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Edward had been on the throne for 18 years. What had he been doing?
Unlike his father, Henry III, Edward I was more a military King and not so much in favour of the church. In 1279 he stopped the church being given
more lands, as they didn’t pay tax, and he didn’t like this. When a baron died, those who inherited his land had to pay a tax. This was good for Edward. But
some people got round this by giving their land to the church when they died. The land owned by the church, and there was a lot of it, didn’t ever pay this
tax as the church never died. So Edward brought out a statute or law saying the church couldn’t have any more land. The statute was called the Statute of
Mortmain. Mortmain literally means, in French, the dead hand, presumably meaning no one could tax it as it was already dead.
In 1277, Edward I, the military man, had invaded Wales and forced Llywelyn ap Gruffyd, Prince of Wales, to pay homage. In 1282, Llywelyn and his
brother Dafydd rebelled against Edward, who defeated and killed them both. The invasion was carried out by one of the largest armies ever assembled by an
English king and had Norman cavalry and Welsh archers and was the way armies fought for years afterwards.
Edward built a network of castles in Wales to emphasise his power and authority. You can still see many of these today. In 1301, he made his eldest
son, also Edward, Prince of Wales, a title the eldest son of the English monarch continues to take to this day. I am actually old enough to have watched
Prince Charles being invested with the title Prince of Wales in 1969 at Caernarfon Castle in North Wales. The castle was one of those Edward had built.
In 1290 Edward held a tournament at Winchester castle to celebrate the engagement of one of his daughters. Edward was a great fan of the story of King
Arthur and it is possible he had a massive round table made so that all the knights he invited could sit down and no knight would have any precedence over any other
knight. The table is 5.5 metres in diameter and because I listened in my geometry lessons in school, I can tell you that means it is about 17¼ metres all the way
round. So, looking at the picture, there are 25 names of knights which means each night had 70 centimetres of space. By the way Edward I had it as a table but
Edward III had the legs cut off and hung it on a wall. The artwork in the picture was added in Tudor times by Henry VIII and, guess what, it shows Henry VIII
sitting at the head as King Arthur with the Tudor Rose in the middle. The names around the edge are those of the mythical King Arthur's knights. Funnily enough,
if Henry's eldest brother had lived, he would have indeed been King Arthur, but you'll find out about that later.
Also in 1290 Edward had expelled all Jews from England. They had arrived, mainly from France, after William the Conqueror and acted as bankers
to the ruling and business classes. In 1275, Edward had stopped Jewish traders from lending money if they charged interest which meant they couldn’t really
make a living but made Edward’s life a lot easier if he wanted to borrow money. In 1287, he imprisoned and ransomed 3,000 Jewish people. The ransom was paid,
but in 1290 an edict was issued expelling all Jews from England. Looks to me like Edward had run out of ways of taking money from them and if they weren’t in
the country, he didn’t have to pay them back.
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