices is a necessary consequence of scarcity; and laws, instead of preventing it, only aggravate the evil, by cramping and restraining commerce. The parliament accordingly, in the ensuing year, repealed their

ordinance, which they had found useless and burdensome.t

The prices affixed by the parliament are somewhat remarkable: Three pounds twelve shillings of our present money for the best stalled ox; for other oxen, two pounds eight shillings: A fat hog of two years old, ten shillings: A fat wether unshorn, a crown; if shorn, three shillings and six-pence: A fat goose, seven-pence halfpenny: A fat capon, six-pence: A fat hen, three-pence: Two chickens, three-pence:
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Four pigeons, three-pence: Two dozen of eggs, three-pence. If we consider these prices, we shall find, that butcher’s meat, in this time of great scarcity, must still have been sold, by the parliamentary ordinance, three times cheaper than our middling prices at present: Poultry somewhat lower; because, being now considered as a delicacy, it has risen beyond its proportion. In the country places of Ireland and Scotland, where delicacies bear no price, poultry is at present as cheap, if not cheaper, than butcher’s meat. But the inference I would draw from the comparison of prices is still more considerable: I suppose that the rates, affixed by parliament, were inferior to the usual market prices in those years of famine and mortality of cattle; and that these commodities, instead of a third, had really risen to a half of the present value. But the famine at that time was so consuming, that wheat was sometimes sold for above four pounds ten shillings a

quarter,w usually for three pounds;x
that is, twice our middling prices. A certain proof of the wretched state of tillage in those ages. We formerly found, that the middling price of corn in that period was half of the present price; while the middling price of cattle was only an eighth part: We here find the same immense disproportion in years of scarcity. It may thence be inferred with certainty, that the raising of corn was a species of manufactory, which few in that age could practise with advantage: And there is reason to think, that other manufactures more refined, were sold even beyond their present prices: At least there is a demonstration for it in the reign of Henry VII.

from the rates affixed to scarlet and other broad cloth by act of parliament. During all those times, it was usual for the princes and great nobility to make settlements of their velvet beds and silken robes, in the same manner as of their estates and manors.
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the list of jewels and plate, which had belonged to the ostentatious Gavaston, and which the king recovered from the earl of Lancaster after the murder of that favourite, we find some embroidered girdles, flowered shirts, and silk waistcoats.
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It was afterwards one article of accusation against that potent and opulent earl, when he was put to death, that he had purloined some of that finery of Gavaston’s. The ignorance of those ages in manufactures, and still more, their unskilful husbandry, seem a clear proof that the country was then far from being populous.