The three Edwards

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Edward I, Conquest of Wales

Edward I:

Edward I was born in Westminster, on the evening of 17th June, 1239.

He was the first child to his family. His father was Henry III while his mother was Eleanor of Provence.

He was nicknamed Longshanks because of how tall he was.

One of his childhood friend was a person who was the son of one of Henry III’s brother’s son, Henry of Almain.

At the Age of fifteen, Edward married the thirteen year old Eleanor of Castile (1241-1290) on the 1st of November, 1254.

He became King in 1274.

He was a great military leader, having taken part in the rebellion with his father and joining the crusades.

He had a dream to unite all of the parts of Britain and being overlord Britain

He fought in 2 military campaigns, the Campaign of Wales and the Campaign of Scotland.

Edward I and Wales:

A prince named Llewelyn had managed to declare himself prince in Henry III time.

In 1274, Llewelyn refused to pay homage.

This was not to be tolerated, as Edward was concerned as far as that he owned him loyalty and service as the king of England.

Llewelyn continued invading, and in 1276-77, Edward invaded Wales.

Many previous attacks had failed over the years to defeat the Welsh in the mountain of Snowdonia, but Edward prepared ahead of time.

He split his army into 3 battles, all 3 surrounding the mountains of Snowdonia, cut the welsh food supply so that they could starve, allied himself with some of the welsh nobles, and cut down the whole forest for Scottish men hiding in the forest.

Edward I won

Llewelyn didn’t like Edward being overlord and his brother, David raised an army.

Edward I built his army to and it was a huge amount of men

However Llewelyn was almost accidentally killed, and David was handed to the English.

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Edward I and Scotland:

Edward invaded Scotland because it was allied with France.

This is what kept Scotland separate from England.

The King of Scotland, Alexander III, paid homage to Edward

However, Alexander died in 1286.

He used the oppourinty to expand his conquest of Wales

The only heir to the throne, Margret of Norway, Alexander’s 3 year old granddaughter, became next in line.

Edward was asked to keep an eye out on Margaret and obliged.

Edward I arranged a marriage between his son, called Edward and Margaret.

However, Margaret suddenly dies in 1291 at the age of 7.

There was no clear heir to the throne.

As overlord, he must decide who is king.

Many men stepped forward, but out of the three best people, John Ballio, Robert the Bruce and John Hastings, Edward chose John Ballio.

Ballio was crowned in 1292 and he swore homage to Edward.

However, John turned out to be weak.

The Scottish lord, supicous of Edward, convinced John to start a war against France.

Balio did, and Edward tried to convince the nobles to raise money

However, that failed.

Edward imprisioned some of the Jews and burned at the stake some of the Jews.

The jews were moneylenders.

Edward then got the Jews money for the war and gained the nobles support.

Finally they went to war.

Edward finally invaded England and publicly stripped Ballio.

William Wallace:

Many scots were unhappy about Edward’s control of England.

Many stepped up to fight the English, the most famous being William Wallace.

William Wallace was born in the 1270s.

Wallace was born in Eldersile in Renfrewshire.

He was born into a well known social family.

He was best at Gorilla Warfare, Warfare where one side hides and then attackes.

In 1297, Wallace attacked the town of Lanark.

He killed the English sheriff and made a rebellion. Men joined Wallace and began to drive the English out of Fife and Perthshire.

In September, 1297, the Battle of Stirling bridge began.

Battle of Strilling Bridge:

The English woke up late.

They fell in a trap

They should have crossed the river at low tide because then they could have crossed in lines of five.

They went a mile down stream using a narrow wooden bridge.

William Wallace and his men were waiting up on Abbey Crag so they could see what was happening.

The English crossed 2 by 2

William Wallace say, and saw this as a good time for a ambush.

Wallace’s men destroyed the bridge, splitting the men half and half

Wallace gave an order for attack. The Scottish fighters knocked some of the English and killed. The rest fled. The battle was about an hour

After Stirling Bridge:

He was knighted by John Ballio and gave the title ‘guarding of the Kingdom’.

The English were not happy.

On the 22nd3 July 1298, the Scottish and English armies met near Falkirk

The battle of Falkirk had begun.

Battle of Falkirk.

Wallace wanted to prove himself in battle.

In formed his men into 4 rings, or shilitorns, with pointed stakes in front of the shilitrons.

Edward used the Welsh longbow, a decimating weapon with a range of a quarter of a mile.

They sent over arrows which killed the scots.

The English cavalry then rode in to begin the killing.

Up to 8,000 scots lost their lives.

Wallace escaped but lost the support of many Scottish people

Aftermath of the Battle of Falkirk:

At some point he resigned and was succeeded by Robert the Bruce.

He went overseas to France then came back to Scotland in 1303.

Robert the Bruce had accepted a truce with Edward, and in 1304, John Comyn called a truce with England as well.

In 1305, Wallace was betrayed by one of his own countrymen and taken to England

He was charged and tried of treason

Wallace denied, and on the 23rd of August, he was hung, drawn and quartered.

His head was placed on London bridge, and his limbs were displayed in Newcastle, Berwick, Stirling and Perths

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Edward I and Robert the Bruce:

-Edward I defeated Wallace, but there was still Robert the Bruce

-Bruce became king in 27 March, 1306, elected by the nobles.

-At one point he was forced to watch a spider weave and destroy it web, giving him a new heart.

-Edward felt that the Scottish nobles had betrayed him as overlord.

-However, Edward imprisoned Isabel of Buchan in a heart shaped cage.

-Edward then was riding up to Scotland

-However, he died of camp fiver.

-He wished for his heart to go to the holy land.

-His funeral was at Westminster Abbey

Edward II:

-He started his reign in 1307

-He was so unpopular because:

he was a weak military leader

not very intelligent

he choose favorites as advisors to help him rule.

The Scottish drove the English out of Scotland

-One of his favorites was Piers Gaveston, a French knight.

-However, the nobles of England didn’t like Piers as his advisor, as they felt jealous

-The leader of them was Thomas the Earl of Lancaster

-The barons exiled Piers Gaveston

-However, Edward brought Gaveston back.

-Lancaster and the other nobles then exciuted Gaveston.

-Robert the Bruce took advantage of this and then raised an army.

-He began raiding the north of England

-He threatened one of the last English stronghold of Scotland: Sterling Castle

Edward II and the Battle of Bannockburn:

-The battle of Bannockburn was against Edward II of England and Robert the Bruce of Scotland

-Edward army consisted out of archers, cavalry and foot soldiers, and had more men the Robert’s army.

-Robert’s army had between 6000-10000 men, which consisted of foot soldiers and a small body of cavalry.

-The Scots used the schilitrons, armed with long spears.

-These moved around, unlike in the Battle of Falkirk.

-The Scots choose their battlefield well, as it was surrounded by marsh land, making it impossible for the English knights to ride around the Scottish men.

-Also, the English knights had to cross a stream

-The day before the main battle, on June 23rd, a English knight challenged Robert the Bruce.

-Bruce, who was armed with a battle axe, moved aside(as the knight was carrying a lance) and then slammed his axe into the knights head, splitting it in half.

-On June 24th, the day of the main battle, the nobles grew impatient and advanced their men.

-This was because of no central leadership.

-The calvary also found that they couldn’t break the shilltrons, and the English further back couldn’t fight.

-The English tried to break thegog scottish line but the Scots resisted.

-Then the English spotted a large number of people moving to join the Scottish defence(these were camp follower, the young, the sick and the women) and the English tried to flee.

-The men were cut down or drowned in the marshes.

-Edward himself only narrowly escaped.

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Edward II and the aftermath of Bannockburn:

The fall at Bannockburn meant that Edward was in mercy of the barons. Lancaster ran the government for a while,

The King wanted to restore royal power by choosing favourites, this time Hugh Despensers and his son, also called Hugh.

This lead to a rebellion in 1321, when Edward was forced to send the Despensers into exile.

The king struct back in late 1321, rasing an army and Edward defeated Lancaster's forces in 1322.

Lancaster was captured and beheaded as a traitor.

In 1322, the Statue of York was passed, stating that the king's subjects could never force reforms that were against royal power. Parliament remained, but it's powers were limited

Edward II and the end of his regin

Things began to change for Edward

His wife, Queen Isabella, was the daughter of Philip IV, King of France.

She was engaged to Edward when she was 12 years old. Isabella produced four children.

She spent most of her married life being jealous about Edward's favourites.

When she was asked to help settle Edward problems by talking to the French king, her brother, she swiftly took the chance to to join with a rebel English lord, Roger Mortimer, against her husband.

When she sailed to England with a small army, not a finger was raised to help Edward

This was because of his failures of a warrior king, his use of favourites, and the struggle with the barons.

This made the entire country against him.

The Despensers were hunted down and executed, and Edward was forced to give the throne to his 14 year old son, Edward.

Edward II was a threat to the Queen and Mortimer.

He died within a year.

His death at Berkeley castle was probably order by the Queen and Mortimer.

How he died was not clear.

Edward III:

In many ways Edward III was like Edward I.

He was known as one of England's greatest warrior kings.

When he was 15, he was under control of his mother Queen Isabella and her lover Roger Moritmor.

Between them, Isabella and Mortimor ruled on Edward's behalf, leaving the king with major financing trouble.

At 17, however, Edward broke into the queen's bedroom and arrested Mortimor. Mortimor was found guilty of treason and executed.

She spent the rest of her days in a castle in Norfolk.

She was buried in London in 1358 in a habit of a nun.

Edward III and the Hundred years war:

The was a number of reasons for the hundred years war. This is:

There had been more fighting with the Scots, who were allied and receiving aid from the French

The English control of Gascony angered the Kings of France

The death, without children, of the last French King, Charles IV, meant that Edward I had a claim through the French through his mother, Queen Isabella, who was Charles' sister. However, it was given to Phillip VI of Valois.

Against this, Edward III had threats against the French lands.

When the war broke out in 1337, Edward first efforts gained very little

In fact, the French sussecfully raided England in 1338 and 1339.

Edward spent all his money, and had to leave his wife and children in Antwerp as hostages until he could pay back his loans.

Having raised more money, Edward set sail to attack a larger fleet of the coast off the town of Sluys.

On June 24th, 1340, the English ships were attacked.

The French had anchored their ships in three lines, and were unable to move.

Although Edward was slightly wounded in battle, he won a great victory

18000 frenchmen died.

However. Edward was not doing well. Money was becoming short.

But things gradually improved for Edward in the south of France, he decided to invade France from the north.

Edward III and the campaign of Crecy

The Crecy Campaign began on July 1346, when Edward got 15,000 men and landed his force in Normandy.

Edward then marched inland, taking and sacking the town of Caen, killing 3,000 of it's citizen.

Edward were certainly terrifying the French and gathering riches, but this did not help Edward's claim as King.

As Edward marched east and north, Edward reached the river Seine.

King Phillip VI of France, who had gathered a large army at Rouen, was trying to block off the English by destroying all the bridges on the river Seine.

The English, plundering and destroying as they went, the English were forced to go ever closer to Paris in search of a crossing.

Paris panicked as the English came within twenty miles, but Edward only wanted to cross the Seine.

At Poissy, enough of the bridge survived for the English to rebuild it, and the English crossed on 15th of August

Edward led his force north, and Philip followed, marching hard and reaching the river Siene first.

Again, the French attempted to destroy or guard all the crossing places to force the smaller English army into battle.

The English had move further west towards the coast.

This was because they were unable to cross the river

There food supplies were running out.

Phillip moved most of his army on to the south side of the Somme.

Phillip was marching to catch Edward

However, the English learnt of a tidal ford in Blanchetaque and forced their way through the French guards.

Edward knew that the French were too close and that it was futile to keep running.

The time had come to choose a battlefield.

Just beyond the village of Crecy, on 26th of August, he placed his army on a ridge facing south-east, using a windmill as his command post.

It is estimated that Edward had around 12000 men.

Edward III and the armies at the battle of Crecy

The English army had a small number of knights and mounted men at arms, heavily armoured with mail and plate armour.

The English depended upon archers, equipped with the longbow.

Although the crossbow could fire further, the longbow could launch ten or more arrows a minute, making the crossbow faster then the longbow.

Used in large enough numbers and with the right kind of arrowhead, the English longbow could penetrate mail and plate armour, causing major problems to attacking armoured men.

The English had learnt, fighting the English and French, that mounted charges weren't as effective as dismounted knights fighting alongside large groups of archers.

The english waited in two large groups in front of the windmill in command of the Earl of Northampton, and Edward's sixteen-year-old son, Edward the Black Prince.

King Edward held a group behind the reserve.

The French army had perhaps 30,000 to 40,000 men, largely of mounted knights and men-at-arms.

These men saw warfare as a chance to display their fighting ability and bravery;

The men were not easy to control.

There was also a large force of hired Genoese crossbowmen, but the French used them to the minimum of their ability

Edward III and the battle of Crecy:

Phillip's army arrived at the battlefield late on 26th August, 1346, and the king was advised to wait until the next morning.

This was because many of his men were still some distance away.

But the nobles felt like it was shameful to retreat, and more French knights were arriving and pushing forward

Phillip felt he had no choice but to attack and send the crossbowmen forward.

There was a rain shower as they advanced wetting their bowstrings, and to make matters worse, the crossbowmen found they were firing into the setting sun.

The longbowmen, on high ground and in greater numbers, showered arrows down at the French crossbowmen, who began to retreat, only be trampled by the French calvary who were moving up into position behind them.

Again, the English longbowmen sent flights of arrows into the French

As soon as the first charge was broken, another came, and then the next.

The English archers kept their work, but a few knights managed to reach the English lines.

In all, the French charged 15 times until it was to dark to see.

King Phillip, who had a horse killed under the battlefield and had been wounded, was led out of the battlefield.

Another king, blind king John of Luxembourg, King of Bohemia, was an ally of the French and insisted that his followers lead him into the battle.

The next day, his body was found tied to his men.

The prince of Wales took this symbol of three feathers, and to this day the Prince of Wales has three feathers as part of his crest.