FREE BOOKS

Author's List




PREV.   NEXT  
|<   96   97   98   99   100   101   102   103   104   105   106   107   108   109   110   111   112   113   114   115   116   117   118   119   120  
121   122   123   124   125   126   127   128   >>  
le," added the Monarch, "that what concerns all should be judged of by all." Concerning the possibility of these members dissenting from his decrees, however, His Majesty was not quite so eloquent. That contingency was one which a sovereign in the thirteenth century could scarcely be expected to take into his august consideration. But King Edward wanted more money, and apparently preferred to grind it out of his monks rather than his peasants. He now instituted a search of all the monasteries in England, and commanded the confiscation of all cash. The monasteries resisting the excessive taxation laid upon them, the King seized their lay fees. In the December of this year, Earl Edmund left Berkhamsted for Cornwall, taking with him Vivian, and leaving Ademar behind as the only gentleman in the party. He was going on an errand unpleasant to himself, for the King had committed to his charge a portion of the Gascon army. War and contention were altogether out of his line, yet he had no choice but to obey. He joined his cousin, the Earl of Lancaster, and the Earl of Lincoln, in Cornwall, and together they sailed on the fifteenth of January 1296, from a Cornish port termed Plumhupe in the "Chronicle of Worcester," but not easy to identify now, unless it be taken as a blunder for Plymouth, and the chronicler be supposed ignorant of its county. With them were twenty-five barons and a thousand knights. During the absence of the Earl, it struck his cousin, the King--for no other reason can be guessed--that the Earl's treasury being much better filled than his own, he might reasonably pay his debts out of his cousin's overflowing coffers. Accordingly he sent to Berkhamsted, much to the dismay of the household, and coolly annexed his cousin's valuables to the Crown. But Earl Edmund was a man in whose eyes gold was of comparatively small value, partly because he set other things much higher, and partly because he had always had so much of it, that poverty was a trouble which he was scarcely able to realise. A sad year was 1296 to the royal family of England. The Gascon expedition proved so disastrous, that Edmund, Earl of Lancaster, died of grief and disappointment at Bayonne on the fifth of June; and the Scottish one, though brilliantly successful in a political light, cost no less, for an arrow shot at a venture, at the siege of Berwick, quenched the young life of Richard Plantagenet, the only brother and last ne
PREV.   NEXT  
|<   96   97   98   99   100   101   102   103   104   105   106   107   108   109   110   111   112   113   114   115   116   117   118   119   120  
121   122   123   124   125   126   127   128   >>  



Top keywords:

cousin

 

Edmund

 

England

 
monasteries
 
partly
 

Gascon

 
Lancaster
 

Berkhamsted

 

Cornwall

 

scarcely


treasury
 

venture

 

guessed

 

Berwick

 

quenched

 
reason
 

filled

 

struck

 

absence

 
twenty

county

 
supposed
 

ignorant

 

Plymouth

 

brother

 

blunder

 

During

 
Richard
 

knights

 

barons


thousand

 

Plantagenet

 

chronicler

 

coffers

 

Bayonne

 

disappointment

 

poverty

 

higher

 

things

 

identify


trouble

 

family

 

expedition

 

disastrous

 

realise

 

dismay

 
successful
 

brilliantly

 

political

 

overflowing