Free The Great Turning Points of British History by Michael Wood Page B

and by levels of investment. The years of prosperity were coming to an end.
    The major political crisis of this half-century in England began in 1258, and lasted until 1265, when the baronial leader, Simon de Montfort, was killed at Evesham. Edward I did much to restore the prestige of the crown after he came to the throne in 1272, but in his later years he faced political difficulties. War meant heavy taxation, both on wool exports and on personal wealth.
    Growing prosperity helped enable Edward I to extend his political influence in Britain. He conquered Wales in two campaigns, in 1277 and 1282–3; rebellion in 1294–5 saw the embers of resistance flare up. Scotland was a different story. Relations between England and Scotland were peaceable for most of the thirteenth century. Edward I oversaw the hearings of the Great Cause in 1291–2, which determined that John Balliol, not Robert Bruce, should be king after the death of the heiress Margaret, the Maid of Norway. Scotland’s alliance with France led to Edward I’s invasion in 1296, and Balliol’s deposition, but in the next year William Wallace led a successful rebellion. The Wars of Independence had begun.
    Relations with France were also peaceable until the 1290s. The war that began in 1294 was not of Edward I’s choosing. He was tricked by French diplomacy into thinking that a marriage alliance was about to be agreed; instead the French moved into his duchy of Gascony. The war, which saw heavy expenditure but no major battles, lasted until a truce was agreed in 1297. It was a precursor of the Hundred Years War that began in 1337, though in that conflict the English claim to the French throne provided an additional element.
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    As the year 1295 opened, England’s King Edward I and his troops were wintering in Conwy Castle, besieged by Welsh rebels. Food was running low; all the drink that remained was one small barrel of wine, left for the king’s personal use. Edward had this distributed among his men, the action of a good commander.
    The Welsh had been in rebellion since the previous autumn; they had taken advantage of English preoccupation with the war that had just started with France. The rising was a national one, headed by a then obscure figure, Madog ap Llywelyn. Wales had seemed conquered by 1283; now, the whole English achievement was under threat. Edward led a rapid raid from Conwy to the west, into the Lleyn peninsula, but it was elsewhere that the war was won. In March Madog was defeated in mid-Wales by forces under the earl of Warwick, at Maes Moydog. There, an English commentator noted that Madog’s forces were ‘the best and bravest Welsh that anyone has seen’. They met the English head on, but to no avail. English archers and men-at-arms were too powerful. Madog himself escaped. Edward went on a triumphant tour of Wales, receiving submissions from a defeated people. Eventually Madog was captured, and led to miserable captivity in the Tower of London.
    The end of the Welsh rebellion was marked by the start of the building of a great new castle, Beaumaris in Anglesey, the last of the magnificent series of castles that marked Edward’s conquest. It was characterized by concentric lines of defences, two great twin-towered gatehouses, and a dock so that ships could supply the fortress. Edward’s great mason from Savoy, Master James of St George, was in charge of the project. In July the king returned from his circuit of Wales to see the work under way; accounts show that one evening there he enjoyed entertainment provided by an English harpist, Adam of Clitheroe.
    Wales was only one of the immense problems that Edward faced; England’s war with France was another. In the previous year the French had taken over much of Edward’s duchy of Gascony in south-western France, and English forces there were hanging on with difficulty. His soldiers achieved a measure of success at the start of the year, but at Easter the French under Charles