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There were also several princesses born to Edward by Philippa; to wit, Isabella, Joan, Mary, and Margaret, who espoused, in the order of their names, Ingelram de Coucy, earl of Bedford, Alphonso, king of Castile, John of Mountfort, duke of Brittany, and John Hastings, earl of Pembroke. The princess Joan died at Bordeaux before the consummation of her marriage.

It is remarked by an elegant historian,[**] that conquerors though usually the bane of bunian kind, proved often, in those feudal limes, the most indulgent of sovereigns: they stood most in need of supplies from their people; and not being able to compel them by force to submit to the necessary impositions, they were obliged to make them some compensation, by equitable laws and popular concessions.

     * Rymer, vol. vi. p. 564.

     ** Dr. Robertson’s Hist. of Scot. book i.

This remark is, in some measure, though imperfectly, justified by the conduct of Edward III. He took no steps of moment without consulting his parliament, and obtaining their approbation, which he afterwards pleaded as a reason for their supporting his measures.[*] The parliament, therefore, rose into greater consideration during his reign, and acquired more regular authority, than in any former time; and even the house of commons, which, during turbulent and factious periods, was naturally depressed by the greater power of the crown and barons, began to appear of some weight in the constitution. In the latter years of Edward, the king’s ministers were impeached in parliament, particularly Lord Latimer, who fell a sacrifice to the Authority of the commons;[**] and they even obliged the king to banish his mistress by their remonstrances. Some attention was also paid to the election of their members; and lawyers in particular, who were at that time men of a character somewhat inferior, were totally excluded the house during several parliaments.[***]

One of the most popular laws enacted by any prince, was the statute which passed in the twenty-fifth of this reign,[****] and which limited the cases of high treason, before vague and uncertain, to three principal heads—conspiring the death of the king, levying war against him, and adhering to his enemies and the judges were prohibited, if any other cases should occur, from inflicting the penalty of treason without an application to parliament. The bounds of treason were indeed so much limited by this statute, which still remains in force without any alteration, that the lawyers were obliged to enlarge them, and to explain a conspiracy for levying war against the king, to be equivalent to a conspiracy against his life; and this interpretation, seemingly forced, has, from the necessity of the case, been tacitly acquiesced in.

     * Cotton’s Abridg. p. 108, 120.

     ** Cotton’s Abridg. p. 122.

     *** Cotton’s Abridg. p. 18.

     **** Chap. 2.

It was also ordained that a parliament should be held once a year, or oftener, if need be; a law which, like many others, was never observed and lost its authority by disuse.[*]

Edward granted above twenty parliamentary confirmations of the Great Charter; and these concessions are commonly appealed to as proofs of his great indulgence to the people, and his tender regard for their liberties. But the contrary presumption is more natural. If the maxims of Edward’s reign had not been in general somewhat arbitrary, and if the Great Charter had not been frequently violated, the parliament would never have applied for these frequent confirmations, which could add no force to a deed regularly observed, and which could serve to no other purpose, than to prevent the contrary precedents from turning into a rule, and acquiring authority. It was indeed the effect of the irregular government during those ages, that a statute which had been enacted some years, instead of acquiring, was imagined to lose, force by time, and needed to be often renewed by recent statutes of the same sense and tenor. Hence likewise that general clause, so frequent in old acts of parliament, that the statutes, enacted by the king’s progenitors, should be observed;[**] a precaution which, if we do not consider the circumstances of the times, might appear absurd and ridiculous. The frequent confirmations in general terms of the privileges of the church proceeded from the same cause.

It is a clause in one of Edward’s statutes, “that no man, of what estate or condition soever, shall be put out of land or tenement, nor taken, nor imprisoned, nor disherited, nor put to death, without being brought in answer by due process of the law.”[***] This privilege was sufficiently secured by a clause of the Great Charter, which had received a general confirmation in the first chapter of the same statute. Why then is the clause so anxiously, and, as we may think, so superfluously repeated? Plainly, because there had been some late infringements of it, which gave umbrage to the commons.[****]

     * 4 Edward III. cap. 14.

     ** 36 Edward III. cap. 1. 37 Edward III. cap. 1, etc.

     *** 28 Edward III. cap. 3.

     **** They assert, in the fifteenth of this reign, that there
     had been such instances. Cotton’s Abridg. p. 31. They repeat
     the same in the twenty-first year. See p. 59.

But there is no article in which the laws are more frequently repeated during this reign, almost in the same terms, than that of purveyance which the parliament always calls an outrageous and intolerable grievance, and the source of infinite damage to the people.[*] The parliament tried to abolish this prerogative altogether, by prohibiting any one from taking goods without the consent of the owners,[**] and by changing the heinous name of purveyors, as they term it, into that of buyers;[***] but the arbitrary conduct of Edward still brought back the grievance upon them, though contrary both to the Great Charter and to many statutes. This disorder was in a great measure derived from the state of the public finances, and of the kingdom; and could therefore the less admit of remedy. The prince frequently wanted ready money; yet his family must be subsisted: he was therefore obliged to employ force and violence for that purpose, and to give tallies, at what rate he pleased, to the owners of the goods which he laid hold of. The kingdom also abounded so little in commodities, and the interior communication was so imperfect, that had the owners been strictly protected by law, they could easily have exacted any price from the king; especially in his frequent progresses, when he came to distant and poor places, where the court did not usually reside, and where a regular plan for supplying it could not be easily established. Not only the king, but several great lords, insisted upon this right of purveyance within certain districts.[****]

The magnificent Castle of Windsor was built by Edward III., and his method of conducting the work may serve as a specimen of the condition of the people in that age. Instead of engaging workmen by contracts and wages, he assessed every county in England to send him a certain number of masons, tilers, and carpenters, as if he had been levying an army.[*****]