The year 1297 witnessed a sundering of the political consensus that Edward I had painstakingly built up over the previous quarter of a century, and a splintering of the community of the realm in a way not seen since the Barons' Wars. Edward faced opposition from both the church and the laity on a very large scale, and the crisis has rightly received a good deal of attention from historians. For all this, however, we still do not know very much about those who formed an opposition that the chronicler Walter of Guisborough estimated at 1500 mounted men. Beyond the leaders of the opposition, the earls of Norfolk and Hereford, historians have only the sketchiest idea of who was actually involved, and this has led to an incomplete picture of the opposition's character. This paper argues that in recent years too much emphasis has been placed on the personal grievances of its leaders at the expense of the constitutional element, and will demonstrate that the fundamental clash was instead over what the king could or could not expect from his subjects.

Before coming to the nature of the opposition, it is important for us to know, as far as possible, who exactly was in opposition and who was not. Let us begin at the apex of lay society, the earls. Historians' views on comital attitudes to Edward I in 1297 have been shaped by the observation of the chronicler Pierre Langtoft that Edward had set sail for his controversial expedition to Flanders without a single earl in support.