A History of Britain 04. Nations (30 of 30)

A History of Britain

For Edward's attempt to pound the nations of Britain into a united super-state ended up just reinforcing their acute sense of difference.
The hammer that Edward had taken to the Scots had rebounded fatally against his dream of a reborn Britannia.
For the cost of all those endless marches and mile upon mile of castle walls was political as well as financial.
It meant parliament was more, not less, necessary to England's government.
It was parliament which had to agree on how to foot the bills and how big those bills ought to be.
Edward II failed to bring any attention to this new reality.
Falling back on rule by favourites, Edward made himself an alien in his own land.

The nobility failed to remove him, but his wife succeeded.
Legend has it that he was killed in Berkeley Castle from a hot iron thrust up his rectum.
Edward's murder was proof that the king could be removed, even physically disposed of, if he betrayed the community.
But England would get a new king - more the heir to Edward the First than the Second.
Edward III knew he couldn't achieve anything simply by acts of brutal, imperial will.
He'd learned something from the long wars of Plantagenet Britain, and what he'd learned was that his power depended not just on force, but on consent - on the consent of his barons and his churchmen, on the consent of parliament, on the consent of the English community of the realm.
Not for the first and not for the last time, it would take the rest of Britain to teach England just how to be a nation.