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horror; contemporary Englishmen
who shared his bigoted Christianity regarded it as one of his most commendable
acts – a fact that forces us to confront an unpleasant truth about our medieval
ancestors.
Yet even as they cheered his
victories, they were not oblivious to the consequences of his rule. As one poet
who marched in his army put it, the English king confronting his enemies was
like the three lions embroidered in gold on the red of his banner – dreadful,
fierce and cruel. And one anonymous obituarist put it
in even more telegraphic terms. Edward, he said, was peaceable to the obedient,
but to those who opposed him he was ‘a terrible king’.
When I stumbled across this line, I
realised I had my title. It was possible to allow Edward his greatness, as long
as we also acknowledged the terrible nature of his rule. On first hearing the
phrase ‘great and terrible’, many people remark on the apparent contradiction.
How can someone, or something, be both at the same time? Naturally, not
everything can be described in this way: we could hardly recommend to our
friends a great and terrible restaurant, or boast to them about our new, great
and terrible carpet. But when we move beyond the mundane and begin to
contemplate the mighty, great and terrible seem to be less contradictory, and even complementary adjectives. ‘The great and terrible wilderness’ is how
the Bible describes the Sinai Desert; ‘Do not tempt me!’ says Gandalf to Frodo,
alarmed by the hobbit’s offer of the One Ring. ‘I should have a power too great
and terrible.’ The kind of power, in fact, pretended by
another, altogether less bona-fide wizard. ‘I am Oz, the Great and
Terrible’, he booms, before being exposed as a pathetic little man hiding
behind the curtain.
Kings, like wizards, were expected to wield enormous power.
Some of them found it too much to handle and were merely terrible in the more
modern sense of the word. Others abused their power and were truly terrible, to
the extent that they could inspire great terror. King John, for example, that famously
bad king of England,
was regarded by contemporaries with considerable dread. Being terrible,
clearly, did not make one great. But did being great mean one had to be
terrible? When it comes to kings, I would argue that the answer must be yes.
William the Conqueror, Henry I, Henry II: all could justly be described as
great, and in each case this was partly down to their ability to inflict
immense terror. None of them, however, was greater, or more terrible, than
Edward I.
10. The Best of
Kings, the Worst of Kings: A Reassessment of Edward I
On an otherwise unremarkable building opposite Holborn tube
station, some five or six storeys above the commuter throng, sits a serene and
noble-looking Edward I. The work of a young sculptor Richard Garbe (d. 1957), he was placed there in 1902, and evidently
intended as a tribute: on the opposite corner of the same building sits a
similar statue of Edward VII, who was crowned that same year.
The accession of a new King Edward, the first in 350 years,
evidently prompted some of his subjects to look back through the annals of
English history in search of a similarly named exemplar. No doubt they quickly
dismissed as unsuitable the two boy kings, Edwards V and VI, the usurper Edward
IV and the unspeakable Edward II, and ignored the three unnumbered pre-Conquest
Edwards on the grounds of their comparative obscurity. Today they might have
considered the merits of Edward III, a successful king whose reign witnessed
the greatest English triumphs of the Hundred Years War. But at the start of the
twentieth century no one was in the mood to celebrate a man who appeared to
have gone looking for glory on the battlefields of Europe;
the victor of Crécy and the founder of the Order of
the Garter was at that time regarded as a feckless and irresponsible warmonger.
By a process of elimination, therefore, it had to be a statue
of Edward I. Like
who shared his bigoted Christianity regarded it as one of his most commendable
acts – a fact that forces us to confront an unpleasant truth about our medieval
ancestors.
Yet even as they cheered his
victories, they were not oblivious to the consequences of his rule. As one poet
who marched in his army put it, the English king confronting his enemies was
like the three lions embroidered in gold on the red of his banner – dreadful,
fierce and cruel. And one anonymous obituarist put it
in even more telegraphic terms. Edward, he said, was peaceable to the obedient,
but to those who opposed him he was ‘a terrible king’.
When I stumbled across this line, I
realised I had my title. It was possible to allow Edward his greatness, as long
as we also acknowledged the terrible nature of his rule. On first hearing the
phrase ‘great and terrible’, many people remark on the apparent contradiction.
How can someone, or something, be both at the same time? Naturally, not
everything can be described in this way: we could hardly recommend to our
friends a great and terrible restaurant, or boast to them about our new, great
and terrible carpet. But when we move beyond the mundane and begin to
contemplate the mighty, great and terrible seem to be less contradictory, and even complementary adjectives. ‘The great and terrible wilderness’ is how
the Bible describes the Sinai Desert; ‘Do not tempt me!’ says Gandalf to Frodo,
alarmed by the hobbit’s offer of the One Ring. ‘I should have a power too great
and terrible.’ The kind of power, in fact, pretended by
another, altogether less bona-fide wizard. ‘I am Oz, the Great and
Terrible’, he booms, before being exposed as a pathetic little man hiding
behind the curtain.
Kings, like wizards, were expected to wield enormous power.
Some of them found it too much to handle and were merely terrible in the more
modern sense of the word. Others abused their power and were truly terrible, to
the extent that they could inspire great terror. King John, for example, that famously
bad king of England,
was regarded by contemporaries with considerable dread. Being terrible,
clearly, did not make one great. But did being great mean one had to be
terrible? When it comes to kings, I would argue that the answer must be yes.
William the Conqueror, Henry I, Henry II: all could justly be described as
great, and in each case this was partly down to their ability to inflict
immense terror. None of them, however, was greater, or more terrible, than
Edward I.
10. The Best of
Kings, the Worst of Kings: A Reassessment of Edward I
On an otherwise unremarkable building opposite Holborn tube
station, some five or six storeys above the commuter throng, sits a serene and
noble-looking Edward I. The work of a young sculptor Richard Garbe (d. 1957), he was placed there in 1902, and evidently
intended as a tribute: on the opposite corner of the same building sits a
similar statue of Edward VII, who was crowned that same year.
The accession of a new King Edward, the first in 350 years,
evidently prompted some of his subjects to look back through the annals of
English history in search of a similarly named exemplar. No doubt they quickly
dismissed as unsuitable the two boy kings, Edwards V and VI, the usurper Edward
IV and the unspeakable Edward II, and ignored the three unnumbered pre-Conquest
Edwards on the grounds of their comparative obscurity. Today they might have
considered the merits of Edward III, a successful king whose reign witnessed
the greatest English triumphs of the Hundred Years War. But at the start of the
twentieth century no one was in the mood to celebrate a man who appeared to
have gone looking for glory on the battlefields of Europe;
the victor of Crécy and the founder of the Order of
the Garter was at that time regarded as a feckless and irresponsible warmonger.
By a process of elimination, therefore, it had to be a statue
of Edward I. Like
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