Outlines of Universal History Part 24

| | | +--CHARLES VII, 1422-1461, | _m_. Mary, daughter | of Louis II of Anjou.

| | | +--LOUIS XI, 1461-1483, | _m_. (2), Charlotte, | daughter of Louis, | Duke of Savoy.

| | | +--3, CHARLES VIII, 1483-1498, | _m_. Anne of Bretagne.

| +--Louis, Duke of Orleans (_d_. 1407) _m_.

Valentina, daughter of Gian Galeazzi, Duke of Milan.

| +--Charles, Duke of Orleans (_d_. 1467), | _m_. Mary of Cleves.

| | | +--2, Anne of Bretagne, | _m_. LOUIS XII, 1498-1515.

| | | +--Claude, _m_. FRANCIS I, 1515-1547.

| +--John, Count of Angouleme (_d_. 1467).

| +--Charles, count (_d_. 1496), _m_. Louisa, daughter of Philip II, Duke of Savoy.

| +--FRANCIS I, 1515-1547.

| | | +--HENRY II. 1547-1559, _m._.

| Catherine de' Medici, _d._. 1589.

| | | +--FRANCIS II, 1559-1560, _m_.

| | Mary, Queen of Scots.

| | | +--CHARLES IX, 1560-1574, | | _m_. Elizabeth, daughter of | |Emperor Maximilian II.

| | | +--HENRY III. 1574-1589, _m_.

| |Louis, daughter of Nicholas, | |Duke of Mercoeur.

| | | +--Margaret, | _m_.

| +--HENRY IV, succeeded 1589.

| | | +--Jeanne, _m_. Anthony of Bourbon.

| | +--MARGARET, _m._ (2), HENRY II OF NAVARRE.

ENGLAND.--DESCENDANTS OF EDWARD I

EDWARD I, 1272-1307, _m._.

1, Eleanor, daughter of Ferdinand III of Castile; | | +--4, EDWARD II, 1307-1327, _m._.

Isabel, daughter of Philip IV of France.

| +--EDWARD III, 1327-1377, _m._ Philippa, daughter of William III of Hainault.

| +--Edward, the Black Prince, | _m._ Joan of Kent.

| | | +--RICHARD II, 1377-1399, _m._ | Anne, daughter of Emperor Charles IV.

| +--Lionel, Duke of Clarence.

| | | +--Philippa, _m._ Edmund Mortimer.

| | | +--Roger Mortimer.

| | | +--Edmund Mortimer.

| | | +--Anne Mortimer, _m._ | Richard, Earl of Cambridge.

| | | +--Richard, Duke of York.

| | | +--EDWARD IV, 1461-1483.

| | | | | +--EDWARD V (_d._ 1483).

| | | +--RICHARD III, 1483-1485.

| +--John of Gaunt, Duke of Lancaster.

| | | +--HENRY IV, 1399-1413.

| | | +--HENRY V, 1413-1422.

| | | +--HENRY VI, 1422-1461.

| +--Edmund, Duke of York.

| +--Richard, Earl of Cambridge _m._ Anne Mortimer (wh. see).

2, Margaret, daughter of Philip III of France.

PERIOD IV. FROM THE END OF THE CRUSADES TO THE FALL OF CONSTANTINOPLE.

(_A.D. 1270-1453_.)

THE DECLINE OP ECCLESIASTICAL AUTHORITY: THE GROWTH OF THE NATIONAL SPIRIT AND OF MONARCHY.

CHARACTER OF THE NEW ERA.--The Church was supreme in the era of the Crusades. These had been great movements of a society of which the Pope was the head,--movements in which the pontiffs were the natural leaders. We come now to an era when the predominance of the Church declines, and the Papacy loses ground. Mingled with religion, there is diffused a more secular spirit. The nations grow to be more distinct from one another. Political relations come to be paramount. The national spirit grows strong,--too strong for outside ecclesiastical control. Within each nation the laity is inclined to put limits to the power and privileges of the clergy. In several of the countries, monarchy in the modern European form gets a firm foothold. The enfranchis.e.m.e.nt of the towns, the rise of commerce, the influence gained by the legists and by the Roman law, of which they were the expounders, had betokened the dawn of a new era. The development of the national languages and literatures signified its coming. Germany and the Holy Roman Empire no longer absorb attention. What is taking place in France and England is, to say the least, of equal moment.

CHAPTER I. ENGLAND AND FRANCE: SECOND PERIOD OP RIVALs.h.i.+P: THE HUNDRED YEARS' WAR (A.D. 1339-1453).

PHILIP III. OF FRANCE (1270-1285).--In France royalty made a steady progress down to the long War of a Hundred Years. _Philip III_. (1270-1285) married his son to the heiress of _Navarre_. His sway extended to the Pyrenees. He failed in an expedition against _Peter_, king of _Aragon_, who had supported the Sicilians against _Charles of Anjou_; but the time for foreign conquests had not come.

PHILIP IV. OF FRANCE (1285-1314): WAR WITH EDWARD I. OF ENGLAND.-- _Philip IV._ (the Fair) has been styled the "King of the Legists."

He surrounded himself with lawyers, who furnished him, from their storehouse of Roman legislation, weapons with which to face baron and pope. In 1292 conflicts broke out between English and French sailors. _Philip_, in his character as suzerain, undertook to take peaceful possession of _Guienne_, but was prevented by the English garrisons. Thereupon he summoned _Edward I._ of England, as the holder of the fiefs, before his court. _Edward_ sent his brother as a deputy, but the French king declared that the fiefs were forfeited in consequence of his not appearing in person.

In the war that resulted (1294-1297), each party had his natural allies. _Philip_ had for his allies the Welsh and the Scots, while _Edward_ was supported by the Count of Flanders and by _Adolphus_ of Na.s.sau, king of the Romans. In Scotland, _William Wallace_ withstood Edward. _Philip_ was successful in _Flanders_ and in _Guienne_. _Edward_, who was kept in England by his war with the Scots, secured a truce through the mediation of Pope _Boniface VIII_. Philip then took possession of Flanders, with the exception of _Ghent_. Flanders was at that time the richest country in Europe. Its cities were numerous, and the whole land was populous and industrious. From England it received the wool used in its thriving manufactures. To England its people were attached. Philip loaded the Flemish people with imposts. They rose in revolt, and _Robert d'Artois_, Philip's brother, met with a disastrous defeat in a battle with the Flemish troops at _Courtrai_, in 1302. The Flemish burghers proved themselves too strong for the royal troops. Flanders was restored to its count, four towns being retained by France.

CONFLICT OF PHILIP IV. AND BONIFACE VIII.--The expenses of _Philip_, in the support of his army and for other purposes, were enormous. The old feudal revenues were wholly insufficient for the new methods of government. To supply himself with money, he not only levied onerous taxes on his subjects, and practiced ingenious extortion upon the Jews, but he resorted again and again to the device of debasing the coin. His resolution to tax the property of the Church brought him into a controversy, momentous in its results, with Pope _Boniface VIII_.

_Boniface's_ idea of papal prerogative was fully as exalted as that formerly held by _Hildebrand_ and _Innocent III_. But he had less prudence and self-restraint, and the temper of the times was now altered. If Philip was sustained by the Roman law and its interpreters, whose counsels he gladly followed, _Boniface_, on the other hand, could lean upon the system of ecclesiastical or canon law, which had long been growing up in Europe, and of which the _Canonists_ were the professional expounders. The vast wealth of the clergy had led to enactments for keeping it within bounds, like the statute of _mortmain_ in England (1279) forbidding the giving of land to religious bodies without license from the king. The word _mortmain_ meant _dead hand_, and was applied to possessors of land, especially ecclesiastical corporations, that could not alienate it. The jurisdiction of ecclesiastical courts, which kings, because they happened to have a less liking for feudal law, had often favored, had now come to be another great matter of contention. In 1296 _Boniface VIII_., in the bull _clericis laicos_,--so named, like other papal edicts, from the opening words,--forbade the imposition of extraordinary taxes upon the clergy without the consent of the Holy See. _Philip_ responded by forbidding foreigners to sojourn in France, which was equivalent to driving out of the country the Roman priests and those who brought in the obnoxious bull. At the same time he forbade money to be carried out of France. This last prohibition cut off contributions to Rome. The king a.s.serted the importance of the laity in the Church, as well as of the clergy, and the right of the king of France to take charge of his own realm. There was a seeming reconciliation for a time, through concessions on the side of the Pope; but the strife broke out afresh in 1301. _Philip_ arrested _Bernard Saisset_, a bold legate of the Pope. _Boniface_ poured forth a stream of complaints against _Philip_ (1301), and went so far as to summon the French clergy to a council at _Rome_ for the settlement of all disorders in France. The king then appealed to the French nation. On the 10th of April, 1302, he a.s.sembled in the Church of _Notre Dame_, at Paris, a body which, for the first time, contained the deputies of the universities and of the towns, and for this reason is considered to have been the first meeting of the _States General_, The clergy, the barons, the burghers, sided cordially with the king. The Pope then published the famous bull, _Unam Sanctam_, in which the subjection of the temporal power to the spiritual is proclaimed with the strongest emphasis. Boniface then excommunicated Philip, and was preparing to depose him, and to hand over his kingdom to the emperor, _Albert I_.

DEATH OF BONIFACE VIII.--Meantime _Philip_ had a.s.sembled anew the States General (1303). The legists lent their counsel and active support. It was proposed to the king to convoke a general council of the Church, and to summon the Pope before it. _William of Nogaret_, a great lawyer in the service of Philip, was directed to lodge with Boniface this appeal to a council, and to publish it at _Rome_. With _Sciarra Colonna_, between whose family and the Pope there was a mortal feud, _Nogaret_, attended also by several hundred hired soldiers, entered _Anagni_, where _Boniface_ was then staying. The two messengers heaped upon him the severest reproaches, and _Colonna_ is said to have struck the old pontiff in the face with his mailed hand. The French were driven out of the town by the people; but from the indignities which he had suffered, and the anger and shame consequent upon them, _Boniface_ shortly afterwards died.

THE "BABYLONIAN CAPTIVITY" (1309-1379).--From the date of the events just narrated, the pontifical authority sank, and the secular authority of sovereigns and nations was in the ascendant. After the short pontificate of _Benedict XL_, who did what he could to reconcile the ancient but estranged allies, France and the Papacy, a French prelate, the Archbishop of Bordeaux, was made pope under the name of _Clement V_., he having previously engaged to comply with the wishes of Philip. While the Papacy continued subordinate to the French king, its moral influence in other parts of Christendom was of necessity reduced. _Clement V_, was crowned at _Lyons_ in 1305, and in 1309 established himself at _Avignon_, a possession of the Holy See on the borders of France. After him there followed at _Avignon_ seven popes who were subject to French influence (1309-1376). It is the period in the annals of the Papacy which is called the "Babylonian captivity." _Philip_ remained implacable. He was determined to secure the condemnation of _Boniface VIII_., even after his death. _Clement V_. had no alternative but to summon a council, which was held at _Vienne_ in 1311, when Boniface was declared to have been orthodox, at the same time that Philip was s.h.i.+elded from ecclesiastical censure or reproach.

SUPPRESSION OF THE KNIGHTS TEMPLARS.--One of the demands which _Philip_ had made of _Clement V_., and a demand which the council had to grant, was the condemnation of the order of Knights Templars, whose vast wealth Philip coveted. On the 13th of October, 1307, the Templars were arrested overall France,--an act which evinces both the power of Philip, and his injustice. They were charged with secret immoralities, and with practices involving impiety. Provincial councils were called together to decree the judgment preordained by the king. The Templars were examined under torture, and many of them were burned at the stake. A large number of those who were put to death revoked the confessions which had been extorted from them by bodily suffering. Individuals may have been guilty of some of the charges, but there is no warrant for such a verdict against the entire order. The order was abolished by _Clement V_.

LAW STUDIES: MERCENARY TROOPS.--During the reign of Philip the Fair, it was ordained that Parliament should sit twice every year at Paris (1303). A university for the study of law was founded at _Orleans_. The king needed soldiers as well as lawyers. Mercenary troops were beginning to take the place of feudal bands. Philip brought the Genoese galleys against the s.h.i.+ps of Flanders.

THE THREE SONS OF PHILIP: THE "SALIC LAW."--Three sons of Philip reigned after him. _Louis X._ (1314-1316) was induced to take part in an aristocratic reaction, in behalf of "the good old customs,"

against the legists; but he continued to emanc.i.p.ate the serfs. He was not succeeded by his daughter, but by his brother. This precedent was soon transformed into the "Salic law" that only heirs in the male line could succeed to the throne. The rule was really the result of the "genealogical accident" that for three hundred and forty-one years, or since the election of Hugh Capet, every French king had been succeeded by his son. In several cases the son had been crowned in the lifetime of the father. Thus the principle of heredity, and of heredity in the male line, had taken root.

Under _Philip V._ and his successor, _Charles IV._ (1322-1328), there was cruel persecution of the Jews, and many people suffered death on the charge of sorcery.

EDWARD I. OF ENGLAND (1272-1307): CONQUEST OF WALES: WILLIAM WALLACE.--_Edward_, who was in the Holy Land when his father died, was a gallant knight and an able ruler,--"the most brilliant monarch of the fourteenth century." _Llywelyn_, prince of Wales, having refused to render the oath due from a va.s.sal, was forced to yield. When a rebellion broke out several years later, Wales was conquered, and the leader of the rebellion was executed (1283). Thus Wales was joined to England; and the king gave to his son the t.i.tle of "Prince of Wales," which the eldest son of the sovereign of England has since worn. _Edward_ was for many years at war with Scotland, which now included the Gaelic-speaking people of the Highlands, and the English-speaking people of the Lowlands. The king of England had some claim to be their suzerain, a claim which the Scots were slow to acknowledge. The old line of Scottish princes of the Celtic race died out. Alexander III. fell with his horse over a cliff on the coast of Fife. Two compet.i.tors for the throne arose, both of them of Norman descent,--_John Baliol_ and _Robert Bruce_. The Scots made _Edward_ an umpire, to decide which of them should reign. He decided for _Baliol_ (1292), stipulating that the suzerainty should rest with himself. When he called upon _Baliol_ to aid him against France, the latter renounced his allegiance, and declared war. He was conquered at _Dunbar_ (1296), and made prisoner. The strongholds in Scotland fell into the hands of the English. The country appeared to be subjugated, but the Scots were ill-treated by the English. _William Wallace_ put himself at the head of a band of followers, defeated them near _Stirling_ in 1292, and kept up the contest for several years with heroic energy. At length _Edward_, through the skill acquired by the English in the use of the bow, was the victor at _Falkirk_ in 1298. _Wallace_, having been betrayed into his hands, was brutally executed in London (1305).

Edward carried off from Scone the stone on which the Scottish kings had always been crowned. It is now in Westminster Abbey, under the coronation chair of the sovereign of Great Britain. There was a legend, that on this same stone the patriarch Jacob laid his head when he beheld angels ascending and descending at Bethel. Where that stone was, it was believed that Scottish kings would reign. This was held to be verified when English kings of Scottish descent inherited the crown.

ROBERT BRUCE.--The struggle for Scottish independence was taken up by _Robert Bruce_, grandson of the Bruce who had claimed the crown. His plan to gain the throne was disclosed by _John Comyn_, nephew of _Baliol_: this _Comyn_ young Bruce stabbed in a church at Dumfries. He was then crowned king at Scone, and summoned the Scots to his standard. The English king sent his son _Edward_ to conquer him; but the king himself, before he could reach Scotland, died.

PARLIAMENT: THE JEWS.--Under Edward, the form of government by king, lords, and commons was firmly established. Parliament met in two distinct houses. Against his inclination he swore to the "Confirmation of the Charters," by which he engaged not to impose taxes without the consent of Parliament. The statute of _mortmain_ has been referred to already. The clergy paid their taxes to the king when they found, that, unless they did so, the judges would not protect them. _Edward_ had protected the _Jews_, who, in England as elsewhere, were often falsely accused of horrible crimes, and against whom there existed, on account of their religion, a violent prejudice. At length he yielded to the popular hatred, and banished them from the kingdom, permitting them, however, to take with them their property.