be broken.
The problem, therefore, remained: how to encapsulate such an
epic and varied life in a short and punchy title? Dozens of ideas were proposed
and rejected. All the time, however, that we were batting around words like
Conqueror and Hammer, one word lurked at the back of my brain, a word which was
often used by contemporaries to describe Edward and, until recently, by modern
historians too. Even Mel Gibson, in his enthralling director’s commentary to Braveheart , acknowledges that his villain was ‘a great
king’.
But what did Mel mean by this? ‘Great’ is an attractive word
but, as the BBC’s efforts to provoke a national debate on the matter in 2002
shows, people have very different ideas about what greatness entails. The Great
British public, when ask to place its greatest sons and daughters in rank
order, unsurprisingly put that celebrated scourge of fascism, Sir Winston
Churchill, in the number-one spot. But they also awarded a quite respectable
55th place to Enoch Powell, thereby demonstrating that, for certain sections of
the population, being an unpleasant racist constitutes no bar to greatness.
More baffling still was the appearance of the actor Michael Crawford at number
seventeen, just ahead of Queen Victoria.
Greatness, we can only conclude, is very much in the eye of the beholder.
Where, then, does this leave Edward I (number 92 on the BBC’s
list), apart from well below his rivals William Wallace (48) and Robert Bruce
(74)? For historians of the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries,
Edward’s greatness lay for the most part in his success as a lawgiver and
constitution-builder. Edward, we were once assured, was the king who had given
parliament its definitive form (the so-called ‘Model Parliament’ of 1295). The
sheer volume of legislation that the king enacted was such that it prompted the
seventeenth-century lawyer Sir Edward Coke to describe Edward as ‘our
Justinian’ (after the emperor who codified Roman law), and the name stuck. A
biography published in 1902 was actually entitled The English Justinian.
Another, written a few years before but in much the same spirit was called The
Greatest of All the Plantagenets .
It will hardly be a surprise to learn that neither of these
biographies were written by Scotsmen. North of the
Border there has been an equally long and wholly understandable tradition of
regarding Edward as a cruel tyrant, very much in the Patrick McGoohan mode. Similarly, the Welsh have found few positive
things to say down the years about a king who terminated their political
independence so decisively. ‘Ruin seize thee, ruthless
king!’ shouts the eponymous Bard at Edward in the opening line of Thomas Gray’s
famous poem. Perhaps the most damning indictment, however, has emerged in the
recent re-examination of Edward’s policy towards the Jews, a policy that
resulted in the largest state-sanctioned pogrom in British history, and ultimately
in the outright expulsion of all Jews from England in 1290. Jewish and
(somewhat belatedly) non-Jewish historians have quite rightly suggested that
this should temper any positive general conclusions we might otherwise be
tempted to draw about Edward I.
Thus, in recent years, historians have been understandably
reluctant to use the word ‘great’ to describe this particular English king.
It’s a pity, because it was a word used to describe him by his contemporaries. Edwardus Magnus is a phrase found in obituaries written as
far afield as Westminster and the west of Ireland.
Thirteenth- and early fourteenth-century folk, of course, had quite different
ideas about greatness to our own. They also praised Edward for his parliaments
and for his justice, but to them what made the king a truly awesome figure was
his success in war. ‘He ruled with the power of warring down his enemies’, said
one clergyman approvingly when he preached a memorial sermon before the pope.
We regard Edward’s expulsion of the Jews with
The problem, therefore, remained: how to encapsulate such an
epic and varied life in a short and punchy title? Dozens of ideas were proposed
and rejected. All the time, however, that we were batting around words like
Conqueror and Hammer, one word lurked at the back of my brain, a word which was
often used by contemporaries to describe Edward and, until recently, by modern
historians too. Even Mel Gibson, in his enthralling director’s commentary to Braveheart , acknowledges that his villain was ‘a great
king’.
But what did Mel mean by this? ‘Great’ is an attractive word
but, as the BBC’s efforts to provoke a national debate on the matter in 2002
shows, people have very different ideas about what greatness entails. The Great
British public, when ask to place its greatest sons and daughters in rank
order, unsurprisingly put that celebrated scourge of fascism, Sir Winston
Churchill, in the number-one spot. But they also awarded a quite respectable
55th place to Enoch Powell, thereby demonstrating that, for certain sections of
the population, being an unpleasant racist constitutes no bar to greatness.
More baffling still was the appearance of the actor Michael Crawford at number
seventeen, just ahead of Queen Victoria.
Greatness, we can only conclude, is very much in the eye of the beholder.
Where, then, does this leave Edward I (number 92 on the BBC’s
list), apart from well below his rivals William Wallace (48) and Robert Bruce
(74)? For historians of the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries,
Edward’s greatness lay for the most part in his success as a lawgiver and
constitution-builder. Edward, we were once assured, was the king who had given
parliament its definitive form (the so-called ‘Model Parliament’ of 1295). The
sheer volume of legislation that the king enacted was such that it prompted the
seventeenth-century lawyer Sir Edward Coke to describe Edward as ‘our
Justinian’ (after the emperor who codified Roman law), and the name stuck. A
biography published in 1902 was actually entitled The English Justinian.
Another, written a few years before but in much the same spirit was called The
Greatest of All the Plantagenets .
It will hardly be a surprise to learn that neither of these
biographies were written by Scotsmen. North of the
Border there has been an equally long and wholly understandable tradition of
regarding Edward as a cruel tyrant, very much in the Patrick McGoohan mode. Similarly, the Welsh have found few positive
things to say down the years about a king who terminated their political
independence so decisively. ‘Ruin seize thee, ruthless
king!’ shouts the eponymous Bard at Edward in the opening line of Thomas Gray’s
famous poem. Perhaps the most damning indictment, however, has emerged in the
recent re-examination of Edward’s policy towards the Jews, a policy that
resulted in the largest state-sanctioned pogrom in British history, and ultimately
in the outright expulsion of all Jews from England in 1290. Jewish and
(somewhat belatedly) non-Jewish historians have quite rightly suggested that
this should temper any positive general conclusions we might otherwise be
tempted to draw about Edward I.
Thus, in recent years, historians have been understandably
reluctant to use the word ‘great’ to describe this particular English king.
It’s a pity, because it was a word used to describe him by his contemporaries. Edwardus Magnus is a phrase found in obituaries written as
far afield as Westminster and the west of Ireland.
Thirteenth- and early fourteenth-century folk, of course, had quite different
ideas about greatness to our own. They also praised Edward for his parliaments
and for his justice, but to them what made the king a truly awesome figure was
his success in war. ‘He ruled with the power of warring down his enemies’, said
one clergyman approvingly when he preached a memorial sermon before the pope.
We regard Edward’s expulsion of the Jews with
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