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The roads, many of them inherited from the Romans, were in better shape than in centuries to come when traffic would be heavier, while unit transport costs compared favourably with those of the 18th century. Except in the remoter and less developed parts of the country, the horse had largely replaced the slower ox for haulage. Under private initiative, most major rivers had been bridged while ferries operated at crossings too wide to be bridged. Tolls helped repay the investment. Travellers could purchase lodging, food and drink in most settlements. Writs issued by Exchequer officials at Westminster would be acted upon in the furthest corners of the realm, usually within a matter of weeks. Information and instructions travelled fast.
Bulk goods travelled more slowly and more cheaply by water. England's major navigable rivers, especially those that flowed east, carried a busy traffic. Boats of varying capacities were readily available for hire, as were warehouses and granaries in the principal towns. From 1296 Edward I (r. 1272-1307) would exploit this infrastructure to assemble the mountain of grain, beans, and bacon required to provision his armies and garrisons in Scotland. This lively riverine activity interconnected with an equally busy seaborne trade. The superior prosperity of Britain's east-coast ports demonstrates that maritime commerce was far more strongly orientated towards the North Sea than the Atlantic. Flanders, the northern terminus of the great overland trade route to Italy and the Mediterranean, was the focus of most northern European seaborne trade, and its great cloth working towns the destination for the bulk of the wool that dominated both English and Scottish exports. From the closing years of the 13th century, however, trade was increasingly disrupted by warfare. In particular, the trans-Alpine trade route became more risky. Piracy and the conscription of merchant vessels to serve naval needs also became blights upon North Sea shipping.
The 13th century had witnessed a process of state building in England and Scotland. In England the common law had developed and royal justice rose to eclipse seigniorial justice. At the same time, the crown's constant need for revenue from taxation and other sources fed the growth of an increasingly depersonalised administration, reliant upon the written word. Central government was aided by a host of clerks and facilitated by royal officials in the shires - sheriffs, escheators, and, from the early 14th century, justices of the peace. Public record-keeping fostered private record-keeping, as manifest in England's unique wealth in extant manorial records. Without widespread literacy the transition could not have been made from memory to written record.
The recent invention of spectacles lengthened the working life of clerks, scribes and all who made their living from or relied upon the written word. The mechanical clock likewise introduced the possibility of better time-keeping and payment by the hour. Britons, like their fellow Europeans, were becoming more preoccupied with measurement and quantification, heralding the scientific achievements of later centuries. Attitudes towards money and concepts of profit also began to change. By the second quarter of the 14th century Italian merchants had invented double-entry book keeping but already from the late 13th century the monks of Norwich Cathedral Priory were beginning to experiment with profit-and-loss accountancy. Under the pressure of commercial change canon lawyers began to reformulate the position of the Church on the lending of money for interest.
In England it was now firmly believed that English ways were best and there was a growing desire in some quarters to extend those ways to Wales and Scotland. Emigration had already carried English settlers and some others deep into south Wales, Ireland and Scotland. In Scotland these immigrants mostly settled in the newly founded boroughs but in south Wales and Ireland they occupied both town and country. The cultural, demographic, and economic impacts of settlement were tremendous. Politically, alien communities were created which long remained defiantly separate from those around them and which helped further English economic, political, and military domination of the greater part of the British Isles.
Edward I harboured an ambition to create a single empire of Britain and by 1306 it looked as though he was on the brink of fulfilling that aim. By 1272 Llywelyn ap Gruffyd felt sufficiently secure in his base of Gwynedd to refuse homage to Edward. He misjudged Edward, who in 1277 wheeled the English military machine into north Wales and forced Llywelyn to acknowledge his overlordship. Renewed Welsh rebellion in 1282 was crushed more ruthlessly and in 1284 the principality was annexed to the English crown. To consolidate and defend his conquest Edward encircled Llywelyn's former mountain stronghold of Snowdonia with a ring of stone castles of the most up-to-date military design. He intended Caernarfon Castle as a royal residence and modelled its walls on those of the imperial city of Constantinople.
The opportunity to intervene in Scotland came in 1290 when, disastrously, there was a failure in the Scottish direct line of succession. Edward was invited to arbitrate and chose John Balliol, whom he required to swear fealty (a feudal tenant's or vassal's fidelity to a lord � and/or - an acknowledgement of this allegiance) to him and accede to his claimed right to hear appeals from Scots courts. When in 1296 John renounced his fealty, Edward forced him to abdicate and invaded Scotland with the intention of annexing it. Notwithstanding England's superior resources, this eventually proved ruinous to England. At their peak in the Falkirk campaign of 1298, the armies fielded by the English against the Scots numbered over 25,000 men. Keeping such large forces in the field at such a distance was a huge undertaking and a great strain upon the administration and the economy. Nevertheless, all was ultimately in vain.
Scottish independence was forged in its war of independence against England, as were anti-English Scottish sentiments. Following the crushing defeat of Edward II (r. 1307-27) by Robert the Bruce (r.1306-29) at Bannockburn in 1314, the Scots took their war to the enemy, raiding deep into northern England, burning, destroying, and driving off cattle to great economic harm. The once peacefully settled border counties would not know security again until the union of the Scottish and English crowns in 1603. In 1315 a Scottish army was also despatched to Ireland - since 1171 a Lordship of the English crown - to cut off this important source of supplies to English armies in Scotland, open up a pan-Celtic front against the English, and create a kingdom for Robert's brother, Edward Bruce. This dealt a blow to the English colony in Ireland from which it never recovered, converting it from a source of profit to a drain upon the English purse as crown control shrank to the lands of the Pale.
Until the last quarter of the 13th century, war in Europe had been relatively localised and shortlived. Kings and magnates had mostly done their fighting against the 'infidel' in Spain or the Holy Land. In the closing years of the century, large-scale warfare returned to Europe. England spent much of the new century fighting a war on three fronts: against the French, the Scots and the Irish. War was destructive of property, goods, and confidence. It was also costly. Kings took out loans to finance their wars and bribe their allies, often bankrupting those from whom they borrowed. Edward I expelled the Jews in 1290 after they were of no further financial use to him. Europe's bankers, the Italian super-companies, now served him better. His grandson, Edward III, would borrow even more heavily in order to finance the opening stages of the Hundred Years' War. Edward III (r. 1327-77) was one of several militaristic monarchs who by reneging upon huge loans contributed to the collapse of a succession of Italian merchant banks. The shock waves were felt throughout the European monetary system. Meanwhile, English kings had begun to tax trade and use the once-lucrative wool export trade to coerce the Flemings into providing support against the French. As the burden of taxation mounted and law and order broke down, brigands arid pirates preyed with increasing effect upon the all important long-distance trade. The long boom was over and as markets contracted so commercial recession deepened and poverty increased.

This, and the adverse environmental changes, was the background to the worst subsistence crisis and greatest crisis of public health in recorded British history. There were at least half a million excess deaths during the Great European Famine of 1315-22. A generation later a further 1.25 to 2 million would perish in the Black Death of 1348-49. Governments had no way of dealing with catastrophes on this scale - indeed, during the Black Death England's found it difficult to keep functioning at all - nor was it yet accepted that it was the responsibility of government to take action. Instead, family support, private charity, and the Church were relied upon for welfare, relief, and spiritual consolation, irrespective of whether their means were adequate to the need. Hence the devastating toll exacted by these disasters. As populations collapsed in England, Wales, Scotland, and Ireland so the tide of English power receded. An era had culminated. ENDS