The following spring Edward married his younger daughter to the Earl of Gloucester and besought Parliament for an aid “pur fille marier,” though technically this was to be paid only in the case of the marriage of the king’s eldest daughter. Parliament proved well-disposed, however, and granted forty shillings on the fee. The manner in which the barons and bishops who composed this session of Parliament made their offering is noteworthy, in view of the fact that the tenants-in-chief intimated that they could speak only for themselves. They made their own grant of an aid and extended it “as far as in them lies,” to “the community of the whole kingdom.”[142] The barons made special note of the fact that the offering was an advance upon the two marks which had been granted to King Henry, and stipulated that this be not drawn into precedent. As a matter of fact, the tax fell only on the tenants-in-chief (just why can only be conjectured), and the collection was not made until many years afterward.
A second Parliament was held in July. To it Edward summoned two or three elected knights from each shire.[143] The design behind the calling of the Parliament was probably the securing of a grant of a fifteenth of temporal movables, since it develops that such a tax was laid at that session, by clergy and laity alike.[144] Edward made a further demand of a tenth of spiritual revenue, which the clergy granted him on the 2d October following.[145] Apparently these offerings to the king were in payment for his banishment of the Jews, who were hated for their usurious habits and for their religion; the laity sought their expulsion for the former reason and the clergy ostensibly for the latter, but the offence to their pockets doubtless did much to arouse their religious zeal against the Jews.
The interval between 1290 and 1294 does not furnish a wealth of material. The royal poverty coexisted with a spirit of restlessness on the borders and in France during the four years, and little was accomplished toward relieving either the one or the other. In 1291 the Pope had complicated Edward’s relations with the English clergy by giving him a tenth of spiritual revenue for six years,[146] and the barons holding estates in Wales gave a fifteenth in 1292. Edward also had recourse to distraint of knighthood, which as in 1282 was symptomatic of a straitened treasury.[147]