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This chapter describes the evolution of parliament, and its growth as a popular and less exclusively baronial assembly, from the accession of Edward I to the deposition of his son. It shows how, in Edward I's early years, parliament was re‐established, after the traumas of the previous reign, as a central part of the consensual apparatus of royal government; but how this consensus broke down after 1294 under the stress of war and excessive demands for taxes. Parliament then became the focal point for opposition to the crown and one which drew together bishops, magnates, and knights in opposition to royal government. In the next reign, marked as it was by viciously factious aristocratic politics, the knights and the elected burgesses began to draw apart from the magnates and to gain a real political independence for the first time. The role which both elected knights and burgesses played in the deposition of Edward II was a mark of their political status.

This chapter considers the private petition in the heyday of its existence, during the reigns of Edward I and Edward II. This was the period when the greatest numbers of petitions came to be submitted to parliament. The chapter is split into two sub-sections. Section i covers the growth of petitioning and the growth of bureaucracy and demonstrates the great expansion of parliamentary petitioning that took place in the early 14th century. It focuses in particular on the important administrative processes put into place in order to cope with the avalanche of petitionary business which flowed into parliament. Section ii discusses patterns of petitioning from 1297 to 1325, and uses the evidence of chancery warranty notes to reconstruct petitioning trends across the period and to relate these trends to the political circumstances of the time. The evidence suggests that the volume of petitioning fluctuated to extremes, often as a result of political instability or royal intransigence.

This chapter considers events in Robert Bruce's life from 1310 to 1314. These include Edward II's worsening political situation; Bruce's exploitation of Edward II's own growing political and military problems; Robert I' summoning of a parliament to Dundee on or about 21 October 1313; and the battle at Bannockburn.

This chapter describes events in Robert Bruce's life from 1322 to 1326. These include Robert's inducements to persuade Edward II to accept a Bruce dynasty in a sovereign Scotland; the truce agreed with Edward II in 1323; the birth of Bruce's twin boys on 5 March 1324; Anglo-Scottish peace negotiations; and the Scone parliament of March 1325.

The death of Edward I left his son a legacy of war and its costs. The handling of Scotland in the opening years of Edward II's reign was disastrous. He failed to use the funds collected to elicit expeditions against Robert Bruce. The lordship of Ireland presented far greater problems to King Edward than did Wales. However, it also had a more direct importance for the king in his war against Bruce. The Scottish war was about to entrench on the lordship, intensifying the existing problems facing the English administration and community and escalating ongoing conflicts between the two nations and within Irish kindreds. The poor judgement and relative inactivity of Edward II were major factors in the disastrous record of his rule. His conflicting needs and claims of his various dominions must also be recognised.

Bannockburn did not end the war between Robert Bruce and Edward of England. It ended the manning of Scottish castles against Bruce, and open opposition to his royal rights and title within Scotland. Defeat had cost Edward much of his remaining authority. There was a connection between the battle and the shape of English politics. Bannockburn had presented the Bruces with the opportunity to extend the war beyond Scotland into King Edward's dominions. The Bruces had an attraction as the opponents of the Plantagenet administration. The capture of Berwick was a victory almost as great as that of Bannockburn. The king's victory over his enemies demonstrated the residual strength of the English crown. Though the years of warfare between Robert Bruce and Edward II would be ended by the truce, conflict over Scottish crown and realm would last far longer.

This chapter deals with events between Bannockburn and the Treaty of Edinburgh 1328, examining why it took Bruce so long to obtain peace on his terms. Bruce and Douglas led frequent raids into Northern England; these, though very damaging to the northern English economy, had little resonance on the centre of English government in the south. International support for Scotland was weaker than it had been at the start of the fourteenth century; Boniface VIII's successors were inclined to agree with the English case and Philip IV's successors were less powerful than he had been. The Scots made a concerted attempt to counter English arguments at the papal curia, the chief example of which was the Declaration of Arbroath (1320; more fully discussed in chapter 14). Meanwhile Edward II's own position was crumbling and on his deposition in 1327 the Scots attacked Northern England once more; finally the young Edward III's regents agreed to make peace.

Most readers of Christopher Marlowe’s Edward II locate the play’s radicalism in the sexualized challenge that Edward’s homoerotic relations with Gaveston and the Spensers pose to dynastic monarchy and aristocratic governance. This chapter replaces erotics with necrotics to argue that royal sodomy and homoerotic friendship can be accommodated by the play’s political order with relative ease; royal death, by contrast, exposes fundamental weaknesses within dominant conceptions of sovereignty. While recent queer theory has aligned queerness with mortality, Edward II pointedly detaches sexuality from death, offering Edward political opportunities in dying that are unavailable through queer eroticism. In prison, Edward subsumes regimes of dynastic sovereignty within the biological existence of the body. Even once dead, Edward is not superseded because the theater suggests he may still be minimally present, in the slippage between bodies and in props, in the presence of an actor offstage, and in the violence carried out in his name. Rather than supporting a particular structure of power, Edward’s death indicates the range of political potentialities inherent in exposure to mortality, which might alternatively support republican, absolutist, bureaucratic, or tyrannical regimes.

This chapter discusses the following: sharp drop in revenue under Edward II; attempted financial reform; emergence of ‘rebel English’; Edward Bruce's army lands at Lame; reasons for Scottish intervention; failure to secure general Gaelic support; famine; Bruce in Ulster: his victory at Connor; incursion into Leinster; Robert Bruce comes to Ireland; second incursion: the by-passing of Dublin; Scottish setback and withdrawal to Ulster; Robert Bruce returns to Scotland; defeat and death of Edward Bruce at Fochart; effects of the invasion; oppression by the magnates: factions and civil war; the Braganstown massacre; and a new Ireland emerging.

This chapter investigates the bureaucratization of administrative and diplomatic practices during international political conflict and domestic turmoil at the time of the Anglo-French war of St Sardos (1323–5) and the deposition of Edward II (1327). The specific aim of this section is to demonstrate how domestic and international conflicts influenced record-keeping and diplomatic practice in England and the papal curia, ultimately questioning whether bureaucratic developments were entirely driven by what Weber called an ‘autonomous’ logic. Focusing on the surviving English and papal diplomatic correspondence, the chapter first looks at how John XXII arbitrated in the Anglo-French conflict and dealt with the English domestic crisis, drawing on the evidence of the registers of secret letters, which were created by the papal chamber as a new series of registers in order to record political correspondence. It then examines English diplomatic correspondence and record-keeping in the same period, in particular the Roman rolls and the Treaty rolls, emphasizing the practices adopted by the English crown’s administrative departments at times of internal and domestic crisis.

Precise evidence for where Bruce spent the winter 1306-7 is lacking, but the likeliest hypothesis is that he stayed in Northern Ireland and the southern Hebrides. Early in 1307, aware that Edward I had not much longer to live, Bruce launched a campaign of guerrilla warfare in Galloway and Carrick, ambushing the English in Glen Trool and scoring further successes at Loudoun Hill and at Ayr. Edward I died 7 July 1307 on the Solway Firth leading an army north; his son Edward II proceeded a little further and then turned south. Bruce campaigned against his Scottish opponents in Galloway, Buchan and Argyll 1307-8 and was able to hold his first parliament at St Andrews in 1309.

To relieve Stirling and to ‘suppress the wicked rebellion of Robert Bruce’, Edward II planned a major campaign with forces of perhaps 15000 infantry and 2-3000 cavalry; against this, the forces available to Bruce were perhaps 1/3 of the English total. On 23 June 1314 Bruce's army was stationed on the main road leading south from Stirling as Edward's army approached from Falkirk. Attacks by parts of the chaotically led English force were repulsed and it withdrew a short way to camp for the night. When the two armies met the next morning the narrowness of the battlefield made it hard for the English to manoeuvre, and many were filled by Scottish spearmen tightly packed in schiltroms. Edward II was forced to flee by his advisors and his army then dispersed in chaos. The numerous English captives taken by the Scots were useful for bargaining but the failure to capture Edward himself meant that Bruce could not yet demand peace on his terms, i.e. English recognition of Scottish independence.

The examination of Anglo-papal relations between 1305 and 1309 provides an interesting first case study of how political change both in England and at the papal curia impacted on the development of Anglo-papal diplomatic and administrative practices in the early fourteenth century. In order to assess the extent to which political changes influenced Anglo-papal administrative and diplomatic practices in the early fourteenth century this chapter is organized in four sections. After a brief historiographical overview on Anglo-papal relations in the early fourteenth century, the chapter focuses on the surviving diplomatic correspondence, looking at some diplomatic documents produced in the context of the diplomatic missions sent from England to the papal curia between 5 June 1305, when Clement V was elected, and 14 November 1305, when he was consecrated at Lyons, as well as examining the first Roman roll, which recorded the petitions sent from England to the Apostolic See in the last year of Edward I’s reign (April 1306–July 1307). Finally, I address the evidence concerning the first two years of Edward II’s reign in order to look for continuity and change in Anglo-papal administrative and diplomatic practices after the succession of the new English king.

The first chapter explores the complexities and varieties of love. Though often separated from sex, sexuality, and gender, love is crucial to sexuality and significant even for gender. To explore these topics, the chapter first examines Marlowe’s Edward II. Marlowe’s play is widely recognized as an important early treatment of same-sex desire and homophobia, but less widely recognized as a work that examines homoerotic attachment bonding and that shows the limits and complexities of homophobia. In connection with homophobia, the chapter also begins to consider ethical issues. The chapter then takes up a Chinese story about a young girl who dresses as a boy in order to receive an education. This is a very popular and enduring tale, with many versions, ancient and modern. This particular version links its in some ways radical gender politics with Confucian teachings, thus connecting gender skepticism with orthodoxy, a socially important and counterintuitive association.

This chapter examines Aymer de Valence's role in averting what could have been a civil war in the summer of 1317 caused by the deteriorating relations between Edward II and Thomas, Earl of Lancaster. It considers the three themes of growing political crisis, Aymer's return to the forefront of English politics, and the rise of the favourites during the period when the Earl of Pembroke is widely believed to have begun to build a political following dubbed ‘middle party’. In particular, it discusses the impact of Lancaster's retirement to his estates on the royal government and how Pembroke recovered his influence after Lancaster left the royal Council. It also analyses Pembroke's activities in the political arena during the period, including his role in the settlement of the Bristol dispute, his participation in making royal policy, and his diplomatic mission to Avignon. Finally, it looks at Pembroke's capture by Jean de Lamouilly and his influence on royal attempts to negotiate with Lancaster.

This chapter examines Aymer de Valence's role in the peace negotiations between Edward II and the magnates from June 1312 to October 1313. Tensions ran high during the period between Piers Gaveston's death in June 1312 and the settlement of October 1313 by which the Earl of Cornwall's opponents were formally pardoned for their involvement in his pursuit and execution. Negotiations to try to resolve the crisis began in the late summer of 1312 and achieved some outward success in the preliminary peace settlement between the King and his baronial enemies in December 1312. The chapter first considers the Earl of Pembroke's attempts to organise and carry out the royal diplomacy of 1312 as well as Edward II's attitude toward the Ordinances before discussing his role in the implementation of the peace treaty between the King and the magnates.