REESE LIBRARY 
 
 OF THE 
 
 UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA. 
 
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 ; t/lccessioii No. «, ^ <^ o 3 2 • Class A , 
 
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CU)cIbe CnsU^ib ^tatesimm 
 
 EDWARD THE FIEST 
 
Digitized by the Internet Archive 
 
 in 2007 with funding from 
 
 Microsoft Corporation 
 
 http://www.archive.org/details/edwardfirstOOtoutrich 
 
EDWAED THE FIEST 
 
 BY 
 
 Professor T. R TOUT 
 
 Hontion 
 
 MACMILLAN AND CO., Ltd. 
 
 NEW YORK : MACMILLAN & CO. 
 1896 
 
 All rights re serried 
 
> 
 
 
 First Edition 1893 
 Reprinted 1896 
 
CONTENTS 
 
 CHAPTER I 
 Early Years — 1239-1258 1 
 
 CHAPTER H 
 
 Edward and the Barons' Wars — 1258-1267 . . 26 
 
 CHAPTER HI 
 Edward as a Crusader — 1268-1272 ... 45 
 
 CHAPTER IV 
 The King and his Work 58 *^ 
 
 CHAPTER V 
 
 Edward's Continental Policy — 1272-1289 , . 86 
 
 CHAPTER VI 
 
 The Conquest and Settlement of the Principality 
 
 OP Wales— 1274-1301 107 
 
 85332 
 
VI EDWARD I 
 
 CHAPTER VII 
 
 PAaE 
 Edward's Legislation — 1275-1290 . . .120 
 
 CHAPTER VIII 
 
 Edward and the Three Estates — The Develop- 
 ment OF the Parliamentary System . .135 
 
 CHAPTER IX 
 v^ Edward and the Church — 1272-1294 . . .149 
 
 CHAPTER X 
 
 The Scottish Overlordship — 1286-1292 . .164 
 
 CHAPTER XI 
 The Years OP Crisis — 1293-1297 . .179 
 
 CHAPTER XII 
 The Conquest OF Scotland — 1297-1305 .^ . 199 
 
 CHAPTER Xm 
 The End of the Reign — 1305-1307 . . 219 
 
 INDEX 231 
 
CHAPTER I 
 
 EARLY YEARS 
 1239-1258 
 
 Edward I. was born at Westminster on 17th June 1239. 
 He was the first offspring of the marriage of Henry III. 
 with Eleanor of Provence. Henry had long held in special 
 reverence King Edward the Confessor, whose pious, 
 weak, but amiable character in some ways is suggestive 
 of his own. He therefore at once bade the child be 
 called Edward, in memory of the holy king whose 
 ashes reposed in the neighbouring abbey of St. Peter's. 
 A papal legate performed the baptismal ceremony, and 
 among the sponsors was the great Simon of Montfort, 
 Earl of Leicester, newly reconciled to his royal brother- 
 in-law after his audacious marriage with the widowed 
 Countess Eleanor of Pembroke, King Henry's sister. 
 Exceptional rejoicings attended the birth of the heir 
 to the crown, for many feared that the young Queen 
 was barren, and all were glad that a man-child, born on 
 English soil and bearing an English name, had come into 
 the world to settle the question of the succession to the 
 throne. Significantly passing over the long line of 
 foreign rulers who had borne sway in England since the 
 ^ B 
 
2 EDWARD I CHAP. 
 
 Norman Conquest, an English chronicler gleefully traced 
 back young Edward's genealogy to Alfred, the greatest 
 of the old English kings. The laws of the good King 
 Edward, after whom the child had been named, had 
 been the rallying cry of more than one generation of 
 oppressed and down-trodden Englishmen. It was hoped 
 that a new King Edward might renew the golden age 
 of the holy Confessor. Groaning under weak and 
 irresolute rule, wounded in all their dearest national 
 aspirations. Englishmen looked forward from the dull 
 present to the possibilities of a happier and brighter 
 future. Nor were such hopes doomed to the dis- 
 appointment which so commonly waits upon those who 
 reckon upon the goodwill of princes. The son of the 
 weak Henry and the greedy and unpopular Eleanor was 
 destined to become the greatest of English monarchs. 
 
 Henry HI. in many ways reminds us of Charles I. 
 There is in both kings the same strict religious principle, 
 the same high standard of private life, the same strong 
 and pure domestic affections, the same intelligent, 
 artistic temperament, the same graciousness, refinement, 
 and love of culture. But a complete paralysis of will, 
 an utter absence of straightforwardness, manliness, 
 resolution, and clearness of vision, made HenYy even 
 more unfitted than Charles to act as ruler of England. 
 Like Charles, Henry could never see that the times 
 were changing. He held ideas of his own rights 
 that the sons of the men who had wrested the 
 Great Charter from King John could never allow to 
 pass unquestioned. But it was not the policy so much 
 as the want of policy of Henry that gave his subjects 
 most offence. Thirteenth -century England had no 
 
I EARLY YEARS 8 
 
 objection to a strong king, who, clearly grasping the 
 identity of interest between himself and his people, 
 strove with might and main to grapple with anarchy 
 and lawlessness, and drive the people into the ways of 
 sound rule and good order. Henry III. was too feeble, 
 too frivolous, too idle, to be such a king. Moreover, 
 he was jealous and suspicious of all able men. He was 
 afraid to allow his ministers to exercise the powers that 
 he was too weak to use himself. He strove to rule 
 personally through clerks, dependents, and foreign 
 favourites. The result was an almost complete collapse 
 of all sound rule. While the material and spiritual 
 activities of the nation were alike rapidly expanding, 
 the strong centralised government which Henry II. had 
 handed down to his sons was smitten with palsy. The 
 begging friars were working out a great religious 
 revival. The young enthusiasm of the Oxford masters 
 had made England the home of an intellectual activity 
 that could only be paralleled in the great University of 
 Paris. Eoger Bacon was preparing the way for English 
 medicine and science. Vast and noble minsters in the 
 new Pointed style were arising throughout the land, and 
 proclaiming the culmination of mediaeval art. The 
 English tongue was again becoming a vehicle for original 
 literature, while in the learned Latin and the noble 
 French a vigorous and abundant crop of great works 
 were written by Englishmen. Englishmen were again 
 conscious of national life and national unity. But with 
 the weak Henry on the throne political progress that 
 should match the rapid movement of the greatest and 
 most constructive period of the Middle Ages could only 
 be obtained through revolution. 
 
4 EDWARD I CHAP. 
 
 Henry III. was himself in full sympathy with at 
 least the religious and artistic movements of his time. 
 His love of English saints, his anxiety to uphold English 
 power abroad, shows that he was no mere foreigner, as 
 has so often been said. But his wife and his mother, a 
 Proven9al and a Poitevin, exercised an unhappy influence 
 upon him. The Proven9al and Savoyard uncles of his 
 wife, his Poitevin half-brothers by his mother's second 
 marriage, claimed the chief places in his court and 
 councils, and aspired to the greatest ofiices, estates, and 
 dignities in the land. Henry's superstitious fear of 
 papal authority, combined with a shrewd sense of the 
 temporal benefits to be got from close friendship with 
 the spiritual head of the Church, exposed England to 
 the invasion of a swarm of greedy foreign ecclesiastics. 
 The very good points of Henry told against his popu- 
 larity as a king. His appreciation of the great position 
 of the Eoman Church, his sympathy for the great wave 
 of religion and culture which radiated from the France 
 of St. Louis, and exercised an influence over western 
 Europe only second to that exercised by the France of 
 Rousseau and Voltaire, led Henry to a love of foreign 
 manners and methods that became increasingly repug- 
 nant to his nobles. The barons of England might talk 
 French at home, and vie with Henry in their love 
 of French ways, but French-speaking Englishmen of 
 the thirteenth century were no more good French- 
 men in the political sense than the French-speaking 
 Vaudois or Genevese of to-day. Since the loss of Nor- 
 mandy under John, most of the English barons had 
 become sound English patriots and enemies of French 
 political influence, however fully they shared in 
 
I EARLY YEARS 6 
 
 the international civilisation of the French-speaking 
 world. 
 
 Queen Eleanor of Provence exercised over Henry III. 
 the same fatal influence that Henrietta Maria wielded 
 over Charles I. She was indeed a stronger and less 
 frivolous character than her antitype. She inherited the 
 subtle will and the bright poetic nature of her father, 
 Eaymond Berenger IV., the last Count of Provence of 
 the native line, and himself not the meanest of the 
 poets in the soft and melodious Proven9al tongue. 
 From her mother, Beatrice of Savoy, came the harder, 
 clearer, more grasping temperament which was already a 
 characteristic of the rising house of Savoy. She was one 
 of four fair sisters, who all in their turn became queens. 
 
 " Quattro figlie ebbe, e ciascuna regina, 
 Ramondo Beringhieri." 
 
 Eleanor's elder sister Margaret was the wife of Louis IX., 
 better known as St. Louis, then at the height of 
 his power, and the strongest king who had ever as yet 
 reigned in France. Her next sister, Sanchia, married 
 Henry III.'s only brother. Earl Eichard of Cornwall; 
 while her youngest sister took the rich inheritance of 
 Provence to her husband, Charles of Anjou, the brother of 
 Louis IX. and the future conqueror of Sicily. But despite 
 her French connections by marriage, Eleanor cannot 
 herself be described as French in any strict sense of the 
 word. Her family had long headed the unavailing 
 struggle against the extension of North French influence 
 into Languedoc and Provence. But a foreign girl from 
 the south who never understood the ways and manners 
 of Englishmen, and was, moreover, proud, greedy, 
 
6 EDWARD I CHAP. 
 
 extravagant, and overbearing, could not but exercise an 
 evil influence over her weak, irresolute, and uxorious 
 husband. 
 
 With all their faults, Henry and Eleanor were 
 devoted to each other, and set an example of family life 
 that was rare in those days of brutality and violence. 
 They showed no less devotion to their children, and 
 all through his life Edward was bound by the strongest 
 ties of duty and affection to his kindly, affectionate, and 
 loving father, and his proud, high-spirited, and passion- 
 ate mother. Henry and Eleanor kept their son more 
 about them than was usual in the formal households of 
 the time. Up to the age of seven Edward was mainly 
 brought up at Windsor under the care of Hugh Giffard. 
 He seems to have been delicate, and to have suffered 
 some severe illnesses. When he was seven he fell sick 
 at Beaulieu Abbey, whither he had been taken by his 
 mother to be present at the dedication of the church. 
 For three weeks he lay in danger, and his mother, to 
 the scandal of the strict Cistercians, insisted on staying 
 in the convent that she might nurse him. A year later 
 Edward was dangerously ill in London, and, at the 
 King's request, prayers were offered up for his recovery 
 in all the monasteries in and near the city. But as he 
 grew older Edward got over his childish weakness. 
 He became a tall, active, handsome boy, with bright 
 flaxen locks, and proud, rather domineering manners. 
 Nor was his education neglected. French, Latin, and 
 English he could understand with equal facility, and, 
 despite a stammer, he became ultimately an eloquent 
 speaker in at least French and English. There is little 
 evidence of his literary attainments and scanty proof 
 
I EARLY YEARS 7 
 
 of any love of books. Probably he was all through 
 his life fonder of action than of speculation. But 
 he certainly must have gone through that elaborate 
 drilling in the routine of business which he afterwards 
 strove in vain to enforce on his unhappy son. We 
 are still more certain that he went through a careful 
 legal training, perhaps under the guidance of the 
 chancery clerk, Robert Burnell, who became his chaplain 
 and confidential servant and to whom he was ever 
 warmly attached. His father's real religious feeling 
 ensured for Edward a strict religious education. The 
 home lessons of purity and piety took a deep root, and all 
 through his life Edward was honourably distinguished 
 by the uprightness of his private life and the strength 
 and fervour of his religious principles. Nor were the 
 martial exercises which became a prince neglected. 
 From an early age Edward became famous throughout 
 Christendom as the bravest and most dexterous of 
 warriors. He gained many notable successes in tourna- 
 ments against some of the doughtiest champions of the 
 day. He was equally expert in hawking and hunting, 
 a fearless and dexterous horseman, and a proficient in 
 all martial and manly sports, especially those that had 
 in them a spice of danger. Among his most ordinary 
 companions were his cousin, Henry of Almaine, the son 
 of Richard, Earl of Cornwall, who was soon to become 
 the titular king of the Romans, and his other cousins, 
 the four young Montforts, of whom the eldest, Henry 
 de Montfort, was nearly his own age. The Montforts 
 were fierce, violent, brutal youths, and marked out for 
 stormy and ill-fated careers. Not less violent were 
 Edward's young Poitevin uncles, the Lusignans, the 
 
8 EDWARD I CHAP. 
 
 offspring of his father's mother, Isabella of Angoul^me, 
 by her second marriage with the Count of La Marche, 
 and who came, like the Savoyard kinsfolk of Henry's 
 wife, to share the bounty of their half-brother the King. 
 Edward himself was not unmarked by the same taint in 
 early manhood. After he had been given a household 
 of his own, the violence and brutality of his followers 
 involved their master in an unpopularity which was not 
 quite undeserved. With lordly good nature, Edward 
 bestowed his confidence on ruffianly officials, who op- 
 pressed and robbed his tenants in his name. Nor were 
 his own acts blameless. Strange tales were told of 
 the lawless deeds wrought by the heir to the throne 
 out of mere love of mischief or wanton cruelty. 
 The progresses of the Lord Edward with his band 
 of 200 horsemen, mostly foreigners, were like the 
 movements of a desolating plague. Not even Louis of 
 France, the invader of England in King Henry's youth, 
 had taken about with him such a band of ruffians and 
 desperadoes. No common man had any rights that such 
 high-spirited gentlemen could regard as sacred. They 
 stole the horses, the waggons, and the provisions that 
 came nearest to their hands. Even monks were spoiled 
 and maltreated by these reckless youths. One day, when 
 Edward paid a visit to his uncle Richard at Wallingford, 
 his followers took violent possession of the neighbouring 
 priory, and, driving out and insulting the lawful owners, 
 stole their food, destroyed their property, and beat their 
 servants. On another occasion Edward was passing 
 along a road, and, out of mere wantonness, ordered his 
 followers to cut off an ear and pluck out an eye of a 
 harmless youth who had happened to cross his path. The 
 
I . EARLY YEARS 9 
 
 most gloomy forebodings were expressed as to what would 
 happen under so headstrong and reckless a ruler. But if 
 courtly complacency is wont to magnify the virtues of 
 young princes, common gossip is at least as apt to exag- 
 gerate their vices. Regard for human suffering was a very 
 rare quality in the Middle Ages, at least outside church 
 and cloister. Yet it is hard to believe that Edward was 
 guilty of anything worse than youthful carelessness, and 
 overweening pride in his exalted position. Badly served 
 he may well have been, and all through his life it was 
 among his chiefest misfortunes that the execution of 
 his plans had to be confided to agents quite unworthy 
 to give proper eff'ect to them. But with all his love of 
 joustings and hunting, events show that he seldom 
 neglected his serious business. 
 
 Men lived short lives in the Middle Ages, and corre- 
 spondingly began their active career at an exceedingly 
 early age. The mediaeval prince or noble was often a 
 warrior, a practised statesman, a husband and a father 
 when still little more than a mere boy. This was the 
 case with Edward. He was only eight when his father 
 began to think of providing him with a wife. But the 
 negotiations entered upon in 1247 for a marriage between 
 the young Edward and a daughter of the Duke of 
 Brabant led to no result. When Edward was about 
 thirteen, fresh marriage negotiations were begun with 
 Alfonso X., King of Castile. This prince was a descend- 
 ant of Eleanor, daughter of Henry II., from whose 
 marriage with King Alfonso VIII. of Castile had resulted 
 a long and intimate colinection between England and 
 Castile, which coloured the whole of our foreign policy 
 up to the Reformation. But marriage connections 
 
10 EDWARD I CHAP. 
 
 involved not only relations of kinship but unpleasant 
 claims of right. Alfonso X. was the most powerful of 
 the Spanish kings, an able, vigorous, active, and 
 aggressive ruler. The compilation of the code of the 
 Siete Partidas made his reign an epoch in the history of 
 Castile, while his adventurous disposition led him later 
 to accept the doubtful advantage of election to the Holy 
 Eoman Empire in rivalry to Edward's uncle, Earl 
 Richard of Cornwall. The same restless and aggressive 
 spirit Alfonso now showed by entertaining the appeals 
 of the rebellious Gascon subjects of the English King, 
 who called upon him to vindicate his claims to the 
 duchy as the heir of Eleanor of Guienne. It was even 
 believed in England that Alfonso proposed to invade 
 England with an army of Castilians and Saracens, 
 Henry thought it wise to remove the possibilities of a 
 conflict, and restore the old friendly relations with 
 Castile by a proposal to marry Edward to Alfonso's half- 
 sister Eleanor, the daughter of King Ferdinand the 
 Saint by his second wife Joan of Ponthieu, a young girl 
 already reputed to possess great beauty, goodness, and 
 sound sense, and who was, moreover, in right of her 
 mother, heiress of the rich counties of Ponthieu and 
 Montreuil in Western Picardy. That Edward himself 
 might not go landless to the marriage, Henry conferred 
 upon his son such extensive territories that he became, 
 men said, no better than a mutilated king. In 1 253 Henry 
 sailed to Gascony, hoping to appease some disturbances 
 that were then raging there, and conclude the match. 
 Edward, who was taken to Portsmouth to see his father 
 depart, stood weeping upon the shore as the ship sailed 
 away, and would not leave it as long as a sail could still 
 
1 EARLY YEARS 11 i 
 
 be seen. Queen Eleanor remained in England to look 1 
 
 after her son and the realm. The next year the mar- ; 
 
 riage treaty was signed, and in the early summer of 1254 • 
 
 Edward sailed with his mother and his uncle, Archbishop \ 
 
 Boniface of Canterbury, to join his father in Gascony. j 
 
 In August he went to Alfonso's court at Burgos to carry ! 
 
 on his suit in person. His mother still accompanied | 
 
 him. Alfonso received them with great pomp and i 
 
 festivity, examined the youth in his skill and knowledge, ' 
 
 and conferred upon him the honour of knighthood. In • 
 
 October he was married to Eleanor at the monastery of ' 
 
 Las Huelgas, and shortly afterwards returned with his ! 
 
 wife to Bordeaux, whence a year later they returned to ' 
 
 England. The marriage thus concluded between the ' 
 
 royal children proved one of the happiest in English ! 
 
 history. Edward and Eleanor rivalled Henry and , 
 
 Eleanor in the warmth of their attachment and the , 
 purity of their domestic lives. They were scarcely ever 
 separated, Eleanor making it her pride to share in the 
 toils and dangers of her husband. On her death, after 
 thirty-five years of happy wedlock, Edward experienced 
 
 the most poignant grief. His whole character changed ■ 
 
 for the worse after the removal of the faithful partner of I 
 his youth and early manhood. 
 
 In the thirteenth century a king's son did not form a 
 member of a special royal caste. He had no distinctive 
 
 title and was brought up very much like any other ! 
 
 young man of high birth. The old English word I 
 "^theling" had ceased to be used as the appropriate 
 
 designation of the son of a crowned and anointed king. ] 
 
 The vaguer modern word " prince " did not come into ; 
 
 use for many centuries later. The eldest son of the j 
 
12 EDWARD I CHAP. 
 
 English king had no higher title than the vague appella- 
 tion of "lord," which he shared with a whole host of 
 feudal chieftains, great and small, with the bishops, 
 abbots, judges, and even the masters and doctors of the 
 universities. To speak of our hero as " Prince Edward " 
 is an anachronism, though sometimes it is a convenient 
 one. Contemporaries were content to call him " the Lord 
 Edward, the first-born son of the King," or, more shortly, 
 " the Lord Edward." It is best to imitate their example. 
 The provision for a mediaeval king's son was not 
 made by grants and pensions from a civil list, but by the 
 conference of large estates and territories, which he was 
 expected to manage as a landlord, if not also to rule as 
 a feudal chieftain. It was only through the successful 
 administration of his domains that he could expect to 
 get an adequate income for himself. The privilege of 
 receiving the revenue of his appanage thus involved the 
 duty of hard work in its government. It was, more- 
 over, a very common practice all over Europe to confer 
 upon the youthful heir some outlying and semi-independ- 
 ent portion of the royal dominions that was not strictly 
 a part of the main kingdom, and which gave the young 
 prince a wide and free field to learn how to govern and 
 prepare himself for the larger task of ruling the kingdom 
 itself. A familiar though later example is the grant 
 to the French king's heirs of the outlying district of 
 Dauphiny, whence their well-known title of Dauphin. 
 In the next century it became the custom in England to 
 confer on the king's eldest son the Principality of Wales. 
 But long before this had grown into a regular fashion, 
 long before the Principality was in the king's hands to 
 bestow, a similar practice had arisen. The lavish grants 
 
I EARLY YEARS 18 
 
 of territory made, as we have seen, to Edward between 
 1252 and 1254 had not simply the object of providing 
 him with an adequate revenue to keep his court in due 
 state with his young wife. They were also made with 
 the design of giving him experience as a ruler in those 
 districts of his father's dominions where the most 
 valuable experience could be got. The ample provision 
 made for Edward included indeed certain English cities 
 such as Bristol, Stamford, and Grantham. But these 
 were but an insignificant portion of the whole. The 
 real importance of the grants lies in the gift to 
 Edward of aU Ireland, the earldom of Chester, the 
 king's lands in Wales, the islands of Jersey and 
 Guernsey with their dependencies, and the whole of 
 Gascony with the island of Oleron, and whatever rights 
 the king still had over all the other lands taken from 
 his predecessors by the kings of France. It was, in 
 short, the transference from Henry to Edward of aU 
 those parts of the British Islands outside England itself 
 where the English King had any claim to rule. Along 
 with these outlying dependencies, went every vestige 
 that remained of the Norman inheritance of William the 
 Bastard and the Aquitanian inheritance of Eleanor of 
 Guienne. Edward was thus made the representative of 
 the claims still brought forward from time to time for 
 the restitution of the great Angevin Empire, reduced to 
 insignificance by the heedless folly of John and the 
 watchful aggressions of the French kings. The results 
 of both series of grants were of unspeakable import- 
 ance for the future history of Edward, and indeed 
 for the future destinies of the British Islands. It was 
 perhaps the greatest work of Edward's life to revive and 
 
14 EDWARD I OHAP. 
 
 extend the policy of the great West Saxon kings before 
 the Conquest of reducing the whole British Islands under 
 the rule of the English King. The firmness and clear- 
 ness with which Edward persisted in this policy may in 
 no small measure be attributed to his early experience 
 as ruler of Wales, Chester, and Ireland. Hardly second 
 in importance to the imperial schemes of Edward in 
 Britain was the firm policy with which he upheld 
 England in a foremost place in the councils of Europe. 
 This again can be traced back to his early experiences 
 as a ruler of the English King's dominions in France. 
 That he thought the real acquisition of Wales, Scotland, 
 and Ireland more important and more worthy objects 
 than vain attempts to renew the Angevin Empire on the 
 Continent is perhaps almost equally true of his later 
 policy. His early Gascon training gave him opportuni- 
 ties for reforming the institutions and developing the 
 resources of his great feudal duchy, while it could not 
 but convince him of the real limitations imposed upon 
 his power in the south of France. 
 
 It is important to realise the exact position of the 
 lands made over by Henry to Edward when the young 
 prince was started on his active career. The appanage 
 he received was a large one, but it was so unprofitable 
 that Henry had to promise his son that the value of the 
 lands settled on him should not fall short of 15,000 
 marks. In fact, Edward's whole lordship was in such a 
 disturbed state that the maintenance of law and order 
 within it could only be assured by means of lavish 
 subsidies from the royal Exchequer. Such subsidies 
 Henry was in no condition to make. The impossible 
 task was therefore assigned to Edward and his advisers 
 
I EARLY YEARS 16 
 
 of reducing Ireland, Wales, and Gascony with their 
 own resources ; while at the same time it was necessary 
 that sufficient revenue should be derived from these 
 poor and disturbed regions to provide for the support 
 of their lord's household. 
 
 Ireland was of all Edward's dominions in the most 
 hopeless position. The first energies of the Norman 
 conquerors of the twelfth century had been exhausted, 
 and, though the great Norman houses still ruled extensive 
 territories, they had begun to experience the attraction 
 of Irish influence, and besides the hibernicisation of the 
 Norman lords, the native septs were coming down from 
 the hills and disputing with their new masters the 
 domination of the plain country. But the power of the 
 English crown had become insignificant alike over 
 Norman lord and Irish chieftain. Edward's deputy 
 at Dublin could command the obedience of neither. 
 The Celtic chieftains upheld the tribal anarchy of the 
 old Irish septs. The Norman lords saw their ideal 
 of government in a political feudalism which gave 
 the great landlord every regalian right, and necessarily 
 involved the complete disintegration of all central 
 authority. The central power was weak, foreign, and 
 unpopular. .These complicated evils had reduced the 
 unhappy island to a state of confusion almost worse 
 than that which had prevailed in the wild times of 
 independence, before Strongbow and his associates 
 had crossed the St. George's Channel. To grapple 
 seriously with such difficulties was beyond the strength 
 of Edward's advisers. They paid little attention to 
 Ireland, preferring to concentrate their efforts on the 
 smaller and more accessible territory of Wales. 
 
16 EDWARD I CHAP. 
 
 The plans of Edward's advisers in Wales for the 
 reduction of Wales were made possible by the grant 
 of the great earldom of Chester. Ever since the 
 Conquest Chester had been a district standing by itself. 
 It was a palatine earldom, set up by the Conqueror to 
 keep in check the wild Welshmen. With this object 
 the Earl was given an almost absolute control of the 
 civil and military resources of his shire. His duties to 
 the Crown were discharged by simple homage and service. 
 He held Cheshire as freely by his sword as the King 
 held England by his crown. This position is in all 
 respects analogous to that of the practically independent 
 feudal chieftains of France or Germany. The result 
 was that Cheshire became a great military state. Its 
 population were famed for their violence, turbulence, 
 and martial powers. Headed by their fierce lords, the 
 Cheshiremen had conquered nearly all Wales between 
 the Dee and the Conway, though a later wave of Welsh 
 enthusiasm had driven the invaders back almost to the 
 walls of Chester. But the great line of Earls of 
 Chester was now extinct. The bestowal of lapsed fiefs 
 was among the most important of the prerogatives of 
 the Crown. It was no small gain to the royal cause 
 that Henry was thus able to invest his son with the 
 rich, fair, and fertile Palatinate. It involved revenue, 
 soldiers, influence, dignity, and the status of the greatest 
 of English earls. It gave the new Earl of Chester 
 means to make good the vaguer grant of "Wales." 
 
 Wales included all the exceptional jurisdictions of 
 the western peninsula, largely but by no means ex- 
 clusively inhabited by Welshmen. In thinking of the 
 Wales of the thirteenth century, we must forget the 
 
I EARLY YEARS 17 
 
 modern boundary which separates the twelve or thirteen 
 counties of the Wales of to-day from the modern 
 England. This boundary goes no farther back than 
 the reign of Henry VIII. Thirteenth -century Wales 
 included much that is now England, while some parts 
 of what is now Wales were then English ground. Beyond 
 the vague and undefined western limits of Cheshire, 
 Shropshire, Herefordshire, and Gloucestershire, every- 
 thing was Wales. 
 
 Before the Norman Conquest Wales had been ruled 
 by a swarm of petty Celtic chieftains, whose energies 
 were consumed in fruitless fights with each other, the 
 true " battles of kites and crows " of British history. 
 All owed a nominal allegiance to the English kings, 
 but this lax feudal tie did not prevent them plundering 
 and devastating the English border whenever a fair 
 opportunity was offered. But the strong rule of William 
 I. and his sons brought about a great change. The 
 Norman Conquest of England was followed by the 
 Norman Conquest of Wales. A swarm of Norman 
 adventurers crossed over the border and drove the 
 Welsh from the fair plains to the barren uplands. 
 The mutual jealousies of the petty Welsh kings and 
 princes made national union impossible, and without 
 union efi"ectual resistance to the Normans was hardly to 
 be thought of. But the Norman Conquerors were as 
 little united as the Welsh that they displaced. As in 
 Ireland, the ideal of feudal lord and clan chieftain had 
 this in common that it involved an infinite division 
 of political power. The Norman conquerors of Wales 
 fought for their own hands and were almost independent 
 of the kings of England. They set up therefore a 
 
 C 
 
18 EDWARD I CHAP. 
 
 whole host of petty states, over which they ruled like 
 little kings. These small Norman principalities on 
 Welsh ground were known as the Lordships Marcher, 
 and the whole district as the Marches of Wales, though 
 the original idea of the March as a border was largely 
 lost sight of in an age when the Welsh Marches 
 included the districts so remote from the English 
 border as a great part of the modern Pembrokeshire. 
 The most important of the Lordships Marcher of 
 Wales were the palatine earldom of Pembroke and 
 the great lordship of Glamorgan, whose lords were 
 not called Earls only because they had already that 
 title from their English earldom of Gloucester. Next 
 in importance was the lordship of Brecon, an appendage 
 to the earldom of Hereford. More to the north the 
 great family of Mortimer bore sway in Shropshire 
 and the Middle Marches. The Four Cantreds of 
 Perveddwlad (the plain country) Ehos, Rhuvoniog, 
 Duffryn Clwyd, and Tygeingl, which roughly corre- 
 sponded to the modern Denbighshire and Flintshire, 
 depended on the Earls of Chester. All southern and 
 eastern Wales was thus March ground. 
 
 The Norman Conquest also indirectly affected Welsh 
 Wales. It finally forced the native Welsh to unite 
 among each other as the only alternative to complete 
 subjection. A great national and literary revival broke 
 out in Celtic Wales. The lords of Gwynedd, whose rule 
 included the mountain fastnesses of Snowdon and 
 Merioneth and the rich corn-lands of Anglesey, became 
 the leaders of the Welsh national revival. Bit by bit the 
 old jealousies of tribe and tribe, of north and south, were 
 removed. At last all Welshmen looked up to the lords 
 
I EARLY YEARS 19 
 
 of Snowdon as the champions of the national cause against 
 the restless and oppressive French invaders. Llywelyn 
 ab lorwerth, the greatest of Welsh princes, cleverly used 
 this new feeling of national unity to extend his north 
 Welsh principality at the expense of the now divided 
 and quarrelsome Marchers. He pushed his successes 
 eastwards to the walls of Chester, and southwards to the 
 shores of Carmarthen Bay, thus forcing a wedge of Welsh 
 territory through parts of the modern Cardiganshire 
 and Carmarthenshire, though the royal stronghold of Car- 
 marthen still checked his onward progress. But while 
 his praises were chanted by the native bards as the hero 
 of the Cymric race, Llywelyn never forgot that he was 
 not only a national Welsh prince but a great feudal 
 English lord. He accordingly allied himself with the 
 baronial opposition to English kings, and took a 
 prominent part in the struggle for Magna Charta, 
 clauses of which ensured him many important privileges. 
 Before his death in 1240 he was proud to call himself 
 prince of all Wales. His son David (1240-1246), born of 
 his English wife Joan, King John's bastard daughter, 
 was hardly strong enough to uphold Llywelyn's power. 
 But after his death a full-blooded Welshman again ac- 
 quired the Principality. The new prince was David's 
 nephew Llywelyn ab GrufFydd, the son of Llywelyn 
 ab lorwerth's favourite son by a Welsh mother. For 
 nearly forty years (1246-1282) Llywelyn ab Gruffydd 
 strove to maintain the policy, both national and feudal, 
 of his grandfather. But at the time we are now dealing 
 with he had not attained any very great measure of 
 success. 
 
 The twofold division of Wales into the Principality 
 
20 EDWARD I chap. 
 
 and the Marches must never be lost sight of if we wish 
 to understand the Welsh policy of Edward I. We must 
 remember that the Principality did not then mean, as it 
 does in its loose modem use, the whole of Wales, but 
 strictly the districts ruled over by the Prince of Wales, 
 Llywelyn ab Gruffydd. At this time that region roughly 
 comprised what now constitutes the three shires of 
 Anglesea, Carnarvon, and Merioneth. The Four Can- 
 treds and the lands between the Dovey and Carmarthen 
 Bay had fallen into the hands of the English king, and 
 were now the main districts granted to Edward. 
 Edward's Welsh lands therefore included a great deal 
 of what is now Denbighshire and Flintshire, and of 
 what is now Cardiganshire and Carmarthenshire. But 
 beyond these royal dominions were the Marches, the 
 term meaning not simply the border districts but all 
 those parts of Wales ruled over by Norman lords on 
 feudal principles. A few of these may have fallen by 
 lapse into Edward's hands, but the real significance of 
 Henry's grant was that it included all the recent 
 acquisitions from the restless Princes of Wales. 
 
 Edward had already vigorous and able, though fierce 
 and unscrupulous, advisers. His ministers now formed 
 a scheme of introducing English institutions into their 
 master's lands in Wales. The current phrase (well 
 known in Ireland down to the seventeenth century) 
 for bringing English law into a country was to make 
 the district in question "shire ground." Edward's 
 advisers therefore sought to attach the Four Cantreds to 
 the county of Chester, while they set up a new shire of 
 which the centre was Carmarthen, but which was for 
 convenience sake split up later into the counties of 
 
I EARLY YEARS 21 
 
 Cardigan and Carmarthen. So sovereign a remedy was 
 English law considered for the chronic anarchy of 
 Wales, that some Welshmen had actually begged Henry 
 to introduce it into their land. But the whole weight of 
 national feeling clung to the rough rude laws of Howel 
 the Good, which the Welsh regarded as the basis of 
 their jurisprudence. While Edward's officers were 
 establishing their hundredmoots and their shiremoots, 
 his Welsh subjects took counsel together and declared 
 that they would never give up the laws of their fathers. 
 The violence and greed with which Edward's deputy, 
 Geoffrey Langley, sought to bring in the new system 
 completed their disgust. In their despair they turned 
 to Lly welyn, who gleefully welcomed a chance of winning 
 back the dominions of his grandfather. In the autumn 
 of 1256 Llywelyn's troops poured down from the heights 
 of Snowdon over the Four Cantreds. The plain country 
 submitted through the goodwill of the native inhabit- 
 ants for the invaders. Two castles alone, Dyserth 
 (near Rhyl) and Deganwy (near Llandudno), held out 
 for Earl Edward. 
 
 Edward hurried from the delights of the tourney and 
 tiltyard to defend his inheritance. But he had no 
 money and no men to cope with the trained warriors of 
 Lly welyn. He soon exhausted a loan that he obtained 
 from his rich uncle Eichard, and earnestly besought his 
 father to come to his assistance. " What business is it 
 of mine 1 " answered Henry ; " I have given you the land. 
 You must act for yourself." But next year Henry was 
 prevailed upon to accompany Edward in an expedition 
 to North Wales. Father and son penetrated to the 
 sorely beleaguered castle of Deganwy, where they spent 
 
22 EDWARD I chap 
 
 some time. But on their retirement the Welsh again 
 became masters of all the land but a few castles. It was 
 Edward's first campaign, an inglorious beginning for so 
 great a martial career. But it gave the young earl 
 valuable experience in Welsh warfare, and may well 
 have first opened his eyes to the weakness and incom- 
 petence of his father as a king. It left him discredited, 
 overwhelmed with debt, and eager to barter away part of 
 his patrimony for ready money. But it showed him the 
 way by which Llywelyn might some day be conquered, 
 and it showed him still more clearly how Wales, if 
 conquered, ought to be ruled. The germ of all Edward's 
 later Welsh policy lies in his early attempt to establish 
 the shire system in his Welsh estates. 
 
 Gascony, Guienne, or Aquitaine (the terms at this 
 period at least are practically synonjrmous) was no less 
 than Wales the object of Edward's special concern. It 
 included all that remained in English hands of the vast 
 possessions which Eleanor of Poitou had brought to her 
 husband Henry II. It was a land of great wealth and 
 prosperity, a land of vineyards and rich corn-fields, 
 watered by noble rivers, with many a wealthy and 
 flourishing town, and a great band of warlike, turbulent, 
 lawless nobility, in whom the wild, fierce spirit still 
 lived that had in an earlier age found an undying ex- 
 pression in the songs of Bertrand de Born, and among 
 whom Richard the Lion Heart had found the ideals 
 of his restless, adventurous, purposeless life. Cut off 
 from France by language, manners, sympathies, and 
 traditions, the Gascons were content with the rule of 
 their English dukes, because they were so far off that 
 they had little reason to fear them, and because they 
 
I EARLY YEARS 28 
 
 found in England the best and readiest market for their 
 wines. But the towns were little republics, almost as 
 free and as self-contained as the great cities of Italy, and 
 like them torn by fierce factions, such as the Kosteins 
 and Colons of Bordeaux, and the popular and aristocratic 
 parties of Bayonne. The feudal nobles, in their hill^ 
 castles on the slopes of the Pyrenees and Cevennes, were 
 for all practical purposes independent. Chief among 
 them was Gaston, Viscount of B4arn, the uncle of Queen 
 Eleanor, and the greediest, cruellest, most desperate, and 
 turbulent of men. Strong neighbours watched eagerly 
 the chronic tumults within the duchy, hoping to derive 
 therefrom some advantage to themselves. Of these the 
 most dangerous were the King of Navarre, and Alfonso, 
 Count of Poitiers and Toulouse, the brother of Louis IX. 
 of France, actual possessor of the northern and eastern 
 portions of Henry 11. 's Aquitanian inheritance, and the 
 pioneer of North French influence in the Languedoc. 
 Against such complicated troubles, weak King Henry 
 had been able to make no way at all, until in 1248 he 
 had made Simon of Montfort seneschal or governor of 
 Gascony. Earl Simon's strong, fierce, vigorous rule soon 
 began to work a great change ; but he was reckless of 
 his means and strove to do everything at once. He had 
 poor support from England, and soon raised up a whole 
 host of enemies in Gascony, who overwhelmed the 
 English king with complaints and eagerly demanded 
 the recall of the Earl of Leicester. 
 
 This was the state of things when Edward first re- 
 ceived the grant of Gascony from his father. His uncle 
 and godfather still remained seneschal, acting henceforth 
 for the son and not for the father. At first the king 
 
84 EDWARD I chap. 
 
 encouraged Simon, hoping that he would prepare the 
 way for Edward's future rule. "You shall receive," he 
 wrote to his brother-in-law, "from us and our heir a 
 recompense worthy of your services." It was left to 
 the Gascon towns first to bring Edward into that 
 opposition to Earl Simon which was to colour the 
 whole of his future life. They hated Leicester, and 
 strove to set up their new lord against his fierce deputy. 
 "We beg your Majesty," wrote the deputies of the 
 flourishing city of Bazas, "to drive Earl Simon from 
 Gascony, and send us your son Edward, our lord, who 
 will find us all in peace." Henry in response confirmed 
 his grant to Edward, but with his usual weakness again 
 sent back Simon as governor, though plainly showing 
 that he had no longer his full confidence. When Henry 
 was in Gascony in 1253 Simon was still his seneschal; 
 but next year he was dismissed in disgrace, and, filled 
 with a burning sense of wrong and hatred, plunged 
 eagerly into the camp of the baronial opposition in 
 England. In 1254 and 1255 Edward himself lived 
 mostly in Gascony. Here too he acquired valuable 
 experience. Apart from the importance of his Gascon 
 rule in first bringing out his opposition to Leicester, it 
 taught him lessons as to how the English king's lands in 
 France should be governed, which in later years bore 
 him excellent fruit. It, moreover, gave him that insight 
 into south French and Spanish politics which qualified 
 him to fulfil the leading part in those regions to which 
 in after years he was called. On his return to England 
 he did not forget the interests of his Gascon subjects. 
 In 1261 he drew up an elaborate series of statutes for 
 Bordeaux which, while taking away from the citizens 
 
I EARLY YEARS 25 
 
 the right of choosing their own mayor, gave them in 
 compensation full protection from the exactions of the 
 royal officials. The need of such protection had been 
 brought home to Edward by the bitter complaints 
 which the wine merchants of Bordeaux now presented 
 to him of the ruin to their trade caused by the 
 exactions of the king's officials. Edward eagerly 
 espoused their cause, and plainly told his father that 
 such exactions must cease. For the first time his sense 
 of the impolicy of Henry's conduct prompted him 
 to break through the strong ties of affection which 
 bound him to the fondest and most indulgent of fathers. 
 Henry was bitterly offended. "My own flesh and 
 blood," he exclaimed with a sigh, " are assailing me ; 
 the times of my grandfather, whose children waged 
 war against him, are surely coming back." Nothing 
 shows more clearly the impracticable and hopeless 
 attitude of the old king than these foolish and petulant 
 remarks. But the time was coming when Edward's 
 faithfulness to his father was to endure far sterner 
 trials than this. The time of his apprenticeship was 
 over. With the beginning of the great dispute between 
 Henry and his barons, Edward enters into his real 
 political career. 
 
CHAPTEE II 
 
 EDWARD AND THE BARONS' WARS 
 1258-1267 
 
 The personal government of Henry III. had now lasted 
 for more than five and twenty years. Year after year 
 his weak and nerveless rule had become worse. He 
 gave the nation neither strong government nor popular 
 control. A feeble attempt at despotism had brought 
 about a chronic state of anarchy. Extravagance, 
 nepotism, incompetence had reigned supreme. Many 
 and loud had been the protests that the wiser among 
 the churchmen and the nobler among the baronage had 
 raised against the weak king's misdoings. But the 
 tyranny of Henry was not of that severe and grinding 
 kind which invites immediate and strenuous resistance 
 even at the expense of revolution. And the opposition 
 was wanting in unity of policy and in leaders of capacity. 
 Thus it was that, despite the protests of the gallant 
 Richard Marshal, the despairing lamentations of the 
 sainted Edmund of Abingdon, the more manly de- 
 nunciations of Bishop Grosseteste, and the spirited 
 action of Earl Richard of Cornwall, Henry was still 
 able to go on in his evil ways. But new complications 
 
CHAP. II EDWARD AND THE BARONS' WARS 27 
 
 now presented themselves which at last brought about 
 the final crisis. The return of Simon de Montfort from 
 Gascony, thoroughly and for ever at feud with his 
 royal brother-in-law, gave the opposition a leader of 
 matchless ability, resourcefulness, energy, and daring. 
 The vain attempt of Henry to procure for his second 
 son Edmund the crown of Sicily had imposed a new 
 and a crushing burden upon the scanty resources of the 
 kingdom. The popes, who used Edmund as a tool to 
 drive out the heirs of their hated enemy, Frederick of 
 Hohenstaufen, from the Sicilian throne, pledged Henry's 
 credit to the uttermost, and sent legates to England to 
 demand the fulfilment of his promises. This led to the 
 famous Parliaments of Barons of 1258. At London, in 
 the spring, Henry was forced to accept a commission 
 of reform. At Oxford, in the summer, a new constitu- 
 tion was drawn up and forced upon the reluctant 
 monarch. By the Provisions of Oxford the whole 
 power of the Crown was put into the hands of a 
 committee of fifteen barons. The king's household was 
 set in order, his alien kinsmen and favourites were 
 driven beyond sea, and the custody of royal castles 
 entrusted to Englishmen alone. A sweeping scheme 
 of further reformation was drawn up for the future. A 
 few months' vigorous action reduced the would-be despot 
 to a position of utter powerlessness. 
 
 Edward was now in his twentieth year. It is pro- 
 bable that he was already dimly conscious of his father's 
 deficiencies, but his filial affection and his pride of power 
 alike prompted him to vigorously oppose the audacious 
 designs of the barons. But he soon found himself swept 
 away by the torrent. In vain he set himself against 
 
28 EDWARD I chap. 
 
 the expulsion of his familiar friends and companions, 
 his uncles the Lusignans. The barons forced him to take 
 part in the siege of Winchester Castle, from which his 
 Poitevin uncles made their last unavailing resistance. 
 After their expulsion he gave his reluct int oath to 
 observe the Provisions of Oxford. It must have been a 
 bitter humiliation to him to be compelled to accept the 
 appointment of four baronial councillors, specially 
 commissioned to reform his turbulent and disorderly 
 household. But with all his loyalty he could not 
 sacrifice enough to satisfy the exacting affection of his 
 foolish father. A hot quarrel broke out between the 
 king and his son, though it was soon ended by an 
 affectionate reconciliation in the chapter-house at Win- 
 chester. Yet each outburst of foolish petulance on 
 Henry's part could not but be a fresh inducement to 
 Edward to take up a line of his own. In his passive 
 action in 1258 he had abundant opportunity to win fresh 
 experience. The removal of his Poitevin and Proven9al 
 kinsfolk threw him back on more English and more 
 capable advisers. Next year he began to play an inde- 
 pendent part. 
 
 The Provisions of Oxford had not satisfied everybody. 
 The revolution had been carried out by a ring of great 
 earls and baronp, who thought, like the Whigs of the 
 eighteenth century, that the transference of power to 
 themselves had made the constitution so perfect that 
 further improvements were not to be hoped for. Thjs 
 was not the view of the Earl of Leicester, but as a new 
 man and a foreigner his influence was far inferior to 
 that of Richard of Clare, the Earl of Gloucester, whose 
 vast possessions and vigorous personal character made 
 
n EDWARD AND THE BARONS' WARS 29 
 
 him the natural head of the English aristocracy. But 
 new classes of the community now entered for the first 
 time into the arena -of practical politics. The country 
 gentlemen of knightly rank, the natural leaders of the 
 unrepresented masses of the nation, had already begun 
 to get political experience from the new fashion of 
 summoning knights of the shire to treat with the king 
 in general parliaments. They now began to murmur 
 loudly that the old grievances under which the nation 
 had groaned so long were in no wise removed by the 
 change of leaders. These men, "the community of 
 the bachelorhood of England," addressed to Edward a 
 long petition for further reform, and denounced the 
 barons for breaking their word and working merely 
 "for their own good and the harm of the king." 
 Edward answered that he was ready to die for the good 
 of the commonwealth, but that though he had sworn 
 to the Provisions with the utmost unwillingness, he was 
 resolved to keep his oath. He took up their cause with 
 his usual impetuous ardour, and thus dissociated himself 
 from the mere courtier party. One result of his energetic 
 action was a further though small instalment of reform 
 in the Provisions of Westminster. It is significant that 
 while Henry simply swore to observe these Provisions, 
 Edward added to his acceptance an oath that he would 
 advise and aid Earl Simon against all men. Perhaps 
 the most important immediate result of this move- 
 ment was that it brought Edward into temporary 
 relations with his uncle Montfort. It is hard to say 
 that Edward's object was simply to divide his father's 
 enemies and so break down the slavery to which 
 the Crown had been subjected, though no doubt this 
 
80 EDWARD! chap. 
 
 result did follow from his action. But for a time 
 there was a complete breach between Edward and 
 Henry, a complete harmony of action between the 
 king's son and Earl Simon. Queen Eleanor, who could 
 not forgive her son's desertion of her Proven9al kins- 
 folk, stirred up Henry against Edward. Gloucester, now 
 Simon's declared enemy, did his best to widen the breach. 
 Something like civil war seemed likely to break out be- 
 tween the followers of Gloucester and those of Edward. 
 For five weeks and more the Londoners sought to keep 
 the peace by closing their gates and guarding them with 
 an armed force. 
 
 The absence of Henry in France, whither he had gone 
 to negotiate a peace with his brother-in-law St. Louis, 
 still further complicated matters. There Henry signed 
 a treaty by which he formally renounced all claims on 
 Normandy and Poitou, thus giving up those pretensions 
 which a few years before he had so solemnly handed 
 over to his son. Simon hotly opposed the peace. It is 
 not likely that Edward was very favourable to it. But 
 both Edward and Simon became parties to the treaty, 
 and solemnly renounced their share in the abandoned 
 claims. 
 
 In the spring of 1260 things got worse. Henry and 
 Eleanor were informed, as they were travelling back to 
 England, that Edward had formed a conspiracy with the 
 barons to depose his father, and that the king on his 
 arrival home would be forthwith hurried into captivity. 
 The story was an outrageous fiction, but it thoroughly 
 frightened Henry, who lingered on the French shore of 
 the Channel, fearing to cross the straits. At last the 
 timely intervention of Richard of Cornwall, now King of 
 
II EDWARD AND THE BARONS' WARS 81 
 
 the Romans, convinced Henry that his suspicions were 
 exaggerated. Henry was much offended with Edward. 
 On his arrival in London he sternly refused to see his 
 son, who was lodging with Simon outside the city walls. 
 But the weak head and good heart of the king could not 
 long endure such unnatural estrangement. " Do not let 
 my son appear before me," he exclaimed, "for if I see 
 him, I shall not be able to refrain from kissing him." 
 After a fortnight father and son were reconciled. Edward 
 gradually dropped his connections with Simon, though he 
 kept up his feud with Gloucester until the death of Earl 
 Richard in 1262. Disgusted at the troubles that had 
 resulted from his first active intervention in politics, 
 Edward withdrew for a time from public afifairs, and 
 again sought distraction in his favourite amusement of 
 the tiltyard. He now went to France for a great tourna- 
 ment, in which he came off badly. Again in 1262 he 
 went abroad for the same purpose. He proved victor 
 in several mock encounters, but in one he received a 
 serious wound. 
 
 Henry III. had long wearied of his inglorious degra- 
 dation at the hands of the Fifteen, and had for some 
 time been engaged in secret intrigues against the con- 
 stitution which he had sworn to observe. His last 
 scruples were removed when two successive popes 
 absolved both him and his son Edward from their oaths. 
 On 2nd May 1262 Henry solemnly proclaimed to the 
 sheriffs the tidings of his absolution from his obligations. 
 But later in the year, on learning that the young Earl 
 Gilbert, who had just succeeded his father in the 
 Gloucester estates and title, had thrown himself warmly 
 on the side of Leicester, Henry again confirmed the 
 
82 EDWARD I chap. 
 
 Provisions. A few months later he was again at work 
 undermining the new constitution. By Whitsuntide 
 1263 open civil war had broken out. 
 
 Edward spent the early part of 1263 in Paris. But 
 the tidings came that Llywelyn of Wales had again 
 invaded his Welsh estates, and after hurriedly collecting 
 a body of foreign mercenaries, he hastened back to 
 England, and was engaged until Whitsuntide in a fruit- 
 less campaign against the Welsh. Meanwhile the civil 
 war had broken out, hastened by the refusal of the 
 young Earl of Gloucester to take the oath of allegiance 
 to Edward, which Henry, with singular want of tact, 
 now insisted upon imposing upon the magnates. Edward 
 threw himself into Windsor Castle, while Simon raised 
 an army and encamped at Isleworth, a village on the 
 Middlesex bank of the Thames, just below Kichmond, 
 hoping thus to separate Edward at Windsor from 
 Henry and Eleanor, who had taken refuge in the 
 Tower of London from the fury of the Londoners, 
 who were nearly all staunch partisans of Earl Simon. 
 One day Eleanor, apparently with the object of joining 
 Edward at Windsor, took boat and attempted to pass 
 underneath London bridge on her upward journey. 
 But a great mob of the London rabble thronged the 
 bridge, reviled her as a traitress, and an adulterous 
 foreigner, and pelted her barge with stones, mud, rotten 
 eggs, and all manner of filth. She was soon forced 
 back to the Tower. The incident is mainly memor- 
 able for its effect on Edward, who bitterly resented 
 the foul indignities heaped upon Eleanor, and became 
 a sworn foe to London and its liberties for the rest of 
 his life. Edward now applied himself with extraordinary 
 
II EDWARD AND THE BARONS' WARS 33 
 
 dexterity to win over Leicester's followers, and suc- 
 ceeded in creating a strong party for himself, of which 
 the backbone was the fierce Lords Marcher of Wales, 
 who might well have looked upon Edward as their 
 natural leader, and who had already fought by his side 
 against Llywelyn. In revenge Simon forced a close 
 alliance with the Prince of Wales, and promised him his 
 daughter as a wife. Thus Llywelyn fought for the 
 baronial cause, just as his grandfather Llywelyn ab 
 lorwerth had joined the nobles arrayed against John in 
 the first struggle for the Charter. Meanwhile fresh truces 
 were made, only to be broken ; and fresh parliaments 
 assembled, only to be dissolved amidst riot and confusion. 
 Edward's tactics had so far succeeded that neither side 
 was strong enough to get the better of the other. At 
 last, in December, all parties agreed to submit their 
 disputes to the arbitration of St. Louis. 
 
 Edward sailed with his father for France, suffering 
 severely during his passage from the storms of December. 
 Early in 1264 the French king, as might have been 
 expected, annulled the Provisions, and declared on all 
 points in favour of Henry IIL Leicester, as might 
 equally have been anticipated, refused to be bound by 
 the arbitration to which he had sworn. On his taking 
 up arms, Edward hurried back to England to defend his 
 father's cause. He was already the practical leader of 
 the royalists, and the outbreak of civil war now forced 
 him still more fully to the front. He alone could take 
 the lead in the king's council, for he alone could form a 
 royalist party. There had been no party for Henry as 
 long as he ruled through foreigners and favourites, any 
 more than there was any party for Charles I. in the days 
 
 D 
 
84 EDWARD I chap. 
 
 of Ship Money, the Bishops' Wars, and the first session 
 of the Long Parliament. Edward did effectually for his 
 father what Hyde and Falkland did less successfully for 
 Charles I. He showed the nation that Earl Simon 
 was not the only reformer, and that the mass of the 
 barons were not reformers at all. He upheld a con- 
 stitutional royalism which allowed for national progress 
 but discouraged revolution. But the bad traditions 
 of long years of misgovernment still clave to his 
 following, and the hot revengeful fire of youth still 
 coloured the political conduct of Edward mth personal 
 motives. Despite his gallant fight he did not this 
 time succeed, and it was well for England that the early 
 failure of Edward preceded his later triumph. 
 
 The campaign of 1264 was begun by Earl Simon, 
 who, half despairing at the threatened break up of his 
 party through Edward's intrigues, was resolved to con- 
 quer or perish. 'VThough all men quit me^'- he exclaimed, 
 " I will remain with my four sons and fight for the good 
 cause which I have sworn to defend for the honour of 
 Holy Church and ^ the welfare of the realm." While 
 Simon himself marshalled the levies of the south, his 
 eldest son Henry operated in the west in conjunction 
 with Llywelyn of Wales, and his second son Simon 
 raised a force in the Midlands at Kenilworth. 
 
 Edward hurried to the west, to join his friends the 
 Lords Marcher in the fight against Henry Montfort and 
 Llywelyn. He strove to throw himself into Gloucester 
 Castle, the town, which commanded the passage over 
 the Severn, being already in the hands of the barons. 
 But though he gained his point, his numbers were too 
 small to enable him to maintain his position, and he 
 
II EDWARD AND THE BARONS' WARS 35 
 
 was forced to beg for a truce from his cousin. Henry 
 Montfort chivalrously, or rashly, granted an armistice. 
 But on the withdrawal of Henry to Kenilworth 
 Edward treacherously broke the truce, and regained 
 possession of the town. Master of the chief crossing 
 over the Lower Severn, he could now turn his atten- 
 tion to the more general campaign. He soon joined 
 his father at Oxford, where he drove out all the masters 
 and scholars, who, headed by their Chancellor, Thomas 
 of Cantilupe, were enthusiastic partisans of the popular 
 cause. Thence father and son marched against North- 
 ampton, where the younger Simon now was. Edward 
 easily captured the town and took his cousin prisoner, 
 having great trouble to save his life in the wild confusion 
 of the storm. He now devastated the earldom of 
 Leicester with fire and sword. But the royal forces 
 were soon called ofif to the south, where Eochester, the 
 key of Kent, was in danger of falling into the hands of 
 Earl Simon. 
 
 The king easily relieved Eochester, and wandered 
 aimlessly through Kent and Sussex, seeking, though 
 with little success, to win over the hostile Cinque Ports, 
 and striving to open communications with Queen Eleanor, 
 who was collecting an army of foreign mercenaries in 
 the Flemish harbours. But his soldiers suffered severely 
 from lack of food and forage. As his troops plodded 
 wearily through the deep lanes and dense copses of the 
 Weald, they were much harassed by Simon's light armed 
 Welsh archers, who lurked in every hedge and thicket 
 and inflicted severe losses upon them. At last the weary 
 host rested at Lewes. Edward took up his quarters 
 in the castle to the north of the town, while his father, 
 
36 EDWARD I chap. 
 
 with whom was his uncle Richard, King of the Romans, 
 occupied the priory, on the southern side of Lewes. 
 
 Earl Simon had retired from Rochester to the capital, 
 whence he marched south with an army reinforced by 
 a host of Londoners, all fresh and eager for battle, 
 though but little accustomed to warfare. On 13th May 
 he slept at Fletching, a village nine miles to the north 
 of Lewes. Thence, early on the morning of 14th May, 
 Montfort marched across the South Downs, hoping to 
 surprise the town. 
 
 Lewes is situated on the right bank of the Ouse, 
 which here . makes a bend that almost encircles the 
 town. To the west and north the South Downs sink 
 gradually down in the form of a natural amphitheatre 
 until they form the gap in which the town is built. 
 The army of the barons swept swiftly across the 
 bare rolling chalk downs, hoping to attack the castle 
 and priory simultaneously. But their movements were 
 discovered, and the royalists poured out of the town, 
 ready to fight out the battle upon the open plain. Simon 
 fixed his standard upon the hill, hoping that its con- 
 spicuous position would tempt the royalist attack. But 
 while he gathered the mass of his army on the right 
 wing which operated from the west against the defenders 
 of the -priory, he massed around the standard the un- 
 trained though enthusiastic Londoners. All turned out 
 as Simon had expected. Edward, the real general of 
 the royalists, at once fell into the trap, and charged 
 with the flower of the host the dense masses grouped 
 around the Earl's standard. With him was his gallant 
 cousin Henry of Almaine. The Londoners were smitten 
 with panic and fled in confusion; while Edward, de- 
 
II EDWARD AND THE BARONS' WARS 87 
 
 lighted to revenge on the citizens the insults they had 
 heaped upon his mother, pursued them vigorously for 
 four miles, giving no quarter and inflicting terrible 
 losses upon them. At last, tired out with slaughter, his 
 weary troops marched back into Lewes. But they 
 found that in their absence Earl Simon had forced the 
 royal positions, captured the priory in which the king 
 had taken up his quarters, and driven the King of the 
 Komans to take refuge in a mill, where he was soon 
 forced to surrender. Edward's troops now dispersed 
 in a panic. Next day the Mise of Lewes was drawn up, 
 by which the Provisions of Oxford were renewed, and 
 Henry again forced to delegate his power to a baronial 
 committee. One of the articles provided that Edward 
 and Henry of Almaine were to be given up as hostages 
 for the good behaviour of the Lords Marcher, who were 
 still in arms in the west. On 16th May Edward sur- 
 rendered. He and his cousin were put under the care 
 of Henry Montfort, who shut them up at Dover and 
 treated them as captives rather than hostages, and 
 less honourably than was becoming. Edward was 
 afterwards removed to Kenilworth, where his aunt, the 
 Countess of Leicester, seems to have dealt with him 
 more considerately than her son. 
 
 A new constitution was soon drawn up which put 
 all power in the hands of three grand electors, and their 
 nominees a council of nine. But the Marchers still 
 held out ; Queen Eleanor and her mercenaries still 
 threatened invasion, and the pope fulminated anathemas 
 against Simon and his adherents. Accordingly Simon 
 found it necessary to repose further trust in the people. 
 Hence he summoned his famous Parliament of January 
 
88 EDWARD I chap. 
 
 1265, in which for the first time knights of the shire 
 and representatives of the burgesses sat side by 
 side, and deliberated in common with the bishops 
 and barons who favoured the popular party. No one 
 now thinks that Simon's parliamentary convention was 
 the first House of Commons, but it marks an important 
 era in the development of qur parliamentary institu- 
 tions. Besides being the completest Parliament that had 
 hitherto been summoned, it is the first popular Parliament 
 consciously gathered together to deal with a great poli- 
 tical crisis. It is not too much, therefore, to regard it 
 as the first occasion on which the rulers of England delib- 
 erately took the people into partnership with them. It 
 taught a lesson that was never effaced from the mind 
 of the impatient prisoner at Kenilworth. 
 
 In this Parliament it was arranged that Edward was 
 to surrender his earldom of Chester to Leicester and to 
 be speedily released from captivity. But the dark ambi- 
 tions of Leicester and the brutal violence of his sons had 
 again split up the popular party. No one could ever 
 work long with Earl Simon. Gilbert of Gloucester's 
 youthful enthusiasm for his brilliant mentor had now 
 worn off". After a violent quarrel he retired in anger 
 to his estates and joined the Marchers. Leicester 
 accordingly marched to the west, taking Edward with 
 him by way of precaution. About Whitsuntide Edward 
 was at Hereford, under the custody of Thomas of Clare, 
 the brother of the Earl of Gloucester, by whose media- 
 tion a secret understanding was arrived at for his escape. 
 One day PMward went outside the city, attended by 
 Thomas and a few knights, for the sake of taking exer- 
 cise. The conversation turned on horsemanship, and 
 
II EDWARD AND THE BARONS' WARS 39 
 
 Edward, as if to try their paces, rode in turn all the 
 horses of the party. At last he found out which steed 
 was the swiftest and strongest, and, mounting hastily 
 upon it, rode off as hard as he could. His guardians 
 soon saw that they were duped, and galloped after him 
 in pursuit. But Edward had got too good a start and 
 was too well mounted to run much risk of capture. 
 Before long he joined a band of armed Marchers, who 
 were waiting for him in a wood, and conducted him 
 safely to the Mortimers' stronghold of Wigmore. He 
 now made terms with the Earl of Gloucester. At 
 Ludlow Edward solemnly swore that, if he obtained the 
 victory, he would cause to be observed all the good old 
 laws of the land, would do away with all evil customs, 
 expel all aliens from the king's castles, court, and coimcil, 
 and take care that England should be ruled by English- 
 men. It was an eventful moment. This treaty of 
 Ludlow, marking the formal acceptance by Edward of 
 the popular programme, completed the transformation 
 of parties which, through Edward's influence, had been 
 slowly working ever since 1259. Henceforth it was not 
 Leicester but Edward who best represents the cause of 
 orderly national progress. Leicester with all his great- 
 ness had made himself impossible, and his designs were 
 more and more suspected. Henry becomes henceforth 
 a mere puppet in his son's hands. And Edward, in 
 taking his promises, had no mere intention of outbidding 
 the rival faction or "dishing the Whigs." His whole 
 future shows that he had convinced himself that the 
 poHcy he swore to uphold at Ludlow was the right one. 
 Henceforth the English monarchy becomes both national 
 and progressive. 
 
40 EDWARD I chap. 
 
 Leicester soon saw that the game was up, but man- 
 fully resolved to die fighting for the good old cause. A 
 vast army gathered together under the standards of 
 Edward and Gloucester. By the capture of Gloucester 
 town, they hemmed up Leicester on the right bank of 
 the Severn, and cut him off from his son Simon, who 
 was collecting another army in the Midlands. While 
 Leicester was marching wearily up and down the 
 Severn, hoping to find a passage, Edward on 1st August 
 surprised the younger Simon at Kenilworth, and almost 
 annihilated his army, though he failed to capture the 
 castle, into which Simon escaped. Meanwhile Leicester 
 had succeeded in crossing the Severn, and had marched 
 as far as Evesham on his road to Kenilworth, hoping to 
 join forces with his son. There he learnt of the younger 
 Simon's misfortunes. Conscious that his last hour was 
 come, the great Earl prepared with his handful of worn- 
 out and dispirited troops to sell his life dearly to the 
 victorious Marchers. 
 
 The situation of Evesham with respect to the Avon 
 is not altogether dissimilar to that of Lewes with respect 
 to the Ouse. The river makes a great curve to the 
 south, and Evesham is situated on the right bank 
 towards the southern sweep of the reach. On 4th 
 August the battle of Evesham was fought. Edward had 
 taken the lesson of Lewes to heart, and had marshalled 
 his superior forces with consummate prudence. He 
 himself occupied in force the sort of isthmus formed by 
 the windings of the Avon a little to the north of Evesham. 
 This cut off Leicester's only retreat by land, while 
 Gloucester, who was posted with the rest of the army on 
 the left bank of the river beyond the town, cut off all 
 
UNI 
 
 11 EDWARD AND THE BARONS' WARS 41 
 
 possibility of escape over Evesham bridge. Leicester 
 himself could not but admire his enemies' tactics. " By 
 the arm of St. James," he swore, " they come on cun- 
 ningly. Yet they have not taught themselves that order 
 of battle, but have learnt it from me." The battle was 
 short but sharp. Edward and Gloucester advanced 
 simultaneously to the attack amidst a terrible blare of 
 trumpets. Slowly but surely the little army of Leicester 
 was surrounded and overwhelmed. Earl Simon died 
 fighting bravely. At his side perished his first-born son 
 Henry, the old playmate and companion-of-arms of the 
 victor. Guy, the third son, was captured terribly 
 woimded. The army of the good cause was annihilated, 
 and Edward by one day of victory undid the efforts of 
 seven years of struggle. 
 
 Henry IlL was now restored to liberty, though it 
 was, in truth, little more than a change of masters. 
 Henceforth he was to act as the puppet of his son 
 instead of his brother-in-law. But years and misfortunes 
 had still further relaxed the will of the old king, and 
 Edward was so careful to pay him due deference, so 
 affectionate and devoted to him, that all trace of former 
 jealousy was removed, and perfect harmony remained 
 between father and son until the end of Henry's life. 
 One more difficulty still stood in the way of a complete 
 settlement. The wild thirst of the victors for vengeance 
 forced the vanquished to fight till the bitter end. A 
 general sentence of forfeiture drove the remnants of the 
 baronial party to renew their resistance in the autumn. 
 The dead Earl's stronghold of Kenilworth was the chief 
 centre of the renewed struggle, but the younger Simon 
 held out amidst the marshy fastnesses of the Isle of 
 
42 EDWARD I chap. 
 
 Axholme. By building long wooden bridges over the 
 sluggish streams that cut off Axholme from the mainland, 
 Edward procured in November his cousin's surrender. 
 In the spring Edward won a great fight against the men 
 of Winchelsea, which resulted in the surrender of the 
 Cinque Ports. He then turned his arms against a 
 famous freebooter, an outlawed knight named Adam 
 Gurdon, who headed a band of desperadoes that lurked 
 in the Hampshire forests on the pretext of upholding to 
 the last the good cause. Edward came upon Gurdon's 
 camp in the neighbourhood of Alton. Thoroughly 
 delighted with the adventure, he rushed impetuously for- 
 ward, heedless of the fact that his followers had got separ- 
 ated from him by a deep ditch. He engaged in personal 
 conflict with his doughty antagonist, and having wounded 
 him, captured him after a sharp tussle, and, delighted 
 with his bravery and daring, treated him with all 
 honour, tending his wounds, and regarding him as his 
 guest rather than his captured enemy. But the non- 
 knightly followers of Adam were hanged on the nearest 
 trees by Edward's orders. Meanwhile Kenilworth 
 still held out. Its long resistance at last taught 
 Edward that clemency was not only right but politic. 
 After failing to storm the castle, Edward offered the 
 " Disinherited " to restore them their lands on condition 
 of their paying a fine amounting to five years' rental. 
 The general acceptance of the terms of this " Dictum de 
 Kenilworth " practically ended the English rising. But 
 a few desperadoes, specially exempted from the pardon, 
 still strove to hold the Isle of Ely as their fellows had 
 previously held Axholme. They maintained their posi- 
 tion so bravely that Edward was forced to go in person 
 
II EDWARD AND THE BARONS* WARS 48 
 
 to the siege. By building causeways of wattles over 
 the marshy fenland, he secured an access to the strong- 
 hold of the Disinherited. Treachery did something 
 more. But clemency finally ended the struggle. 
 Edward at last offered the enemy the terms of Kenil- 
 worth, whereupon they surrendered. This ended the 
 war in England. But Llywelyn of Wales still stood out 
 in the west, and as long as he was in arms the cause of 
 the Montforts could not be said to be dead. But the 
 papal legate Ottobon, who had already done good work 
 for peace, now offered his powerful intervention, which 
 both Edward and Llywelyn hastened to accept. By 
 the Treaty of Shrewsbury terms of exceptional liberality 
 were offered to, and accepted by Llywelyn. In this 
 treaty Henry recognised Llywelyn as prince of all 
 Wales, and allowed him to receive the homage of all 
 the Welsh barons save the degenerate representatives 
 of the old line of princes of the south, who were still 
 allowed the greater dignity of immediate vassals of the 
 Crown. Edward's old territory of the Four Cantreds 
 was fully surrendered to him, though this course left 
 Edward nothing of his Welsh estates save the lands 
 round Carmarthen. It was a great day of triumph 
 for the Welsh national cause. It was also a great day 
 of rejoicing to Edward, who thus by a noble surrender 
 concluded his great work of peace and reconciliation. 
 For the rest of the old king's reign the land remained in 
 profound peace, thanks to the wise policy of Edward in 
 identifying the monarchy with the more solid and per- 
 manent parts of the policy of the dead Earl of Leicester. 
 In the nine years of struggle Edward's character had 
 become matured and his experience ripened. He had 
 
44 ^ EDWARD I chap, ii 
 
 already shown that he ranked among the first knights, 
 generals, and statesmen of Christendom. Now that the 
 swords of his followers were turned to ploughshares and 
 their lances to reaping-hooks, Edward again went back 
 to his old pastime of the tournament. But he soon 
 resolved to consecrate to a higher purpose the sword 
 which he had so often wielded against his kinsfolk and 
 his countr3Tnen, or in the savage sports of the tiltyard. 
 In June 1268 Edward took the crusader's vow to rescue 
 the sepulchre of Christ from the insults of Islam. 
 
CHAPTER III 
 
 EDWARD AS A CRUSADER 
 
 1268-1272 
 
 The great age of crusading had long passed away. It 
 was no longer possible, as it had been two hundred years 
 before, for a crusading prince to win with his sword a 
 fair Eastern province. The Latin kingdom of Jerusalem 
 had never recovered the deadly blows inflicted upon it 
 by Saladin. The hosts of Islam had been long united, 
 and opposed to the pious fury of the Christians as ardent 
 a zeal, as devoted a bravery, and a far greater knowledge 
 of the country and of the means of warfare appropriate 
 to it. Yet the crusading impulse had by no means died 
 away. All through the thirteenth century it remained 
 the highest ideal of Christian knighthood to renounce 
 all conflict with fellow -Christians and fight the good 
 fight of the Holy Cross against the blasphemous infidels 
 who profaned the sepulchre of the Lord. The great 
 Military Orders, whose establishments were scattered 
 throughout Christendom, provided a constant stream 
 of ardent and devoted recruits, and kept up a very 
 necessary permanent element in the crusading forces. 
 The greatest of the popes, the holiest of the saints, the 
 
46 EDWARD I CHAP. 
 
 mightiest of the kings of the greatest age of mediaeval 
 Christendom were unwearied in their efforts to keep 
 alive the holy war. But the growing complications of 
 Western politics kept princes at home, though the con- 
 stant degeneracy of the Eastern Christians necessitated 
 a continual stream of new pilgrims if any effectual 
 resistance were to be made to the ever - increasing 
 aggressions of Islam. The result was that the thirteenth- 
 century Crusades assume a character of their own. 
 They are no longer, as they once had been, the united 
 effort of Western Europe. They are rather the results 
 of individual piety and enterprise, a constant stream of 
 petty expeditions rather than the occasional rush of a 
 mighty army. They were seldom or never successful. 
 All that the most ardent crusader could hope for was to 
 discharge his personal vows or stay for a short time the 
 advancing flood of Islam. There is then in the abortive 
 Crusades of the age of Edward I. a higher and more 
 exalted character than in the great military promenades of 
 an earlier age. There was no longer the prospect of an 
 Eastern kingdom to attract a selfish Bohemund, or the 
 hopes of sharing in the spoils of a mighty empire to 
 inspire the greed of the Venetian trader. It was purely 
 a work of piety and self-sacrifice, tempered by love of 
 adventure. Death, sickness, defeat were the common 
 lot of the Eastern pilgrim. Yet the constant flow of 
 crusaders never slackened for a day ; and conscious of 
 the futility of individual effort, the noblest minds of 
 Christendom looked forward eagerly to the time when 
 the great monarchs of Europe would again lay aside their 
 feuds and unite with one accord in a pious effort to 
 ransom the Holy Sepulchre. But the hoped-for moment 
 
Ill EDWARD AS A CRUSADER 47 
 
 never came, and as time rolled on, the crusading 
 impulse, though still affecting exalted and adventurous 
 souls, seemed to have lost its hold on the great masses 
 of the people. It is significant that the Mendicant 
 Orders, whose great work among the poor gave them a 
 grasp over reality which no other class possessed, had 
 not, as a rule, the crusading fervour of the older religious 
 bodies. Some, at least, of them saw that there was 
 plenty of opportunity for pious enthusiasm at home. 
 To relieve the daily miseries of the humble toilers 
 at their own doors was a higher call upon men of 
 religion than the pursuit of visionary ideals beyond sea. 
 And with the growth of wider views of nature and 
 religion that intense power possessed by the early 
 Middle Ages of embodying its faith in concrete external 
 acts became fainter. Many began to question whether 
 piety might not be better employed than in the rough 
 violence of crusading warfare. The religion of love 
 was beginning to vie with the religion of war. The 
 best and the worst of motives combined to slacken 
 crusading enthusiasm. 
 
 France was now the greatest power in Christendom, 
 and the best representative of the Christian ideals of the 
 age. The Crusades had always been mainly a French 
 movement, and now in their decline became more of a 
 French movement than ever. The saintly hero who sat 
 on the French throne was the only monarch in Christen- 
 dom who had both the power and the will to lead a new 
 great Crusade. In his early manhood St. Louis had failed 
 miserably in his first Crusade in Egypt. He was now 
 bent on consecrating his old age by a second crusading 
 effort. At his command a Crusade was preached through- 
 
48 EDWARD I chap. 
 
 out Europe. It seemed as if the twelfth century had 
 become renewed. 
 
 Edward was among the first to respond to the per- 
 sistency of St. Louis. He had long been bound by the 
 strongest ties of gratitude and affection to the great 
 king who had come to his father's rescue in the ex- 
 tremity of his fortunes, and 'he was not unmindful of 
 the tie of blood that bound him to the husband of his 
 mother's sister. Edward's own strict religious training, 
 his own exalted personal piety, bent him strongly in 
 the same direction. It may even be that remorse 
 for the violence of his youth may have contributed to 
 induce him to direct the arms that had shed so much 
 English blood against the infidel, to slay whom was a 
 work of piety. His keen love of adventure was no 
 longer satisfied with the violent distractions of the tilt- 
 yard. Anyhow he took the cross with enthusiasm, and 
 with him the noblest and bravest of his countrymen 
 assumed the sacred symbol. Unlike Edward, all did not 
 fulfil their vow. 
 
 Edward took the cross in 1268, but two years more 
 elapsed before he could start for the Holy Land. During 
 this interval the zeal of the faithful was stirred up to 
 undertake the Crusade by wandering preachers of the 
 two great orders of friars. But there were still some 
 troubles at home that delayed the departure of the 
 crusaders; especially there was a struggle between 
 Edward and the fierce and restless Gilbert of Gloucester, 
 who declared that he would not go on Crusade and 
 leave his estates exposed to the devastations of the 
 Welsh. But the main difficulty in Edward's way was 
 a financial one. The civil war had so exhausted the 
 
Ill EDWARD AS A CRUSADER 49 
 
 country that he found it impossible to collect the 
 funds to fit out an expedition worthy of the cause 
 and of his rank. His father was hopelessly involved 
 in debt, and was in no condition to incur fresh 
 liabilities. At last Edward was constrained to have 
 recourse to St. Louis. In return for a large advance, 
 Edward pledged himself to follow the French king as 
 Duke of Aquitaine, and submit himself and his followers 
 to the jurisdiction of his uncle. At last, in August 1270, 
 Edward set off from Dover, travelling first to Gascony, 
 to set in order the affairs of his duchy, and thence 
 through the rough hill country of Northern Spain to 
 Aigues Mortes, near the mouth of the Khone, whence 
 St. Louis had already sailed on his Crusade. Among 
 the French king's followers were his son Philip, and 
 his brother Charles of Anjou, whom the favour of the 
 pope had raised to that kingdom of Sicily, which 
 Edward's brother Edmund had been too weak to re- 
 tain. Edward was accompanied by his gallant cousin 
 Henry of Almaine. 
 
 At Aigues Mortes Edward learnt that St. Louis had 
 diverted his arms from Palestine to Tunis, and was 
 encamped at Carthage engaged in a fierce struggle with 
 the Mohammedan Sultan of Tunis, whose nearness to 
 the kingdom of Sicily made him a dangerous neighbour 
 to Charles of Anjou, if not to the Christian world at 
 large. Edward sailed at once over the Mediterranean, 
 but on his arrival he found that St. Louis had died of 
 fever, and that his son, the new king, Philip the Hardy, 
 had been led by his politic uncle, Charles of Anjou, 
 to conclude a truce with the infidels. The sickness that 
 raged throughout the camp was the pretext for this 
 
 E 
 
60 EDWARD I chap. 
 
 inglorious surrender, but though the chiefs approved of 
 the politic step, the mass of tjie pilgrim host cried hotly 
 against the worldliness of their leaders that had betrayed 
 the good cause. Edward fully shared their indignation. 
 "By God's blood," he swore, "though all my fellow- 
 soldiers and countrymen desert me, I will go to Acre 
 with Fowin my groom, and keep my word and my oath 
 to the death." Very reluctantly he bade his little fleet 
 of thirteen ships set sail for Trapani in Sicily with the 
 great French host. But the morning after their arrival 
 off the Sicilian port a fearful storm arose. The fleet, 
 anchored in the insecure roadstead of Trapani, suffered 
 terribly. For three days the tempest raged. The 
 crusaders' ships were driven from their anchorage ahd 
 sunk like stones by the fury of the waves. Twenty- 
 eight ships were destroyed. In one alone it was believed 
 that a thousand pilgrims went down. But the hand 
 of God protected Edward's little squadron. It was 
 universally regarded as a divine sanction to Edward's in- 
 dignation at the unworthy peace that not a single English 
 ship was wrecked. A fortnight later King Philip left 
 Trapani, taking with him in melancholy procession the 
 corpses of his father and brother, to which were soon 
 added the bodies of his wife and child. With him went 
 Henry of Almaine, newly appointed as Edward's seneschal 
 of Gascony. But a few weeks later Henry was brutally 
 murdered by the reckless sons of Simon de Montfort, as 
 he was praying in a church at Viterbo. All Christen- 
 dom was terribly moved by the assassination. It showed 
 that the fires of the civil war were not yet extinct. 
 
 Edward remained for the rest of the severe season at 
 Trapani, whence he sailed in the early South Italian 
 
m EDWARD AS A CRUSADER 61 
 
 spring for the Holy Land. The Christian lordships in 
 the Levant were reduced by this time to the slenderest 
 proportions, though the old titles still remained to 
 testify to the great empire that had been established by 
 the first crusaders. There was still a nominal King of 
 Jerusalem, an offshoot of that same house of Lusignan 
 with which Edward had been, through his grandmother's 
 second marriage, so intimately connected. But Cyprus 
 was the real centre of this power. On the mainland 
 a few coast towns, conspicuous among which was the 
 great city of Acre, alone paid obedience to the King of 
 Jerusalem, while of the numerous great feudatories 
 who had once supported the throne of the Godfreys 
 and Baldwins, the united principality of Antioch and 
 Tripoli alone remained, and had of late sustained a 
 severe shock by the capture of Antioch in 1268 by 
 the indefatigable Sultan Bibars, who, despite the con- 
 stant threatenings of the vast swarms of Mongol bar- 
 barians from Central Asia, never lost an opportunity of 
 turning his scimitar against the Christian colonists. But 
 Acre even in the days of its ruin was no unworthy 
 memorial of the great age of the Latin rule in the East. 
 There was still centred the great trade between East and 
 Westwhich the Crusades had opened up. There were still 
 churches, palaces, castles, market-halls, storehouses, and 
 huge walls of defence that bore vivid testimony to the 
 greatness of the Latins as builders and architects. It was 
 still one of the great towns of Christendom. The keen- 
 eyed traders of Italy, the strenuous monastic soldiers of 
 the great Military Orders, the fanatical and enthusiastic 
 pilgrims, the lax and luxurious descendants of the 
 original Frankish settlers, still jostled each other in its 
 
52 EDWARD I chap. 
 
 narrow and crowded streets. The strange contrasts of 
 the Crusades, the superhuman virtue and the bestial 
 vices, that alike found their representatives in the 
 strange medley that followed the crusading host, were 
 still brilliantly depicted in the daily life of its inhabitants. 
 But Acre was still so strong that Sultan Bibars stopped 
 short in his career of conquest as he approached its walls, 
 and turned his arms against Cyprus. Not till all the 
 other outposts of Eastern Christendom were overthrown 
 would he assail the strong and rich merchant city. 
 
 Edward on his voyage from Sicily first touched at 
 Cyprus, and thence sailed direct to Acre. The English 
 chroniclers who followed his fortunes exaggerate the 
 difficulties of the city, and even suggest that it was 
 closely besieged by the Sultan. But Bibars had ventured 
 no farther than to attack and capture some of the 
 neighbouring castles. No sooner had Edward arrived 
 at Acre than a formidable attack of the Mongols on 
 Northern Syria called away Bibars' army, while his 
 fleet failed in their attack on Cyprus. Edward's little 
 band inspired the men of Acre with a fresh enthusiasm. 
 With the English prince at its head, the crusading army 
 ventured on three forays, which penetrated deep into the 
 heart of Mohammedan Palestine. But they were mere 
 plundering expeditions, and had no great influence on the 
 fortunes of the war. Moreover, the English died off" like 
 flies from the heat and from thirst, while others perished 
 from their intemperate use of fruit, grapes, and honey. 
 In the most successful of the forays Edward failed to 
 capture a Saracen tower, and Bibars exultingly rejoiced 
 that if the crusaders were not able with so large a force 
 to secure a single castle, there was but little prospect 
 
Ill EDWARD AS A CRUSADER 58 
 
 of their conquering so great a territory as the kingdom 
 of Jerusalem. At last the politic Charles of Anjou, the 
 author of the truce at Tunis, sent messengers offering 
 his mediation to bring about a peace. The Latin 
 Christians of Syria eagerly welcomed their intervention, 
 and their good offices induced Bibars to consent to a 
 truce for ten years, which at least allowed Acre to carry 
 on its commerce and rest awhile before the struggle was 
 renewed. The truce was signed in April 1272, but 
 Edward refused to be a party to it. As in the camp 
 at Carthage, he would have no share with the un- 
 believer. He preferred to stand aside in proud and 
 unreasonable isolation, while more practical politicians 
 concluded the unworthy pact. His brother Edmund 
 [since 1267 Earl of Lancaster], who had joined Edward 
 at Acre, now hurried home to England, but Edward, 
 always accompanied by the faithful Eleanor, still tarried 
 in Syria, hoping against hope for fresh adventures. 
 
 The Sultan was disappointed at Edward's remaining 
 at Acre, and did not scruple to send an assassin to seek 
 his life. It was probably at Bibars' instigation that the 
 Emir of Jaffa, one of the Sultan's great officials, now 
 excited Edward's interest by professing an anxiety to 
 become a Christian, and repeatedly sent to Acre an 
 emissary, who could speak French, to treat with him 
 on the matter. But the messenger was a satelKte of 
 the Old Man of the Mountain and versed in every 
 diabolical art of the East. One hot evening in 
 June 1272 — it happened to be Edward's birthday — the 
 envoy of the Emir approached his abode with an urgent 
 message from his master. He was forthwith admitted 
 into Edward's bedroom, and found the prince sitting on 
 
54 EDWARD I chap. 
 
 his bed, with uncovered head and clad only in a light 
 tunic. The Mohammedan handed over a letter to 
 Edward and bent low as he respectfully answered his 
 questions. He put his hand to his belt as if to draw out 
 another letter, but instead he quickly pulled out a 
 poisoned dagger, which he aimed at Edward's heart. 
 Edward was quick enough to ward off the blow with his 
 arm, on which he received a deep wound. But he at 
 once kicked down the assassin as he was threatening 
 another blow. He then wrested the dagger from him 
 and slew him with his own weapon. The attendants 
 rushed in and found their master covered with blood and 
 the murderer dead on the ground. The princess minstrel 
 dashed out the assassin's brains with a stool, and Edward 
 rebuked him for striking a dead man. The Master of 
 the Temple soon hurried in with precious drugs and 
 smooth prophecies of recovery. 
 
 Next day Edward made his will. But after some 
 days the flesh around the wounded arm grew black and 
 threatening. The sui'geons exchanged uneasy whispers, 
 and sadness fell on every countenance. " What are you 
 whispering about?" cried Edward. " Can I not be cured? 
 Speak out and fear not." One of the doctors, an English- 
 man, answered, "You may be cured, but only at the price 
 of intense suffering." Edward at once put himself in that 
 surgeon's hands and bade him do all that he thought 
 necessary. Thereupon the surgeon ordered Eleanor out of 
 the room, and she was led away weeping and wailing.^ 
 
 * The well-known story that Edward owed his cure to Eleanor's 
 devotion in sucking the poison from his wounds, is only found in 
 somewliat late writers, and is inferior in authority and probability 
 to the account given in the text. A Flemish writer attributes the 
 
£11 EDWARD AS A CRUSADER 66 
 
 "It is better, lady," said the bystanders, " that you should 
 weep than the whole of England." Next morning the 
 same surgeon cut away all the blackened flesh from the 
 prince's arm, consoling him with the promise that in fifteen 
 days he would again be able to mount his horse. From that 
 hour Edward rapidly recovered, though his constitution 
 was permanently enfeebled, and many years later sharp 
 attacks of sickness were traced back by his physicians to 
 the efl'ect of the assassin's blow. Sultan Bibars hardly 
 believed that his enemy had escaped the well-planned 
 assassination, but sent some of his chief counsellors to 
 offer his congratulations. Edward received them civilly, 
 but as they bowed low before him he said in English, 
 " You pay me worship, but yet you love me not." But 
 he prudently avoided making the treacherous act a 
 pretext for renewing the war. 
 
 Alarming letters now reached Edward from home. Old 
 King Henry wrote that his physicians despaired of pro- 
 longing his life, and urged his first-born to return home 
 without delay. Accordingly Edward left Acre about the 
 middle of August 1272, and after a voyage of seven weeks 
 again landed at Trapani in Sicily, where he was magnifi- 
 cently entertained by his uncle, Charles of Anjou. But 
 sad news now came from England. First came the tidings 
 of the death of his elder son John, a bright and beautiful 
 boy, whom he had left behind with his uncle, King Eichard. 
 Then followed the intelligence of the death of the King 
 of the Eomans, and soon that of King Henry as well. 
 But the news must also have come how on the old king's 
 death King Edward had been peaceably proclaimed, and 
 
 sucking of the poison from Edward's wounds to Otho of Grandison, 
 one of his Savoyard followers. 
 
66 EDWARD I chap. 
 
 everywhere accepted with rejoicings. The long and 
 weary years of probation were at last over, and Edward, 
 at the age of thirty-three, had at last ascended the throne 
 that he was so brilliantly qualified to adorn. 
 
 Fresh duties and responsibilities crowded upon the 
 new king, but he never forgot that he had been a 
 crusader, and never quite despaired of a new Crusade on 
 a grander scale and with a happier result. A comrade 
 of his pilgrimage at Acre, the holy and wise Archdeacon 
 Theobald of Li^ge, had now been called to the papal 
 throne. As he had bade farewell to Edward and his 
 brother soldiers of the Cross, he had in the touching 
 words of the Psalmist bound himself never to forget 
 Jerusalem in her sorrows. On his way through Italy 
 Edward visited his old friend and reported to him the 
 sad condition of the Holy Land. Gregory X. — this was 
 the name Theobald now assumed as pope — was not un- 
 mindful of his vows, and laboured with single-minded 
 earnestness to appease the feuds of Christendom that all 
 Christian people might unite in a holy war. The good 
 pope saw his highest expectations realised when in 1274 
 he presided over a General Council at Lyons, which 
 healed for a time the schism of the Eastern and Western 
 churches, solemnly called Europe to arm against Islam, 
 and imposed on the whole Western Church the obligation 
 of devoting for six years a tenth of its revenues for the 
 purposes of the Crusade. The Crusade was preached in 
 every land in Christendom. In barbarous Finland 
 and distant Iceland the wandering apostles of the 
 Holy War pressed on their hearers to the sacred work. 
 But the good pope died, and the fierce strife of faction 
 again invaded the papal court. Neither would the 
 
Ill EDWARD AS A CRUSADER 57 
 
 princes of Europe set a term to their mutual jealousies 
 to further the great work. Year after year the hope 
 of a great Crusade became fainter. The crusading tenth 
 was seized by temporal princes for temporal uses : even 
 Edward did not scruple in his necessity to lay profane 
 hands on the sacred treasure. The Latin Christians of 
 the Holy Land saw with dismay that the stream of 
 armed pilgrims fell off rather than grew. The un- 
 natural union of Orthodox Greek and Catholic Latin 
 soon broke asunder. At last the Mohammedans swooped 
 down upon their prey. In 1289 the fall of Tripoli 
 completed the ruin of the northern principality of the 
 Christians. In 1291 Acre itself succumbed after a fear- 
 ful siege. With the fall of the great merchant city fell 
 the last vestiges of the kingdom of Godfrey of Bouillon. 
 Henceforth the crusaders' ambition was at best a pious 
 wish, a hope that could not be satisfied. And the 
 brightest visions of mediaeval Christendom became 
 obscured when the Moslem ruled without a rival over 
 the lands once hallowed by the sacred presence of the 
 Eedeemer. 
 
CHAPTER IV 
 
 THE KING AND HIS WORK 
 
 We have now followed with some minuteness the bio- 
 graphy of Edward before his accession to the throne. 
 No part of his life throws so great a hght on his 
 character and career, or illustrates more clearly the 
 grounds on which we reckon Edward among the greatest 
 of English statesmen. His long years of apprenticeship 
 had not simply formed his character. They had also 
 suggested the main lines of the policy on which he was 
 to act for the whole of his long reign. It is not too 
 much to say that every important aspect of Edward's 
 work as king had been already foreshadowed in his work 
 as a king's son. He had risen superior to his early 
 failures in the field and in the council chamber. His first 
 defeats had given him that power of adapting his tactics to 
 circumstances which is his chief claim to be called a great 
 commander. The Welsh policy suggested to him by 
 his advisers when yet a mere boy contains in substance 
 the Welsh policy of his reign. His early dealings with 
 the fierce Llywelyn and his early efforts to make his 
 Welsh lands shire-ground need only a slight develop- 
 ment to become the policy which had its final outcome 
 
CHAP. IV THE KING AND HIS WORK 69 
 
 in the defeat and death of the Welsh prince and the 
 annexation of the principality to the Crown. In the 
 same way Edward's early experiences in Gascony sug- 
 gested to him the whole of his subsequent policy for the 
 consolidation and security of his Aquitainian possessions. 
 Moreover, his constant dealings with the princes of 
 Europe, most of them his near kinsfolk, cannot but have 
 brought before his mind the main principles of that able 
 and successful foreign policy which is one of the greatest 
 results of his reign. And it is already a commonplace 
 that the experience of the Barons' Wars substantially 
 created the home policy of Edward's later life. To 
 strengthen and develop the royal power ; to widen the 
 hold of the king on the nation by taking the people 
 themselves into partnership with him in the administra- 
 tion of his inheritance ; to work out under happier auspices 
 the great ideas of Montfort, and to turn schemes meant 
 to bring about a revolution into devices for the regular 
 government of the realm ; to stand forth, above all, as the 
 truly national king, who ruled through the advice of his 
 own nobles and scorned the foreign favourite and para- 
 site — such were among the main lines of Edward's work 
 as a king. Every detail almost of his constitutional 
 policy had been already made clear to him during the 
 life of his father. The lack of good laws during his 
 father's days had impressed upon him the need of legis- 
 lation, while the want of good government had made 
 him realise the supreme importance of establishing sound 
 administration. Thus it was, with plans already formed 
 and ambitions already formulated, that Edward entered 
 in 1272 into the great position of an English king. He 
 was already resolved to make England supreme in 
 
60 EDWARD I chap. 
 
 Britain and England the mediator of Europe. He had 
 already become a national constitutional ruler of a free 
 and high-spirited people. 
 
 Thirty-three years of battling with the world had now 
 formed both the body and mind of Edward. He looked 
 every inch a king. The chroniclers speak with enthusi- 
 asm of the beauty and dignity of his person. He was a 
 man of unusual and commanding height. Like another 
 Saul, he overtopped most of his subjects by a head and 
 shoulders. His frame was cast in a strong but elegant 
 mould and was admirably proportioned. H^ had the 
 long sinewy arms that make a good swordsman. His 
 long lean legs, which won for him the popular nickname 
 of Longshanks, gave him that firm grip over the saddle 
 that makes the consummate horseman. All through his 
 life he was as upright as a dart. His chest was broad 
 and vaulted. Constant exercise and incessant activity 
 kept down any disposition to corpulence, and down to 
 his death he retained the slim regular proportions of 
 his youth. His flowing hair shone in extreme youth 
 like burnished silver. It gradually assumed a yellow 
 tinge, and by the time he had reached manhood had 
 attained a deep black colour, which again turned in old 
 age to a snowy whiteness. He never showed any ten- 
 dency to baldness, and the white hair of his age was as 
 thick and abundant as the yellow tresses of his youth. 
 His forehead was broad and high. His features were 
 refined and regular. The only thing that marred their 
 perfect beauty was a slight droop of the left eyelid, 
 which he had inherited from his father. His dark eyes, 
 soft and dovelike when he was at rest, shot forth fire like 
 the eyes of a lion when he was moved to anger. They 
 
IV THE KING AND HIS WORK 61 
 
 remained undimmed to extreme old age. His nose was 
 large, well-shaped, and aquiline. His teeth remained # 
 strong and firm down to the day of his death. His com- 
 plexion was dark, clear, and pale, and was thought to 
 indicate his choleric temperament. His voice had a 
 slight stammer in it, but when animated he could quite 
 overcome this impediment, and speak with a simple and 
 natural eloquence that often moved his susceptible 
 auditors to tears. 
 
 Edward's character was cast in a grand and simple 
 mould, ~ His general instincts were high-minded, noble, 
 and generous. Like most mediaeval heroes, he was a 
 man of strong emotions, and the rough wear and tear 
 of a long life did not destroy, though perhaps they 
 deadened, the deep afiections and the loving heart half 
 hidden by his pride and passion. He was the best of 
 sons, fathers, and husbands. He was the most faithful 
 and generous of friends. His chief fault in those rela- 
 tions was his slowness to see anything blameworthy in 
 those whom he loved, or even in those who had rendered 
 him useful service. His private life was absolutely pure 
 and without reproach. His public action, always able, 
 was, with a few exceptions, strictly upright and honour- 
 able. He had almost a passion for truth and justice, 
 and it was not for nothing that "keep troth" was 
 inscribed upon his tomb. ^ 
 
 A character so strong, a will so firm as Edward's 
 could not be without its faults. Many of these pro- 
 ceeded from the extraordinary impetuosity and violence 
 which lay at the bottom of Edward's temperament. 
 This disposition accounts for a good deal of the wanton and 
 brutal violence of the doings which so scandalised right- 
 
62 EDWARD I chap. 
 
 thinking men in his extreme youth. It accounts for 
 many of those grave defects of character brought out with 
 such uncompromising plearness and precision by the 
 nameless partisan of Simon de Montfort, who wrote that 
 Song of Lewes which best explains to us the standpoint of 
 the baronial party. To this hostile writer Edward was 
 " a lion in pride and fierceness, not slow in attacking the 
 strongest places, and fearing the onslaught of no man." 
 But there was a less noble side to his character. He 
 was, says the song- writer, "a panther in inconstancy 
 and changeableness." "When he is in a strait he pro- 
 mises whatever you wish, but as soon as he escapes he 
 repudiates his promise." In this respect Edward never 
 quite got the better of the evil tendencies of his youth. 
 The violation of his oath after the capture of Gloucester 
 in 1264 is too faithfully paralleled by the treacherous 
 way in which, a few years before his death, he obtained 
 papal absolution from his oath to observe Magna Carta 
 and the Forest Charter as enlarged and developed in 1297. 
 Moreover, Edward was always excessively rash, impulsive, 
 hot-headed, passionate, and even vindictive. Yet a 
 humble submission or the frank acknowledgment of an 
 offence at once mollified him, however furious was his 
 wrath. One day when he was a young man he was 
 hawking on the banks of a certain river. One of his 
 companions, posted on the other bank of the stream to 
 that occupied by Edward, blunderingly let free a hawk, 
 which had seized a wild duck amidst the osier-beds. 
 Edward grew angry, abused and threatened his follower. 
 But the careless falconer, seeing that neither bridge nor 
 ford was near, answered impudently, " It is well for me 
 that the river divides us." Edward burst into a furious 
 
rv THE KING AND HIS WORK 68 
 
 rage, plunged with his horse into the unknown depths of 
 the stream, and having successfully crossed over, climbed 
 with difficulty up the steep bank hollowed out by the 
 action of the water. The luckless follower fled in terror, 
 but Edward pursued him with drawn sword, and soon 
 caught him up. But his anger was at once ended when 
 the man uncovered his head and knelt humbly to implore 
 his master's forgiveness. Edward put back his sword in 
 the scabbard, and soon lord and follower were back at 
 the river bank seeking with the utmost harmony to bring 
 back the strayed hawk. Many years later Edward was 
 moved to anger by the clumsiness of one of the squires 
 attending him on the occasion of the marriage of his 
 daughter Margaret. He seized a stick and soundly 
 belaboured the unlucky squire with it, inflicting on him 
 such injury that, when the fit of temper was over, he 
 heartily repented of his violence and sought to heal his 
 servant's wounds by a present of the very considerable 
 sum of £13:6:8. 
 
 Edward hated his enemies quite as heartily as he loved 
 his friends, and liked power so well that he grew quite 
 mad at the least opposition or contradiction. He was 
 always terribly in earnest, and being quite convinced of 
 the honour and integrity of his own ends, was always 
 ready to impute unworthy motives to his opponents, and 
 was, in fact, opposed so unscrupulously that he often had 
 good reason for his worst suspicions. Edward also 
 possessed that strange power, often found in tempera- 
 ments like his, of persuading himself that what he desired 
 was right, and that the means which he selected to attain 
 a good end were necessarily consecrated by the excellence 
 of his object. " The wiles or tricks," sang the partisan 
 
84 EDWARD I chap. 
 
 critic of his youth, " by which he is advanced, he calls 
 prudence, and the way whereby he attains his end, 
 crooked though it be, seems to him straight and open. 
 Whatever he likes he says is lawful, and he thinks that 
 he is released from the law, as though he were greater 
 than the king." Edward was never a very reflective or 
 thoughtful man. Like many great men of action, he 
 took the course that seemed to him the most likely to 
 lead him straight to his end, and did not ponder too 
 much over its lawfulness. But so far as he pondered 
 over his courses at all, he sought honestly to live accord- 
 ing to the law, and there have been few prophecies more 
 signally falsified than that of the writer of the Song of 
 Lewes, who foretold that Edward's reign would be a 
 most miserable one for England, inasmuch as his wish 
 was to be a king above the law. Edward was proud of 
 his high standard of honour and truthfulness, and as 
 compared with his contemporaries, his boast is in no wise 
 a vain one. But if those who saw in Edward a lawless 
 self-seeker were but blind judges, still more have those 
 erred who saw in him a cold-blooded, calculating, and 
 scheming lawyer, heedless of justice so long as he could 
 get formal right on his side. It is not in such ways 
 that the right clue can be attained for the appreciation 
 of his ardent and impetuous character. Edward was very 
 conscious of his royal dignity, and proud and ambitious 
 to no ordinary degree. But there was little that 
 was mean or sordid even in the lowest of his ambitions. 
 The aristocratic contempt for men of mean birth and 
 humble station, which had been so unpleasant a feature 
 of his early manhood, he almost outlived ; though at 
 times of danger and difficulty, when the Welsh troops 
 
IV THE KING AND HIS WORK 66 
 
 showed signs of mutiny before Falkirk, or when the 
 weavers of Ghent, rising against the oppressions of his 
 soldiers, threatened his very life, it flashed forth again 
 with something of its old insolence and scorn. But 
 there was very little in Edward of that miserable class 
 feeling that was so unlovely a feature among the knights 
 and gentlemen that supported the coui-t of his grandson. 
 Edward loved his people, and possessed many popular' 
 qualities that endeared him to them. Though constantly 
 beset by troubles and difficulties, he seldom lost his 
 cheerfulness, except to sorrow for the loss of those "dear 
 to him. Down to an advanced age he joined in the rough 
 and not very refined practical jokes and merriments of 
 mediaeval society. One Easter Monday he sufi'ered five 
 ladies of the court to make him their mock prisoner, 
 and bought his redemption by a liberal present to his 
 captors. Nor was he less gracious to his followers of low 
 degree. One day in a merry mood, as he was setting 
 out for the hunt, he gave his horse to his washerwoman, 
 Matilda of Waltham, on the condition of her riding a 
 race on the king's hunter and defeating the other com- 
 petitors. His ready eloquence was in itself a means of 
 delighting his people. No less commendable were his 
 earnestness and indefatigability at the seat of judgment. 
 He delighted in unravelling a knotty point of law, and 
 prided himself upon his zeal for the poor and oppressed. 
 He gloried in his reputation for clemency. He really 
 sought to identify himself with every rank of his people, 
 and this great endeavour made him a thoroughly national 
 king. 
 
 Edward had the good luck to pass through a sterner 
 discipline and a stricter apprenticeship than commonly 
 
 F 
 
66 EDWARD I chap. 
 
 falls to the lot of those called to ascend an hereditary 
 throne. He thus learnt to put a curb upon his feelings, 
 and repress the first rush of his angry passions in a way 
 that speaks most strongly for the strength of his char- 
 acter and the nobleness of his aims. His self-restraint 
 in his middle life was, for such a man, admirable. As 
 misfortunes gathered around him he became less able 
 to conceal or check his emotions ; but down to the last 
 he withstood opposition that might well have ruined 
 the temper of a calmer and milder man. Not only had 
 he to face the opposition of large sections of his sub- 
 jects, and the enmity of powerful kings and nations — 
 his private affairs were always made miserable by the 
 millstone of debt which hung round his neck from his 
 first entrance into public life, and from which he could 
 never free himself down to his dying day. The burden 
 which Edward had inherited from his father was 
 sufficiently overwhelming. He increased it by the 
 obligations which he had been forced to incur during 
 his Crusade. When he came to the throne he found 
 himself hopelessly in the hands of the greedy companies 
 of Lombard bankers, who had begun to push themselves 
 into the position which had hitherto been monopolised 
 by Jewish usurers. In after years Edward formed so 
 many great designs that he was always more and more 
 •in want of money. From this perpetual indebtedness 
 sprang half the defects of Edward's character, and more 
 than half of the difficulties of his reign. Edward's 
 poverty accounts for his troubles with the Londoners, 
 his eagerness to open up new taxes, and the ever- 
 increasing discontent of his subjects. He handed on 
 the burden to his son, and the weight which the 
 
IV THE KING AND HIS WORK 67 
 
 great father had hardly been able to bear proved 
 too overwhelming for his weak and incompetent suc- 
 cessor. 
 
 The limited character of Edward's means made 
 necessary a life of the utmost frugality and sobriety. 
 Edward's own personal tastes drew him strongly in the 
 same direction. He was always rigidly economical, and 
 even upon occasions parsimonious. But on state occa- 
 sions his hospitality was truly regal, and he found enough 
 money to keep up a good stud of horses, though he was 
 ever lavish in giving them away to his friends and kins- 
 folk. He was particularly bountiful to poor knights, 
 feeling the full force of the strong tie which bound the 
 knighthood of Christendom together in a single brother- 
 hood of equals. The simplicity of his attire suggested 
 the simplicity of his daily life. After his coronation 
 Edward never once wore his crown, thinking that 
 the dignity which it gave to his royal state was more than 
 counterbalanced by the heaviness of the great bauble. 
 He wore the plainest clothes. He did not affect the royal 
 purple, but, like a common man, was clad in a plain 
 short-sleeved tunic bordered with fur, and all of the same 
 colour. One day he was asked by a hermit why he affected 
 such ordinary garb. " I should not be a better man," 
 answered Edward, "however splendidly I was dressed." 
 The same simplicity was manifested in all his habits 
 of life ; but for all that Edward was keenly conscious of 
 his royal dignity, and there were few who could venture 
 to presume upon his easy familiarity. His court was 
 very free from the luxury and extravagance which are 
 the besetting sins of courts. Though many of Edward's 
 followers were vicious and corrupt men, they were with 
 
68 EDWARD I chap. 
 
 hardly an exception hard workers and earnest poli- 
 ticians. 
 
 The tournament in early life, hunting and hawking 
 until the end of his career, were Edward's favourite 
 diversions. As a sportsman his special delight was in 
 chasing down deer on horseback, and, on catching them 
 up, slaughtering them with his sword. His strong love 
 of the chase made him as jealous as the Norman kings 
 in keeping up his forests and maintaining the forest laws 
 in their old oppressive rigour. His constant indulgence 
 in field sports and manly exercises secured him splendid 
 health, though his infancy had been sickly and though 
 his wound in the Holy Land gave him trouble for many 
 years. The same careful way of life, combined with 
 strict frugality and temperance, secured for Edward a 
 green old age. He had attained what in the Middle Ages 
 was the very advanced age of sixty-seven before there 
 were any signs of his constitution breaking down. 
 
 Edward was deeply and unaffectedly religious. His 
 piety was shown not only in his assiduity in attendance 
 at mass and in his zeal in going on pilgrimages, but in 
 his large and unostentatious charities (all the more credit- 
 able when we remember his chronic state of debt), and 
 in the whole tone and tenor of his daily life. Straitened 
 as were his resources, Edward was able to make grants 
 to the two English universities, to the Knights of St. 
 John, and to many famous monasteries, such as Durham, 
 Glastonbury, Westminster, and St. Alban's. He was 
 the refounder of the Cistercian abbey of Conway, when 
 the needs of his Welsh policy involved the absorption of 
 the old home of the monks in his new castle and forti- 
 fications. He contributed largely towards the cost of 
 
IV THE KING AND HIS WORK 69 
 
 the new church and buildings erected by the monks on 
 the opposite bank of the Conway river at Meynam. 
 But his great work as a monastic patron was the founda- 
 tion of the Cistercian abbey of Vale Eoyal, in a deep and 
 secluded hollow of the valley of the Weaver, in the very 
 heart of his own earldom of Chester. This pious under- 
 taking Edward began in 1266, in fulfilment of a vow 
 which he had made when exposed to great peril of ship- 
 wreck ; but lack of means made the progress of the work 
 slow, and it was not until 1277 that the monks were 
 able to enter into the full possession of their founder's 
 bounty. But while Edward thus practically showed his 
 sympathy for the older religious orders, he was, like 
 most men of his age, strongly under the influence of 
 the mendicant friars. His confessors were generally 
 Dominicans, but the Franciscans, in whose great church 
 in London he treasured up the heart of his beloved 
 Eleanor, were also largely in his confidence. 
 
 Like a good Englishman, Edward reverenced most 
 of all saints of English birth, such as St. John of Beverley, 
 to whose shrine he was never weary of making pil- 
 grimages, and above all, St, Edward the Confessor, his 
 namesake and predecessor. His religion was of that half- 
 martial kind which is so characteristic of the early Middle 
 Ages, but which was already becoming more rare owing to 
 the new types of spiritual perfection held up by the saints 
 among the Mendicant Orders. This element gave a reality 
 and fervidness to Edward's constant aspirations after a 
 Crusade. What in the mouth of Philip the Fair or 
 Clement V. was the merest hypocrisy or conventionality, 
 was to Edward an honest and sincere recognition of the 
 clear ideal of the duty of a Christian knight. And 
 
70 EDWARD I ohap. 
 
 Edward was all too ready to read his crusading 
 ambitions into his everyday wars. Llywelyn or Eobert 
 Bruce were to him men accursed by Holy Church, and 
 he saw too readily a high religious impulse in what was 
 largely the prompting of his own ambition and revenge. 
 But a respect for ecclesiastical authority, which hampered 
 his dealings with popes and archbishops, was at least a 
 very real thing. Not even the barefaced partisanship 
 of a series of fiercely Guelfic popes, not even the per- 
 sistent and wearing opposition which Edward's own 
 prelates so constantly offered to his policy, could quite 
 eradicate from Edward's mind the deep lessons of respect 
 for the authority of the Holy See and the spiritual in- 
 dependence of the English episcopate which had been so 
 firmly ingrained into his mind in youth. But Edward, 
 with all his spirit of reverence, was singularly free from 
 the grosser superstitions of his time. On one occasion 
 a beggar pretended that his sight had been restored 
 through his prayers at the tomb of Henry III., and 
 Queen Eleanor of Provence was delighted that this 
 miracle attested her dead husband's claim to sanctity. 
 But Edward drove the beggar away in anger, saying, 
 " My father would rather have had such a lying knave 
 blinded than have given him back his sight." Edward 
 piously saw in all the many hairbreadth escapes of his 
 adventurous life the direct finger of Providence, and, 
 with something of a fatalist's contempt of danger, 
 exposed himself to the worst risks of battle and siege. 
 When his horse was shot by a missile from Stirling 
 Castle, his followers begged him to withdraw from the 
 range of its walls. But Edward answered in Biblical 
 phrase, " A thousand shall fall beside me, and ten thou- 
 
IT THE KING AND HIS WORK 71 
 
 sand at my right hand, but their arrows shall not come 
 nigh unto me to do me hurt, for the Lord is with me." 
 One day in his youth he was playing chess with a certain 
 knight in a vaulted chamber. Without any particular 
 reason, he arose from his seat and went to the other end 
 of the room. Thereupon a huge stone crashed down 
 from the roof, destroying the chair on which Edward 
 had been sitting. He attributed his preservation to 
 Our Lady of Walsingham, whom he held ever afterwards 
 in special honour. 
 
 Edward was pre-eminently a man of action, but he 
 was by no means altogether lacking in intellectual and 
 artistic tastes. He certainly had a familiar knowledge 
 of English, French, and Latin. Possibly he also knew 
 Spanish, in which tongue he sometimes corresponded 
 with his brother-in-law Alfonso of Castile. He was no 
 great lover of books and no very bountiful patron of 
 men of letters; yet he seems to have had some 
 taste for the romances of chivalry, delighting in the 
 legends of knights and paladins, in histories of such 
 as those of Tancred the Crusader, in devotional 
 treatises, and in books on agriculture. It was from a 
 manuscript belonging to Edward at the time of his 
 Crusade, that Rustician of Pisa made his well-known 
 abridgment of the vast cycle of Breton romances, a work 
 which attained a great success, and which, translated 
 into Italian, afforded the material for a large number of 
 poems. Nor should Edward's interest in English history 
 be forgotten, or his care for the safe preservation of the 
 national archives under proper custody. He was much 
 more a patron of art than of letters, showing a particu- 
 lar taste for richly decorated sculpture, as seen in the 
 
72 EDWARD I ohap. 
 
 crosses commemorating Queen Eleanor, and perhaps still 
 better in the exquisite statuary on the magnificent 
 tombs of his father, wife, and brother in Westminster 
 Abbey, the work apparently of an Italian artist. He 
 completed his father's rebuilding of Westminster, but 
 lack of means prevented his indulging in the expensive 
 taste of building on a large scale. He was also fond of 
 music, supplementing his English trumpeters and harpers 
 with German fiddlers, and rejoicing, even in his hostile 
 progresses in Scotland, when seven women met him on 
 the wayside, and sang before him the songs of their 
 country, as they had been wont to do in the days of 
 King Alexander. 
 
 There is no need to expatiate upon Edward's claims 
 to statesmanship. Contemporaries compared him to 
 Henry II., and certainly no other one of our earlier 
 kings can be rightly put in the same high place as 
 Edward. But though there is a real relation between 
 the work of Henry and that of Edward, and though 
 Henry was perhaps the greater and more original mind 
 of the two, yet Edward's task was complicated by diffi- 
 culties of a subtle kind to which Henry had been a 
 complete stranger. It was Edward's difficult task to 
 adjust the despotism which Henry had set up to meet 
 the national aspirations after liberty, and the popular 
 cry to control the state which in the twelfth century 
 had not yet arisen. That Edward abundantly suc- 
 ceeded in his difficult task will be sufficiently clear in 
 nearly every page of the history of his reign. Without 
 any great originality of character, without that insight 
 and foresight which genius alone can give, Edward was 
 able to apply to the great problems of statecraft an 
 
CALirC 
 ly THE KING AND HIS WORK 78 
 
 intellect of a high order, clear, logical, orderly, and 
 decisive. But his character was stronger than his 
 intellect, and his tenacity of purpose and pertinacity in 
 conduct were seldom excelled by the excitable kings 
 and statesmen of the Middle Ages. It is a common- 
 place to dwell on the legislative mind of Edward. But 
 it is a very superficial view of the great king's character 
 that regards him simply as a mere lawyer, even a great 
 lawyer like his friend Bishop Burnell. It would be 
 truer to say that Edward's chief merit as a legislator 
 is that he knew how to follow the lines laid down by 
 his ministers and judges. The statute-book tells us 
 nothing of motives and springs of conduct, but it is hard 
 not to believe that the main merit of Edward's work 
 as a lawgiver belongs to his advisers. Theirs at least 
 was the initiative. It is merit enough in a bom king 
 that he knew whose advice to follow and in what 
 direction he was to go. The personal characteristics of 
 Edward come out even more in his statecraft and his 
 generalship than in his legislation. 
 
 As a soldier Edward's character is perhaps most 
 completely seen. He was the true knight of chivalry, 
 brave to recklessness, careless of his life, careless of all 
 ulterior consequences, throwing his whole soul into the 
 fierce rush of the feudal charge which scattered the 
 Londoners at Lewes, or wrestling hand to hand in long 
 and doubtful struggle with the fierce Adam Gurdon or 
 the treacherous Count of Chalon. But with increasing 
 experience the knightly hero grew into a real general. 
 The same power of self-restraint, which marks every 
 side of Edward's character, enabled him to curb the rash 
 valour which he had learnt in the tourney and tilt-yard. 
 
74 EDWARD I CHAP. 
 
 aDd aspire to a degree of tactical and strategic skill rare 
 indeed in the age in which he lived. His greatest 
 military qualities were his capacity of profiting by 
 adverse experience, and his rare skill in varying his 
 method of warfare to meet the tactics adopted by the 
 enemy. In his continental campaigns, Edward remained 
 to the end a mere captain of feudal chivalry. But he 
 very clearly realised that there were times and places 
 where the heavily - armed mounted knight was of 
 little military value. His early defeats by the light- 
 armed and nimble Welsh footmen taught him the value 
 of a dexterous and daring irregular infantry, and 
 suggested to him that policy of carrying on Welsh 
 warfare like a great siege, which proved so irresistible in 
 1277 and 1282. Moreover, Edward paid a high tribute 
 to the conquered Welsh in the large use which he made 
 of them in all his subsequent campaigns, and notably in 
 the wars in Scotland and Flanders. In the same way 
 Edward had the quickness and the skill to borrow from 
 Montfort the tactics that had proved fatal to his own 
 and his father's cause at Lewes, and, bettering his 
 lesson, he turned his uncle's teaching against him in 
 his cleverly won victory at Evesham. In his old age 
 Edward was not too proud to learn another lesson. He 
 had the eyes to discern that the close array of the 
 Scottish infantry at Falkirk could not be broken by the 
 mere rush of a cavalry charge. He won the crowning 
 victory of his life by his skilful employment of archers 
 to break up the squares of the Scots with their missiles. 
 His combination of the heavy cavalry of England with 
 the light infantry and archers of Wales prepared the 
 way for the more complete working out of this system 
 
IV THE KING AND HIS WORK 76 
 
 which resulted from the famous Enghsh victories during 
 the Hundred Years' War with France. The two chief 
 lines of military progress in subsequent generations lay 
 in the development of a trained force of infantry and in 
 the increase of the efficiency of the bowman. In both 
 these respects Edward is a forerunner, though perhaps 
 a half-blind one, of the improvements in the art of war 
 which marked the next two centuries. 
 
 The great men of the thirteenth century embody the 
 best ideals of the Middle Ages, but there is also some- 
 thing modem in their character and ambitions. Edward 
 himself partakes of this twofold nature. As a man he 
 seems almost purely mediaeval. Yet as an English states- 
 man he could conceive the idea of a national state ruled 
 by a strong king, but controlled by a popular Parliament. 
 As a diplomatist he could grasp the conception of a 
 European equilibrium, to be maintained by a judicious 
 policy of mediation on the part of his island kingdom. 
 As a British patriot he longed for the time when Eng- 
 land, Scotland, Wales, and Ireland were all parts of the 
 same kingdom. As a warrior he dimly foreshadowed 
 the battle array of Crecy or Agincourt. And many- 
 sided as was his activity, there was a perfect balance and 
 harmony between the various elements of his policy. 
 His eulogisers and detractors have, as a rule, fixed on 
 some one side of his policy, and confined their praise or 
 blame to that side alone. It is only when we take in 
 his character as a whole, that we can fully realise how 
 real are his claims to be regarded as a "greatest of the 
 Plantagenets." No rulers of England save William the 
 Conqueror, Henry II., Henry VIIL, and Cromwell, can be 
 compared with him, either as regards force of character and 
 
76 EDWARD I chap. 
 
 strength of intellect, or as regards the greatness and the 
 permanence of their influence on the history of our land. 
 Edward's family and court next demand our attention. 
 He was strongly amenable to domestic influence, and the 
 weak and tender sides of his father's character continued 
 to have an influence for good over him many years after 
 experience had taught him the folly and evil of his father's 
 policy. His mother, Eleanor of Provence, continued to 
 have a strong hold over him until her death in 1291. 
 His close afiiection and devotion to his first wife, Eleanor 
 of Castile, need not be further dwelt upon. He was 
 warmly attached to his sister Margaret, the wife of Alex- 
 ander IIL of Scotland, and his care for the welfare of 
 his nephew, John of Brittany, is the best proof that 
 Edward was equally devoted to his other sister Beatrice, 
 the wife of the Duke of Brittany. Edward's only 
 brother, Edmund, Earl of Lancaster, was not quite the 
 man to exercise a strong influence over any one; but 
 Edward's care for his brother's interests is seen in the 
 vast estates which gradually accumulated round the 
 founder of the greatest baronial house of mediaeval 
 England, and in the trust with which he allowed Edmund 
 to manage his diplomacy and lead his armies at the most 
 critical period of his reign. Edmund himself was Earl 
 of Lancaster and Leicester and Derby, receiving after 
 Evesham the confiscated titles and estates of Simon de 
 Montf ort and Robert Ferrers. By arranging the marriage 
 of Edmund's heir, Thomas, witli the heiress of his most 
 trusted follower, Henry Lacy, the Earl of Lincoln, Edward 
 still further increased the greatness of the Lancastrian 
 house, and made possible that extraordinary combination 
 of power which Earl Thomas, as the head of the Lords 
 
IV THE KING AND HIS WORK 77 
 
 Ordainers, was able to bring to bear against Edward 11. 
 Nor was Edward inattentive to his more distant kinsfolk. 
 His uncle Kichard, King of the Eomans, had a real in- 
 fluence over him. He was devotedly attached to Eichard's 
 eldest son, his cousin, Henry of Almaine, and strove 
 hard to avenge his tragic death. Richard's younger son 
 and successor, Earl Edmund of Cornwall, had always 
 a high place in his cousin's affections and counsels. 
 
 Edward was the father of a large family, though but few 
 of his children attained manhood, and only three reached 
 middle life. By Eleanor he had thirteen children, four 
 sons and nine daughters. But of the four sons, the two 
 eldest, John (1266-1272) and Henry (died 1274), both died 
 in early boyhood. Alfonso, the third son, born in 1 273 at 
 Bayonne, died in 1284, a few months after the birth of 
 his youngest brother, Edward of Carnarvon (born 1284), 
 less fortunate in his unglorious life than his brothers 
 in their early graves. Of Eleanor's nine daughters, four 
 died as children. Of those that survived the eldest was 
 Eleanor, bt)rn in 1264, and married to the Count of Bar 
 in 1293. She died in her thirty-fifth year. The next 
 was Joan of Acre, born in 1272 during her father's 
 Crusade, and destined in her childhood to be the bride 
 of Hartmann, the son of Rudolf of Hapsburg. She was 
 married in 1290 to Earl Gilbert of Gloucester, Edward's 
 old ally in the struggle against Montfort, who was 
 nearly thirty years older than herself. After Gloucester's 
 death, in 1295, Joan gave herself to the simple knight, 
 Ralph of Monthermer. Edward was very angry at his 
 daughter's disparagement, and threw Ralph into prison ; 
 but Joan defended herself with great spirit and energy, 
 and her father, who loved his children, soon relented, 
 
78 EDWARD I chap. 
 
 and finally gave his low-born son-in-law the custody of 
 the great Gloucester inheritance. She died in the same 
 year as her father, transmitting to her son, the young 
 Earl Gilbert, who died so gallantly on the field of Ban- 
 nockburn, some spark of her father's great spirit. The 
 next daughter, Margaret (1275-1318), married Duke 
 John of Brabant in 1290, and lived to the then respect- 
 able age of forty-three. Mary, the fourth daughter, bom 
 in 1279, was doomed from early childhood to take the 
 veil at Amesbury to please her grandmother, Eleanor of 
 Provence, who ended her life in semi -monastic retire- 
 ment in that famous convent. Edward was unwilling 
 to sacrifice the child, but yielded to his mother's pressure. 
 She attained at least her fifty-fourth year, an age far 
 greater than that reached by her brothers and sisters. 
 The youngest daughter, Elizabeth, surnamed the Welsh- 
 woman, born at Rhuddlan in 1282, was married first 
 to John, Count of Holland (1297), and secondly to 
 Humphrey, Earl of Hereford (1302). She died in 
 1316. Eleanor of Castile died in 1290, and after 
 nine years of solitude Edward married a second time 
 in 1299. But his second marriage was partly at 
 least the result of political calculations; and Edward's 
 second queen, Margaret of France, the sister of Philip 
 the Fair, is a far more shadowy figure in our history 
 than the gracious Eleanor of Castile. She is vaguely de- 
 scribed as a " fair and marvellously virtuous lady." A girl 
 of eighteen married to an old man of sixty could never 
 stand in the place of the faithful partner of Edward's 
 youth. She bore Edward three children. The eldest, 
 Thomas, born at Brotherton in Yorkshire in 1 300, became 
 Earl of Norfolk, and died in 1338. The second, Edmund, 
 
IV THE KING AND HIS WORK 79 
 
 was born at Woodstock in 1301, and was made Earl of 
 Kent. His unlucky end in 1330 is one of the worst 
 stains on the regency of Mortimer and Isabella on 
 behalf of the young Edward III. The third child of 
 the second marriage was a daughter named Eleanor, 
 born in 1306, who died when quite a child. 
 
 Edward's plans for the settlement of his family are 
 of great historical importance. The younger sons he 
 provided for with English earldoms, while the daughters 
 were married to foreign princes whose alliance was of 
 importance, or to great English earls, that their tendency 
 to join the opposition ranks might be counterbalanced 
 by their close personal connection with the royal house. 
 In this respect Edward's policy anticipates that of 
 Edward III. But like the more famous family settle- 
 ment of Edward III. it was something of a failure. 
 
 Edward's ministers fill a large part in the history of 
 his reign ; though the scanty chronicles and the bare 
 and formal legal records, from which we get most of our 
 information, make it hard for us to assign to the king 
 and his helpers their due share of merit, and render it 
 almost impossible for us to get any very clear notion of 
 the personal characteristics of even the greatest states- 
 men that stood round Edward's throne. 
 
 Edward's own kinsfolk take a considerable position 
 among Ms counsellors. His brother Edmund of Lancaster, 
 his representative in Guienne; his cousin Edmund of 
 Cornwall, the regent during his long absence between 
 1286 and 1289 ; his nephew John of Brittany, his faithful 
 vicegerent during the most critical period of his dealings 
 with Scotland, all served Edward with the utmost loyalty, 
 and were entirely trusted by him. Even the foreign 
 
80 EDWARD I chap. 
 
 relatives, who after the storms of the Barons' Wars scarcely 
 dared to show their faces in England, still continued to 
 enjoy Edward's confidence abroad. All through his 
 reign, the Lusignans helped him in Gascony. His cousin, 
 Count Amadeus the Great of Savoy, rendered him most 
 important assistance in his later foreign policy. From 
 that same Savoyard land came John de Grailly, the 
 faithful seneschal of Aquitaine, and Otho of Grandison, or 
 Grandson, who came from the town famous in after ages 
 for the crushing defeat of Charles the Bold by the Swiss 
 confederates, and who was a very important figure in the 
 diplomatic history of the latter part of Edward's reign. 
 
 At home Edward's chief ministers were Englishmen, 
 for the most part ecclesiastics, and though of gentle birth 
 they but seldom belonged to the highest orders of society. 
 Foremost amongst them is Robert Bumell, the Shropshire 
 squire's son, who became the most dexterous of Chancery 
 lawyers, and who, attaching himself to Edward when he 
 was still but Earl of Chester and Duke of Aquitaine, 
 remained united to him by the closest ties of personal 
 friendship and harmony of policy until his death in 
 1292. Edward loved Bumell so well that he strove, even 
 before his father's death, to make him Archbishop of 
 Canterbury, and as soon as he became king secured for 
 him the chancellorship and the bishopric of Bath and 
 Wells. Burnell was undoubtedly a consummate lawyer, 
 a skilful diplomatist, and a thoroughly faithful minister ; 
 but his private character was stained by licentiousness 
 and greed, that stand in strong contrast to the purity 
 and economy of the king. Even his wonderful munifi- 
 cence did not make Burnell popular; yet there is no 
 single minister of whom we can say more clearly that 
 
IV THE KING AND HIS WORK 81 
 
 he was a necessary element in the greatness of the reign. 
 He probably deserves the largest share of the credit 
 of the great legislative achievements of Edward I. 
 
 Burnell is the highest type of Edward's lawyer- 
 statesmen. Next to him comes John Kirkby, Bishop of 
 My, the subtle financier, to whose doings we shall often 
 again have occasion to refer. Judges like Hengham 
 and Britton, and civilians like the Italian legist Francesco 
 Accursi — of whom we shall speak later — filled a sub- 
 ordinate position in Edward's court, and while giving 
 technical details and scientific form to their master's 
 work, had no great share in determining its spirit. 
 After Burnell, the three leading ministers of Edward 
 were Henry Lacy, Earl of Lincoln, Anthony Bek, Bishop 
 of Durham, and Walter Langton, Bishop of Lichfield. 
 
 Henry Lacy, Earl of Lincoln, was the only one of 
 the great earls who remained unswervingly faithful to 
 Edward, and who, despite his great name and vast 
 estates, never shirked labour or trouble in the service 
 of his master. He was courteous, handsome, and active, 
 as brave in war as ripe in counsel. He fought for 
 Edward's cause, both as a general and as a diplomatist. 
 In Wales, Scotland, and France we find constant traces 
 of his activity. When Edward became king, Lincoln 
 had but barely attained his majority. Until his death 
 in 1311, he never faltered in his allegiance; his regard 
 for the father leading him to give what support he 
 could to Edward II., even when the young king most 
 flagrantly went against his father's policy. Unfor- 
 tunate in his domestic life, Lincoln lost his two sons by 
 violent deaths ; and by the surrender of his two earl- 
 doms of Lincoln and Salisbury to his daughter Alice, 
 
 Q 
 
82 EDWARD I chap. 
 
 whom Edward married to his own nephew Thomas of 
 Lancaster, the old earl handed over to the royal house 
 the great estates, which all through his life had been 
 devoted to the loyal service of the Crown. 
 
 Anthony Bek, Bishop of Durham, is another striking 
 figure among Edward's ministers. The son of a wealthy 
 Lincolnshire lord, he was elevated when still a young 
 man to the great palatine see of Durham. His love of 
 pomp, luxury, and munificence well became the holder 
 of one of the greatest posts in the Church, and one who 
 was also secular lord of the rich county of Durham, 
 which he ruled as freely with his crosier as Edward 
 ruled his own patrimony of Chester by his sword. 
 Bek's attitude to politics, like that of the Earl of Lincoln, 
 was essentially that of a great magnate ; but he was for 
 many years as faithful as Burnell himself in his devotion 
 to the royal service, and honourably distinguished from 
 the Bishop of Bath by the purity of his private life. Yet 
 Bek was a soldier and a statesman rather than a bishop, 
 and never shone to greater advantage than when, at the 
 head of his knights, he did good service for his master 
 in the campaigns against the Scots, or when, at the head 
 of a pompous embassy, he built up a close alliance 
 between Edward and Adolf, King of the Komans. 
 But Bek never forgot that he was a great prelate, and 
 towards the end of the reign he joined the clerical 
 opposition and forfeited the favour of the king. His 
 elder brother, Thomas Bek, Bishop of St. David's, was 
 also a prelate of great importance during this reign, 
 doing nearly as much for the king in Wales as Anthony 
 a few years later did for the king in Scotland. 
 
 Walter Langton is as much the minister of the end 
 
IV THE KING AND HIS WORK 88 
 
 of Edward's reign as Burnell is the statesman of its 
 earlier years. He began life as a poor man, became a 
 clerk of the king's Chancery, and after Burnell's death 
 drifted gradually into the position of Edward's chief 
 adviser. In 1295 he was made treasurer, and in 1296 
 Bishop of Lichfield. He kept the treasury until Edward's J 
 death. Like that of Burnell, his private character was noy 
 beyond reproach ; but, like Burnell, he served his master 
 with unswerving fidelity. He shared very largely in 
 the unpopularity which Edward contracted in the later 
 violent years of his reign, and was made the scapegoat 
 of his master's policy after the old king's death. 
 
 Edward's chief ministers were of exemplary fidelity, 
 but one of the king's constant difficulties was with his 
 subordinate agents, whose violence and greed often 
 defeated the king's best laid schemes and involved their 
 master in odium that though natural was hardly deserved. 
 Even the lawyers required the constant eye of the 
 master to keep them in order. During Edward's long 
 absence abroad, between 1286 and 1289, the royal 
 officials committed so many misdeeds that the king on 
 his return was obliged to make a stern example. He 
 almost cleared out the judicial bench of the greedy and 
 venal judges, who, with Hengham at their head, had 
 wrested the law to make their own fortune. Even less 
 satisfactory were the ruffianly bailiffs and sheriffs, whose 
 misrule gave the lie to Edward's policy of sound govern- 
 ment and equal justice in Wales. More hated still were 
 the close-fisted Italian merchants who farmed the king's 
 revenue, and whose expulsion from the realm was one 
 of the chief demands made by the people, when Edward's 
 death brought about a new period of weak rule. But in 
 
84 EDWARD I chap. 
 
 no mediaeval country were things any better than in the 
 England of Edward I. Even the trained clerks and 
 knights of the French royal household conceived that 
 their devotion to the king privileged them to commit 
 any acts of violence they thought fit among his subjects. 
 
 Such was the king, his family, and his court. Called 
 to the throne in 1272, Edward first set foot in England 
 in 1274. The first half of his reign saw him mainly 
 occupied with the reduction of North Wales and the 
 carrying out of a great series of legislative changes. 
 He was also very busy with his elaborate and successful 
 foreign policy ; to which, after the settlement of Wales, 
 he was able to devote a more exclusive attention. Hence 
 his long absence from England from 1286 to 1289. 
 His return was followed by the last great memorials 
 of his legislation. 
 
 The second period of Edward's reign begins about 
 1290. His chief occupation was now the attempted 
 conquest and settlement of Scotland, a task complicated 
 by rebellion in Wales and by the vigorous attack of 
 Philip the Fair on Gascony. Moreover, Edward was now 
 confronted by a revival of the baronial opposition, which 
 forced upon him constitutional changes, whose com- 
 pletion is one of the greatest results of the second half 
 of his reign. A fresh trouble arose from the clerical 
 opposition, that, already troublesome in Edward's earlier 
 years, now came to a head. The result tried the king's 
 severest energies, but he never succumbed to his diffi- 
 culties, and though he died witli his work all undone, 
 he left the impress of his mind and action on every 
 branch of the national life. 
 
 It is now our task to go over in more detail the 
 
IV THE KING AND HIS WORK 85 
 
 history thus outlined in brief. For the first period of 
 the reign it will be most convenient to take each aspect 
 of Edward's policy separately, and devote distinct 
 chapters to his foreign policy, his Welsh policy, his 
 legislation, his dealings with the estates and the working 
 out of the parliamentary system, and the beginnings of 
 his troubles in Scotland. After 1292 another course 
 will be advisable. The complex troubles which now 
 beset the king can only be fully realised if we follow a 
 more chronological method, and see year by year how 
 Edward's dealings with Scotland, France, the baronage, 
 and the Church were all woven together in one inextric- 
 able whole and acted and reacted upon each other. When 
 both sides of our task are done we shall be in a better 
 position to measure his claims to be a great English 
 statesman. 
 
CHAPTER V 
 Edward's continental policy 
 
 1272-1289 
 
 Edward had first learnt his accession to the throne in 
 Sicily. In February 1273 he bade adieu to Pope Gregory 
 at Orvieto and began his slow journey homewards. 
 He was already a man of no small mdrk, and wherever 
 he went he received a most flattering reception. As he 
 passed through Lombardy in great pomp the people 
 flocked out to meet him with the cry, "Long live the 
 Emperor Edward." The doctors of Padua made him a 
 member of the legal faculty of their famous university. 
 The Milanese presented him with horses richly capari- 
 soned with scarlet. He formed friendships with princes 
 and cities that in after years stood him in good stead. 
 He finally traversed the lands of his great-uncle, the aged 
 Count Philip of Savoy, crossing the Mont Cenis early in 
 June, and forcing a petty lord of the kingdom of Aries 
 to perform homage to him ks a punishment for plunder- 
 ing the baggage of the English on their way to the 
 Crusade. Once beyond the Alps, Edward was joined 
 by a large number of English Aiagnates, so that he 
 entered French territory at the head of a little army of 
 
CHAP. V EDWARD'S CONTINENTAL POLICY 87 
 
 more than a thousand lances. The boastful nobles of 
 France had grown envious of Edward's fame as a 
 warrior, and the Count of Chalon on the Saone, a 
 vassal of the Duke of Burgundy, challenged him to 
 a passage of arms. The tournament was fought out 
 with such desperate earnestness that it became plain 
 that the French wished for something other than a mere 
 chivalrous display. The Count and Edward fought 
 fiercely against each other with swords ; until the Count, 
 despairing of finding a weak place in his enemy's harness, 
 flung his arms heavily around the king's neck and 
 sought to dismount him. But Edwaj-d struck his spurs 
 into his horse, so that the beast rushed rapidly forward, 
 and the Count, dragged from his own charger, was 
 thrown heavily to the ground. Meanwhile the followers 
 of both sides had fought with great eagerness and fury, 
 until at last the trained skill of the English prevailed 
 over th^ superior numbers of the Burgundians, and the 
 Count of ChMon, foiled in his treacherous plan, was 
 obliged to surrender his sword to a simple knight. 
 Both sides suffered heavily, and the tournament became 
 famous as the Little Battle of Chalon. 
 
 Edward now entered the domains of his cousin, 
 Philip the Hardy, King of France. At the end of July 
 he reached Paris, where he was entertained with great 
 state. The cou^ns professed great affection for each 
 other, but their love, as a shrewd French chronicler 
 said, was like the love of cat and dog. There were 
 important outstanding disputes. The cessions of lands in 
 the south, promised by St. Louis in the Treaty of Paris in 
 1259 in return for Henry IH.'s renunciation of all rights 
 over Normandy, Anjou, and Poitou, had never been 
 
88 • EDWARD I chap. 
 
 made. The French had not surrendered the royal rights 
 in the bishoprics of Limoges, Cahors, and P^rigueux 
 {i.e. the Limousin, Quercy, and Perigord), which by the 
 treaty were to have been yielded at once. Moreover, 
 on the death in 1271 of Philip's uncle, Alphonse, 
 Count of Poitiers and Toulouse and the precursor of 
 direct French domination in the south, Philip had 
 entered without scruple upon the possession of his vast 
 inheritance, and laid hands upon Southern Saintonge, 
 the Agenais, and Lower Quercy, which by the same 
 Treaty of Paris were, on Alphonse's death without heirs, 
 to fall to the English kings. 
 
 Edward was anxious to vindicate his claims to a share 
 in the inheritance of Alphonse of Poitiers, but he could 
 obtain no satisfaction from the astute clerks and knights 
 who guided the policy of the dull well-meaning French 
 king. All he could do was to perform the homage 
 which as Duke of Aquitaine he owed to the King of 
 France, in such ambiguous terms as to suggest that he 
 still maintained his claims of right. "Lord King," 
 said Edward to Philip, " I do you homage for all the 
 lands which I ought to hold of you." With this re- 
 minder Edward quitted the French court, leaving his 
 lawyers to continue the long-drawn negotiations with 
 his suzerain. 
 
 Edward now went to Aquitaine, where his presence 
 was urgently needed, and where he remained for more 
 than a year. The duchy was still in that state of 
 turbulence which, twenty years before, had proved too 
 much even for the crafty policy and strong hand of 
 Simon de Montfort. Moreover, the ministers of Philip 
 of France were striving constantly to press forward their 
 
V EDWARD'S CONTINENTAL POLICY 89 
 
 master's rights over the duchy, and the aggrieved vassals 
 of the Duke of Guienne had grown well accustomed to 
 appeal to the seneschal of Perigord, who watched over 
 French interests in those regions. /in 1273 there were two 
 wars raging at the farthest extremities of Edward's French 
 dominions. In the cold uplands of the north-eastern 
 Aquitaine, the townsfolk of Limoges were carrying on a 
 fierce struggle against their viscountess, and, mindful of 
 the Treaty of Paris, called on Edward to protect them 
 from her aggressions, which were the more formidable as 
 they were backed up by the King of France. Edward 
 at once espoused their cause. He sent his seneschal 
 to Limoges to receive oaths of fealty from the burgesses. 
 The m^n of Limoges took better heart as Edward's 
 troops now joined their levies, and the joint forces 
 inflicted several defeats on the viscountess. Unsuccessful 
 in the field, the viscountess appealed to the court of King 
 Philip for protection. In the autumn the French king 
 announced his decision, which was dictated as much by 
 his policy as by the law of the case. Edward was to 
 renounce forthwith the fealty of the men of Limoges, 
 and the viscountess was awarded full rights of juris- 
 diction over them. Edward faithfully accepted the 
 situation, and abandoned his new subjects to the fury 
 of their mistress. He construed his feudal duties very 
 literally, and if he was punctilious in exacting his rights 
 against his own vassals, it should not be forgotten that 
 he was himself a pattern of feudal obedience to his 
 own overlord the King of France. Flushed with his 
 triumph, Philip now demanded that all Edward's Aqui- 
 tanian vdssals should take a direct oath of fealty to the 
 King of France. 
 
90 EDWARD I chap. 
 
 More formidable than the war of Limoges was the 
 war of Beam, whose Viscount Gaston, the leader of the 
 feudal vassals of Edward, had contemptuously ignored a 
 sentence of the ducal court, and held out defiantly in 
 his Pyrenean strongholds. Edward led an army against 
 his rebellious subject, and though he lost many men 
 and horses from want of food, and from the difficulty of 
 carrying on his campaign on the rough hillsides and 
 deep-cut valleys of the Bearnese highlands, succeeded in 
 reducing his enemy to the greatest extremities. There- 
 upon Gaston followed the example of the Viscountess of 
 Limoges, and appeded to the French court. Philip then 
 forbade Edward to pursue his attack on Gaston pending 
 the hearing of the suit. Edward's ministers grew^indig- 
 nant, and urged their lord to disregard a command so 
 injurious to his dignity. But the king's love of law 
 triumphed over the impatience of his servants. He 
 made a truce with Gaston, and having no further 
 business in Aquitaine, started for England, travelling 
 overland through France. On his way he negotiated at 
 Montreuil-sur-Mer a treaty with the Count of Flanders, 
 which settled an old-standing dispute that had for some 
 time excluded English wool from the Flemish markets. 
 On 2nd August 1274 he crossed over to Dover. Queen 
 Eleanor had accompanied him in all his journeys. 
 
 The appeal of Gaston of B^arn dragged on for 
 some time in the Parliament of Paris, the highest 
 law-court of the King of France. The French lawyers 
 wished well to the viscount's suit, but their strict 
 regard for feudal propriety made it hard for them to 
 overlook the violence, both of speech and act, which 
 had marked Gaston's treatment of his immediate suze- 
 
V EDWARD'S CONTINENTAL POLICY 91 
 
 rain. Finally Philip advised Gaston to go to London, 
 make his submission to Edward, and excuse himself for 
 his misdeeds. Edward received his vassal's submission, 
 but with characteristic lawyer- like subtlety he main- 
 tained that the submission was equivalent to a renuncia- 
 tion of Gaston's appeal to Paris, and that the sole point 
 remaining was to determine the viscount's punishment. 
 Philip saw that he was outwitted, but the situation 
 became less strained since a personal reconciliation had 
 followed Gaston's humiliation to Edward. The appeal 
 was silently dropped, and in 1279 Gaston was formally 
 reinstated by Edward in the fiefs which his contumacy 
 had forfeited. The real triumph rested with the English 
 king, and Gaston, for some years at least, kept the 
 peace. 
 
 In 1279 the long-standing difficulties between Edward 
 and Philip were brought to a satisfactory conclusion. 
 In May Edward and Eleanor crossed over the Channel 
 and took possession of the county of Ponthieu, which 
 had just fallen to the queen as the heiress of her mother, 
 Joan, the Dowager Queen of Castile and Leon and 
 Countess of Ponthieu, who had just died. This county, 
 whose capital was Abbeville, included a fertile region 
 on the lower Somme. Philip of France now came to 
 Amiens, where he was joined by Edward. On 23rd 
 May the Treaty of Amiens' for which the diplomatists 
 had long been working, was signed by the two kings. 
 By it Philip ceded Agen and the Agenais outright, thus 
 adding to Edward's lands the fair and fruitful plain of 
 the middle Garonne. The French king also promised 
 to submit Edward's claims over Quercy to a commission 
 of inquiry, which eight years later assigned to Edward 
 
92 EDWARD I chap. 
 
 a large number of fiefs in the lower and richer parts 
 of that region. Philip also renounced the oath of 
 allegiance which he had demanded in 1275 of the 
 Aquitanian vassals of Edward, a concession which he 
 made with the more grace as very few of Edward's 
 subjects had condescended to take an oath so con- 
 trary to French feudal custom. Moreover, he confirmed 
 Eleanor in her newly won county of Ponthieu. In 
 return for these great concessions, Edward solemnly 
 abandoned all further claims on French territory. Thus 
 the disputes which had been going on since the time 
 when Philip Augustus had driven King John out of 
 Normandy were finally brought to an end. Every 
 important subject of contention between the two kings 
 was removed. Edward had won great reputation both 
 by the firmness and moderation with which he had 
 pursued his ends. He had gained no small advantages 
 in return for very shadowy renunciations, and had 
 shown clearly to all Europe that the English king was 
 not to be trifled with. 
 
 During the years of unfriendly negotiations between 
 England and France, Edward had sought to strengthen 
 himself on every side against a possible attack 
 of his overlord. He had renewed friendly relations 
 with his brother-in-law, Alfonso the Wise of Castile, 
 though he had sought to protect the widowed queen 
 Blanche of Navarre from the aggressions of her powerful 
 neighbour. He had sought in 1273 to marry Blanche's 
 daughter, the infant queen Joan, now nominal sovereign 
 of Navarre and Champagne, to one of his sons, but 
 though he failed in this, he succeeded in 1275 in marry- 
 ing Blanche herself to his own brother, Edmund of 
 
V EDWARD S CONTINENTAL POLICY 93 
 
 Lancaster. Blanche was not allowed by the French to 
 exercise her rights as guardian of her daughter in 
 Navarre, but she still ruled over her husband's county 
 of Champagne in her daughter's name, and Edmund 
 was now associated with her as regent of one of the 
 most important fiefs of the French crown, and, until 
 his daughter-in-law attained her majority, he practically 
 held the position of one of the great peers of France, 
 and insured a powerful influence being exercised in his 
 favour in all dealings with that country. Moreover, 
 Edward had firm friends at Philip's court. Philip's 
 mother, Margaret of Provence, was a sister of Edward's 
 mother Eleanor. She was an enthusiast for the English 
 alliance, and the strong influence which she possessed 
 over her sluggish son, during the early years of his 
 reign, may well be the chief reason that prevented the 
 ever smouldering animosities of the two kings from 
 breaking out into open war. But Margaret, like all 
 her kindred, was a strong partisan of her family interests, 
 and never turned her eyes away from those lands 
 between the Alps and Rhone, which were now gradually 
 slipping into French hands. She joined with her sister 
 Eleanor in cordially hating Charles of Anjou, who had, 
 with the hand of their youngest sister Beatrice, filched 
 from the elder sisters the rich country of Provence, 
 which he had ilsed as a stepping-stone to his kingdom 
 of Naples. Now Edward also hated the Angevin, who 
 had supplanted his brother Edmund in his Italian 
 kingdom, and had backed up the ruffianly Montforts, 
 the murderers of his cousin Henry of Almaine. 
 Urged on by his mother, who still exercised real 
 influence over him, Edward willingly fell into any 
 
94 EDWARD I chap. 
 
 scheme which the fertile brain of his aunt could suggest 
 against Charles of Anjou. 
 
 Margaret's plans all aimed at some, sort of revival of 
 the kingdom of Aries, that shadowy Middle Kingdom 
 which had maintained a fitful existence as a borderland 
 between France and Germany since the ninth century, 
 but which had now been for nearly two centuries in 
 abeyance, and split up into petty feudal states and sub- 
 ject only to the nerveless grip of a puppet Emperor, was 
 slowly drifting towards incorporation with the French 
 monarchy. She sought to raise up in the Arelate some 
 rival power to Charles of Anjou. Her uncle, Philip of 
 Savoy, was the natural supporter of a scheme which 
 could not but strengthen his power at the expense of 
 his Proven9al rivals. 
 
 The King of the Eomans, Rudolf of Hapsburg (he was 
 seldom described as Emperor, as, like Richard of Cornwall, 
 he was not crowned by the pope), also found one of his 
 main interests in the revival of the Arelate. His election 
 to the Empire in 1273 had ended the Great Interregnum, 
 and had been, largely due to the self-denying efforts of 
 Gregory X. to restore to Europe its natural head. But 
 the prestige of the Holy Roman Empire was almost dead. 
 France, not Germany, was now the leading power, and 
 the nominal successor of Augustus and Constantine owed 
 nearly all his real power to the resources which he, 
 possessed in his hereditary dominions. Rudolf was but 
 the lord of a scanty patrimony in Alsace and Swabia, 
 and was unable to play any great part in Europe. But 
 he was an energetic and active ruler, and did not limit 
 his ambitions to Germany. Cut off from Italy by his 
 convention with the papacy, he turned his attention to 
 
V . EDWARD'S CONTINENTAL POLICY 95 
 
 the "Middle Kingdom, and found in Margaret of Provence 
 and her nephew cordial and congenial allies. He now 
 invested Margaret with Provence. It was but a formal 
 act, but the form might well have been followed by very 
 real results. 
 
 Edward now entered into the combination. In 1278 
 he signed a treaty by which his daughter, Joan of Acre, 
 was betrothed to Hartmann, the son of the King of the 
 Romans. Among the lands assigned as Joan's dower 
 were some of the districts which in the next generation 
 became the seats of the infant Swiss confederacy. 
 Rudolf despaired of getting his son chosen Emperor, but 
 thought that the kingdom of Aries might be revived 
 in his favour. With English and Savoyard support 
 there seemed no small prospect of realising such a 
 scheme, which, had it been carried out, might well have 
 changed the course of later history by closing the lands 
 between the Rhone valley and the Alps to French 
 aggression. But a sudden change in the policy of the 
 papacy dashed all these hopes to the ground. In 1280 
 a new pope, Nicolas III., faithful to the policy of 
 Gregory X., succeeded in reconciling Rudolf and Charles, 
 on the basis of establishing an equilibrium between 
 them in the kingdom of Aries. To the deep disgust 
 of Margaret and Edward, Rudolf abandoned the pro- 
 posed English marriage, and accepted an alliance between 
 his daughter and Charles's eldest son, by which the 
 bride was to bring the Arelate as her wedding-portion 
 to the Angevin heir. In 1282 Hartmann was drowned 
 in the Rhine. HowFver, it was not his death but the 
 change of policy that preceded it that prevented Joan 
 reigning over the Arelate. 
 
96 EDWARD I chap. 
 
 The triumph of Charles over Margaret in the king- 
 dom of Aries was the more bitter as it was attended by 
 a still more signal victory over her at her son's court. 
 About 1280 the specious and dexterous Angevin had 
 insinuated himself so completely into the good graces 
 of his nephew that Margaret's influence was practically 
 destroyed. From 1280 to his death in 1285 Philip saw 
 only with the eyes of his uncle, and abandoning St. Louis's 
 policy of the gradual development of France, embarked in 
 grandiose schemes of aggression in Spain and Italy, which 
 simply served the Angevin interests. The results of this 
 new policy of the French king were extremely im- 
 portant to Edward and England. The ink of the 
 Treaty of Amiens was hardly dry when fresh difficulties 
 arose Avith France on account of Edward's enemy obtain- 
 ing the first place in Philip's councils. 
 
 The consequences were soon seen. Since 1276 
 France had been at war with Castile, and had laid 
 violent hands on Navarre. Edward had laboured 
 strenuously to bring about peace between Philip and 
 Alfonso. In 1279, at Pope Nicolas's suggestion, a con- 
 ference was fixed to meet at Bayonne, in which Edward 
 was to act as mediator between his brother-in-law and 
 his cousin. Then came the change of French policy 
 which resulted from the triumph of Charles of Anjou. 
 Edward's mediation was curtly rejected. Charles's son, 
 the Prince of Salerno, was appointed mediator in his 
 place, and even the King of Castile showed the utmost 
 distrust of Edward. The English king was deeply an- 
 noyed. "You know," he wrote to Philip, "that I have 
 wished to labour to bring about peace through my own 
 efforts ; but the King of Castile has discovered that I 
 
V EDWARD'S CONTINENTAL POLICY 97 
 
 am too lazy and too sleepy to be entrusted with so 
 delicate a task." 
 
 Edward's anger with Philip made him fall readily 
 into the new intrigues by which Margaret of Provence 
 sought to wreak her vengeance upon the Angevin. He 
 sent his faithful seneschal of Gascony, the Savoyard 
 John de Grailly, a man of great ability and experience, 
 to assist his aunt in carrying out their plans. The 
 widowed queen Eleanor threw herself actively into the 
 scheme. Edmund of Lancaster and Champagne, dis- 
 gusted that the French had taken Navarre out of his 
 wife's hands, became an ardent partisan of Margaret. 
 In the autumn of 1281 a crowd of feudal chieftains 
 met at Macon in Burgundy, and pledged themselves to 
 prosecute her claims over Provence by force of arms. 
 In 1282 the parties to the League of Macon were to meet 
 in arms at Lyons. Edward himself promised to send 
 troops to the rendezvous. If he could not win the 
 Arelate for his daughter, he might now hope to secure 
 it for his kinsmen of the house of Savoy, to whom he 
 was now, as ever, most warmly attached, but for whom, 
 since the terrible experience of the Barons' Wars, he 
 could do hardly anything on English soil. But the 
 great plans of the confederates of Macon were never 
 destined to be realised. The statesmen of the thirteenth 
 century could form great plans of international inter- 
 vention, but they seldom had force sufficient at their 
 command to realise them. A motley league of feudal 
 seigneurs could do but little against the Kings of France 
 and Naples. Edmund of Champagne was too weak, 
 Edward himself was too distant to be of much real help 
 to them. Philip III. laboured vigorously to reconcile 
 
 H 
 
98 EDWARD I chap. 
 
 his uncle and mother. Margaret, despairing of the 
 "way of warfare," was forced to leave her cause in the 
 hands of her son's lawyers, who finally awarded her a 
 money compensation for her abandoned rights over 
 Provence. Edward's conduct all through Was both 
 honourable and able, and increased materially his posi- 
 tion in the eyes of Europe. France, however, remained 
 the real victor, and in 1 284 the marriage of the heiress 
 of Navarre and Champagne, Count Edmund's step- 
 daughter, to Philip the Fair, the son and heir of Philip 
 III., destroyed the last hopes of establishing a new 
 English principality in France. Edmund's tenure of 
 the regency of Champagne was thus abruptly brought 
 to an end. As soon as his wife's daughter had entered 
 into her twelfth year, its custody passed over to her 
 youthful husband, the future King of France. Except 
 in name, Champagne now lost its independence. It 
 was soon destined to swell the domains of the French 
 crown. 
 
 Kenewed troubles now beset Edward in Aquitaine, 
 which was still governed by the seneschal Grailly. But 
 these sink into insignificance as compared with the great 
 revolution which followed the Sicilian Vespers in 1282. 
 The dominion of Charles of Anjou was thrown off with 
 energy by the Sicilians, who called upon Peter, King of 
 Aragon, to be their king. Cnarles, who maintained him- 
 self in Naples, now united with the pope in urging his 
 nephew, Philip III., to join in a holy war against the 
 Aragon ese, who thus presumed to trespass on the lands 
 granted to the Angevin by the Holy See. Edward care- 
 fully kept aloof from the quarrel. When a foolish proposal 
 was made that the dispute of Charles and Peter should 
 
V EDWARD'S CONTINENTAL POLICY 99 
 
 be fought out in a tournament at Bordeaux, he refused 
 to take any part in so fantastic a business. " Know," he 
 wrote to Charles, "that to gain two kingdoms such as 
 Sicily and Aragon I would not be the umpire of such a 
 battle ; but I will strive manfully to bring about peace 
 and concord between you." His earnest mediation pro- 
 duced no result. In 1285 Philip III. led a so-called 
 Crusade into Aragon, but his army was discomfited, and 
 he himself perished beyond the Pyrenees. His death 
 marks not merely the end of a reign, but the end of an 
 epoch. Within a few months Charles of Anjou, Peter 
 of Aragon, and Pope Martin IV., the furious French 
 partisan, were also in their graves. The new French 
 king, Philip the Fair, at once withdrew from the 
 Crusade. The new King of Aragon, Alfonso III., left 
 to his younger brother James the dangerous and pre- 
 carious throne of Sicily. The new King of Naples, 
 Charles II.' of Salerno, was a prisoner of his Aragonese 
 rival. No party had force or energy to accomplish any- 
 thing great, and all now longed for peace, and turned to 
 the strong and impartial King of England as the one 
 monarch in Christendom who was both able and willing 
 to mediate between their conflicting claims. 
 
 Edward now saw a chance of realising his dearest ambi- 
 tions. In 1286 he quitted England, and did not return 
 until 1 289. At Amiens he met the new King of France, 
 Philip IV., who accompanied him to Paris, where he per- 
 formed the homage due to his overlord for Guienne, and 
 obtained a final settlement of his claims on Lower 
 Quercy. Thence he travelled to Bordeaux, which be- 
 came his headquarters for nearly three years. He at 
 once busied himself in procuring peace between the 
 
100 EDWARD I CHAP. 
 
 French and Aragonese, sparing neither expense nor 
 trouble to reconcile the fierce antagonists. At Christ- 
 mas time he presided over a grand conference of envoys 
 at Bordeaux. In the summer of 1287 he held a per- 
 sonal interview with Alfonso III., the new King of 
 Aragon, at Oloron in B^arn, where he succeeded in per- 
 suading Alfonso to agree to release the imprisoned King 
 of Naples in return for a large ransom and a recognition 
 of Alfonso's brother James as King of Sicily. Confident 
 that peace was once more established in Europe, Edward 
 again took the cross at Bordeaux, and busied himself 
 with preparations for a new Crusade. But the pope 
 repudiated the treaty, whereupon Edward set himself 
 to work once more on his peaceful mission. In 1288 
 Edward concluded a second treaty, which resulted in 
 Charles's release, Edward himself finding nearly all the 
 money for his ransom. But no sooner was the King of 
 Naples a free man than Pope Nicolas IV. released him 
 from his oaths, and the war was renewed, though now 
 limited to Italy. Edward warmly denounced Nicolas 
 for stirring up warfare among Christian kings at the very 
 moment when the Christian cause was at its last gasp 
 in Syria. He sent an envoy to Italy, who procured a 
 truce between the Kings of Naples and Sicily. Despite 
 the furious partisanship of the popes and the greed and 
 perfidy of the temporal princes, Edward had brought 
 about his great work, the pacification of Europe. The 
 successful mediator of the great peace now stood in the 
 very foremost rank of European sovereigns. But all his 
 hopes for a Crusade were doomed to disappointment. 
 Urgent business called him back to England, and the 
 pressure of the Scottish succession question and of con- 
 
V EDWARD'S CONTINENTAL POLICY 101 
 
 stitutional difficulties at home diverted his mind from 
 the affairs of the Continent. 
 
 The three years' sojourn of Edward in Aquitaine was 
 an epoch-making period in the history of Gascony. 
 Whatever leisure the great mediation allowed, Edward 
 devoted to putting the affairs of his French dominions 
 on a sound and satisfactory basis. He crushed a formid- 
 able conspiracy at Bordeaux, which sought with French 
 help to undermine his power, and dealt out stern and 
 rigorous justice to the traitors. Yet he did his best to 
 promote the commerce of Aquitanian capital, and posed 
 as the benefactor of all the cities of his duchy, seeking 
 in them his best support against the turbulent feudal 
 nobility. A characteristic part of his policy was the 
 setting up of a class of new towns, called bastides, which 
 were at once centres of expanding commerce, bulwarks 
 of the English power, and refuges for the country-folk 
 in times of war and trouble. Many of the most flourish- 
 ing cities of Aquitaine look up to Edward as their 
 founder. Some, such as Sauveterre, the safe land, 
 suggest in their names the object of their establishment. 
 Among all the bastides of Edward's foundation, Libourne, 
 which took its name from the rising Tuscan port of 
 Leghorn [Livorno], is perhaps the most important. 
 Situated at the confluence of the Dordogne and the 
 Isle, at the highest point where the wine -ships that 
 traded with England could sail up from the sea, 
 Libourne was admirably situated for trade, and no 
 less well placed as an outpost of the military defence 
 of Guienne against French aggression, and as a refuge 
 in time of war for the neighbouring country-folk. It 
 grew so rapidly that at one time it bade fair to be a 
 
102 EDWARD I chap. 
 
 rival to Bordeaux itself. It soon reduced to insignifi- 
 cance its older neighbours, like Fronsac, hidden away 
 under the slopes of its vine -clad hill, and the more 
 famous Saint Emilion, where a great military station 
 had gradually grown up on the slopes of the strange 
 amphitheatre, round which clustered the dense mass of 
 houses that had gathered round the rock-hewn church 
 of the hermit saint. Its plan, simple and regular as 
 that of an American city, was that of all the class of 
 bastides. Its eight main streets, as straight if not as 
 broad as those of its American antitypes, radiated from 
 a central square, wherein the public buildings were 
 situated. Ample charters of liberties attracted a 
 numerous population within its strong walls. But the 
 modern Liboume contains but little that reminds one 
 of the age of Edward. Its steady and long-continued 
 prosperity has allowed but few memorials of the remote 
 past to be seen in its busy streets. It is in some of the 
 remoter and less prosperous of Edward's foundations 
 that the characteristic features of the bastide type can 
 best be studied. Little towns such as Beaumont and 
 Montpazier, placed on the extreme north-east frontier 
 of Edward's dominions, in the rolling hill country 
 between the Dordogne and the Lot, and still far 
 removed from railroads or great highways, preserve to 
 this day in their quaint arcaded central square, straight- 
 cut narrow lanes, fortified churches, and picturesque 
 houses, walls, and gateways, an appearance not very 
 dissimilar to that which they must have possessed when 
 they were built, all at one time, at the bidding of their 
 English duke. Yet even in his policy of founding 
 towns in Aquitaine, Edward struck at no original line 
 
V EDWARD'S CONTINENTAL POLICY 103 
 
 of his own. He was neither the first nor the only 
 founder of bastides. Alphonse of Poitiers built the 
 great bastide of Villefranche-de-Rouergue; St. Louis 
 himself created one of the most important of bastides 
 in the New Town of Carcassonne, still dominated by the 
 wonderful fortress of the " Cite," crowning the steep hill 
 beyond the Aude, whose walls, first set up by West 
 Gothic kings and Languedocian counts, and restored 
 to almost their present shape by St. Louis, still remain 
 as the perfect type of a mediaeval stronghold. Every 
 little prince and bishop followed the example of the 
 greatest lords of the south, and Edward was only one 
 of a crowd of imitators. Yet he carried out his work 
 of imitation with such energy and persistence that 
 nowhere was the bastide type of town more thoroughly 
 established than in his Aquitanian inheritance, and 
 nowhere did the " new towns " have more important 
 and lasting influence over the land which they both 
 dominated and protected. 
 
 Edward busied himself with improving the adminis- 
 trative system of Gascony, and in attracting the Gascon 
 gentlemen to the service of their dukes, both at home 
 and in England. His seneschal John de Grailly gave 
 him efficient assistance. He was one of the many 
 Savoyards who had sought promotion in the lands ruled 
 by Eleanor of Provence. Abandoning his home, now 
 called Grilly,,a few miles north of Geneva, he became 
 by Edward's favour one of the territorial magnates of 
 Aquitaine, and the founder of a house whose descendants 
 three centuries later mounted the French throne. His 
 elevation shows not only Edward's constant regard for his 
 mother's people, but some sort of design of setting up new 
 
104 EDWARD I chap. 
 
 families unconnected with the region, and owing everything 
 to the king, as a counterpoise to the old feudal aristocracy. 
 By such wise measures Edward laid the foundation ^ 
 that close union of the duchy and kingdom which lasti^^ 
 through the storms and troubles of a century and a half. 
 He could not change the conditions of his rule there, but 
 he organised and simplified the chaotic constitution of a 
 feudal state. Nowhere can his claims to statecraft be 
 better demonstrated than in his government of Aqui- 
 taine. 
 
 We have dwelt at perhaps disproportionate length on 
 Edward's early continental policy. But no side of his 
 career throws greater light on his statesmanship, and no 
 side of it is less generally known in England. It has 
 become the fashion to say that Edward's great merit was 
 that he gave up all thoughts of the unprofitable Aqui- 
 tanian heritage, and threw his whole energies into purely 
 British questions. That Edward was above all things an 
 English king, no one will deny. That the most im- 
 portant results of his work were seen in the organisation 
 of English institutions and in the attempted extension 
 of English rule over the rest of the British Islands is 
 equally plain. But it is a very false and one-sided view 
 that ignores his constant and vivid interest in his 
 Aquitanian inheritance, and that puts aside as of no 
 account his watchful care of English interests in Europe,, 
 and his constant efforts, in cases where direct English 
 interests were very little involved, to uphold some sort of 
 European balance, while strenuously striving to preserve 
 or restore the peace of Europe. Edward's European 
 policy was pre-eminently a policy of peace and mediation, 
 but it is not to be ignored because his reign was marked 
 
V EDWARD S CONTINENTAL POLICY 105 
 
 by no great continental wars of his own seeking, and 
 because it requires some effort to unravel the tangled 
 threads of diplomatic negotiations through which Edward 
 made his influence felt all over Europe. Not the least 
 striking side of his policy of mediation is its amazing 
 modernness. Yet Edward was above all others a man 
 of the Middle Ages, though mediaeval aspirations after 
 a Crusade jostle strangely with his modern conceptions 
 of a political balance and a policy of interests. 
 
 But the truth is, that too much has been made of the 
 contrast between mediaeval and modern; or, if we 
 like it better, we may say that there was already a 
 modem side in the policy of the great national kings 
 who in the thirteenth century had begun to replace 
 feudalism. There was a European political system 
 before the days of Francis I. and Charles Y., and there 
 was need for a Wolsey in the thirteenth almost as much 
 as in the sixteenth century. Thirteenth-century states- 
 men were not, as we are commonly told, altogether 
 absorbed in home problems, and too feeble or too much 
 wedded to routine and tradition to look abroad and 
 take a comprehensive view of the European situation. 
 They were as well able to plan the partition of a 
 neighbouring state, or the degradation of a rival, as their 
 descendants of modern times. What makes the real 
 diflference between them is, that they had not sufficient 
 maferial resources at their command to carry out with 
 any effect the bold combinations which they had plotted. 
 Edward's favourite projects partake of this characteristic 
 ineffectiveness, but, unlike Charles of Anjou or Philip 
 the Fair, he limited himself for the most part to what 
 was immediately practicable and immediately necessary. 
 
106 EDWARD I chap, v 
 
 His wider schemes, such as those for the revival of the 
 Arelate, show mediaeval statecraft in its feeblest and 
 most impotent shape. But, when all deductions are 
 made, Edward remains one of the greatest of English 
 kings even in his foreign relations. He won for England 
 a sure and foremost place in the councils of Europe. His 
 honesty of purpose and his ability of conception have 
 won the warmest praises both from his own contem- 
 poraries abroad and from those modern foreign writers 
 to whose works we must, to the disgrace of English 
 scholarship, have recourse if we wish to learn how truly 
 great was the great English king when all Europe wel- 
 comed him as the mediator of peace, when his friendship 
 was sought by every power of Western Europe, and 
 when he made the name of England respected and feared 
 in Germany, in France, in Spain, and in Italy. 
 
CHAPTEE Yl 
 
 THE CONQUEST AND SETTLEMENT OF THE PRINCIPALITY 
 OF WALES 
 
 1274-1301 
 
 The first serious difficulty that met King Edward in 
 Britain was presented by the attitude of the Prince 
 of Wales. Llywelyn ab GrufFydd had never cordially 
 accepted the settlement of 1267. Flushed with the 
 greatness of his triumph, he regarded the Treaty of 
 Shrewsbury as but the starting-point for a fresh 
 career of aggression. He never understood that the 
 dexterous game, which he had played so well when 
 England was divided, was the merest foolishness when 
 the discord of king and barons was over, and when a 
 strong king, ruling with the nation's good-will, stood in 
 the place of the weak and irresolute Henry. Llywelyn 
 was a man of vigorous character, high courage, and 
 great dexterity and adroitness, but there was something 
 of the barbarian about him, and he was slow to recognise 
 new forces and tune his policy to altered conditions. He 
 never realised that the Barons' Wars were over, and ever 
 sought to pose with the English as the true successor 
 of Earl Simon, hoping to thus win the hand of Eleanor, 
 
108 EDWARD I chap 
 
 Montfort's only daughter, and to renew with the sons 
 the close connection that had existed between him and 
 the great Earl. But Edward I. was not Henry HI, and 
 the murderers of Viterbo were but poor substitutes for 
 Earl Simon the Righteous. Moreover, Llywelyn was 
 not content with the part which he had hitherto occupied 
 as leader of the Welsh race. Inspired by the vain 
 prophecies that credulity attributed to the wizard 
 Merlin, and puffed up by the panegyrics of the bards 
 and minstrels who revelled in his bounty, Llywelyn 
 dreamed of a time when the Saxon should be expelled 
 from the island of Britain and the ancient British race 
 again rule over its old inheritance. He chafed therefore 
 against the ties of vassalage that bound him to the Eng- 
 lish crown, and, profiting by the absence of Edward in the 
 first two years of his reign, he resisted all the efforts of 
 the regents to exact from him the customary homage to 
 the new king. Nor did the return of Edward in 1274 
 mend matters. Llywelyn still excused himself, shuffled, 
 and at last openly defied the royal mandates. The 
 rough rule of Edward's ministers, the chronic disputes 
 of the Welsh with the swarm of hostile Marchers, gave 
 Llywelyn plenty of pretexts, and, in the eyes of his 
 subjects at least, some sort of justification for his con- 
 temptuous disregard of feudal law. Edward was at last 
 moved to profound anger. We have seen how he 
 rigorously fulfilled the most irksome of his obligations 
 as Duke of Gascony. He had no patience with the 
 shifty Welshman, and sternly resolved to enforce his 
 obligations by the sword. The Montforts established 
 some connection with their old partisans in England, 
 but Edward wisely checkmated their action by issuing a 
 
VI THE CONQUEST OF THE PRINCIPALITY 109 
 
 full pardon to the "Disinherited." The best of the 
 baronial party were now on his side. Thomas of Canti- 
 lupe, Earl Simon's Chancellor, was Bishop of Hereford, 
 and actively co-operating with Edward against Lly welyn. 
 Nevertheless Amaury de Montfort, the most respectable 
 of the sons of Simon, took ship with his sister Eleanor to 
 Wales that she might become the bride of Llywelyn. 
 But some Bristol mariners captured the little squadron 
 at sea. Edward put Amaury into prison and retained 
 Eleanor in the queen's household. He paid no heed to 
 Llywelyn's urgent appeals for their release. He was 
 resolved that the Montforts should have no chance of 
 reviving a party of popular opposition. 
 
 In 1276 there was war all along the Welsh border. 
 In the early summer of 1277 the feudal levies mus- 
 tered at Chester under the faithful Earl of Lincoln. 
 Edward himself led the great expedition against Llywelyn. 
 His early experience taught him the right method of 
 warfare, and how best to win for himself allies among 
 the Welsh. David, the brother of Llywelyn, fought 
 under Edward's banner, along with the many Welsh 
 chieftains who were jealous of Llywelyn's greatness. 
 Broad roads were cut through the dense forests that 
 then made dangerous the passage of the army from 
 Chester to the Conway. A considerable fleet — mostly 
 gathered from the Cinque Ports — sailed along the coast 
 and kept the land forces well supplied with provisions 
 and information. Llywelyn made scarcely a show of 
 resistance, but retreated with all his men into the re- 
 cesses of the great group of mountains which were in 
 those days roughly known by the name of Snowdon. 
 
 Edward's plan was now to blockade his enemies in 
 
110 EDWARD I CHAP. 
 
 Snowdon. Every exit from the mountains was closed, 
 while the fleet cut off all communications with Anglesey, 
 whence alone Llywelyn could draw the supplies of corn 
 necessary to keep his troops alive in the desolate regions 
 of his retreat. Llywelyn held out a long time, but on 
 the approach of winter he was starved into submission. 
 Early in November he came down from the hills and 
 accepted with what grace he could the hard terms 
 imposed by Edward in the Treaty of Conway. By 
 this convention the Welsh prince resigned all claims 
 over the Four Cantreds of Perveddwlad and consented 
 to hold Anglesey for his life only. He retained his 
 other lands, along with the title of prince; but they 
 were burdened with fines and a yearly rent for Anglesey, 
 and he was forced to deliver up hostages for his good 
 behaviour. Edward was, however, in no mood to exact 
 these humiliating terms to the letter. He remitted at 
 once the rent and the fine and sent back the hostages. 
 Llywelyn now made his personal submission to Edward 
 at lihuddlan, and afterwards attended the Christmas 
 court of his lord at Westminster, where he solemnly 
 performed his long-delayed homage before the assembled 
 magnates. The Welsh prince was now in high favour. 
 Next year he held another interview with Edward at 
 Worcester, where, in return for further submission, he 
 was allowed to marry Eleanor Montfort. Edward 
 himself attended the wedding ceremony. Llywelyn's 
 brother David had received his reward in a rich estate 
 in the vale of Clwyd. 
 
 The Treaty of Conway gave Edward an oppor- 
 tunity of renewing the plans of his early youth, and 
 introducing the English shire system and laws into the 
 
VI THE CONQUEST OF THE PRINCIPALITY 111 
 
 ceded districts,/ The county court of Carmarthen and 
 Cardigan, which had continued a sickly and precarious 
 existence since its first establishment, was now revived, 
 while the justice of Chester sought to subject the Four 
 Cantreds to the jurisdiction of the Cheshire shiremoot. 
 Meanwhile English traders and settlers came in the train 
 of the English armies, and the castles that had first been 
 established in the old days of Norman aggressions were 
 now rebuilt and strengthened to keep down the subject 
 lands. This policy excited the Welsh inhabitants of the 
 ceded districts to the uttermost fury. They complained 
 that Edward had shamefully broken the promise that he 
 had made of ruling his new possessions according to 
 their ancient customs and liberties. Edward answered 
 that he would maintain the old Welsh laws so far as 
 they were good ones, but that many of them were 
 barbarous and directly at variance with the Ten Com- 
 mandments. Such evil customs he could never observe, 
 as he was bound by his coronation oath to uphold 
 justice. This attitude was eminently characteristic, 
 Edward's orderly and well-trained mind was disgusted 
 at the barbarism of the old Welsh laws, and he honestly 
 believed that he was doing his Welsh subjects the best 
 service in his power in uprooting that venerable but 
 primitive jurisprudence that allowed the murderer to 
 atone for his crime by a money payment, and regarded 
 wrecking as an unalienable right of the dwellers by the 
 sea-shore. But Edward never understood the feelings of 
 the Welsh at thus seeing their most cherished institu- 
 tions trampled scornfully under the foot of an alien 
 conqueror. His strong but somewhat narrow nature 
 had few points of contact with the fiery, hot-headed 
 
112 EDWARD I CHAP. 
 
 enthusiasts with whom he had now to deal. He wished 
 honestly enough that those Welsh customs should re- 
 main which were not against his conception of natural 
 justice, but neither he nor his lawyers would put 
 themselves in a sufficiently receptive attitude to imder- 
 stand them. At bottom Edward's real policy was 
 to make Welshmen Englishmen as soon as possible, 
 and he was surprised that they resented his trans- 
 parent sophisms, and murmured at reforms that he 
 had only meant for their good. But now, as ever, 
 Edward was badly served by his subordinates. The 
 violence and brutality of his bailiffs and constables 
 stood in damning contrast to his abstract talk about 
 justice. His best friends among the Welsh fully shared 
 in the national resentment to his policy. David himself 
 was deeply hurt, and had quietly reconciled himself 
 with his brother. 
 
 In the spring of 1282 the long smouldering hostility 
 of the Four Cantreds to the English system burst out 
 into open revolt. On the eve of Palm Sunday, David 
 fell upon Rhuddlan Castle and took prisoner Roger 
 Clifford, Edward's justiciar. Llywelyn hurried over 
 the Conway to his assistance, and devastated the country 
 to the very gates of Chester. A simultaneous rising 
 broke out in the south, where the Welsh insurgents 
 took possession of the new castle of Aberystwith, the 
 key of Cardigan and Carmarthen. Edward was deeply 
 enraged at the news of the new rebellion. He now 
 resolved to make a great effort to finally crush the power 
 of the Welsh prince. Archbishop Peckham of Canter- 
 bury put Llywelyn under the ban of the Church. Great 
 armies were poured into both the northern and southern 
 
VI THE CONQUEST OF THE PRINCIPALITY 118 
 
 districts of the Principality. The strategy of 1277 was 
 renewed. Llywelyn was again shut up in Snowdon, 
 whither the Archbishop journeyed on a vain effort to 
 induce him to submit. But Edward would accept no 
 terms but unconditional surrender, though he gave a 
 private assurance that Llywelyn should receive an estate 
 of £1000 a year in England, with due provision for 
 his brother. But Llywelyn scorned such a degrading 
 submission, and, mindful of his fate in 1277, escaped 
 almost unattended from Snowdon before the winter 
 snows again compelled him to surrender. He soon 
 appeared in the Marches of the Upper Wye, hoping to 
 raise a fresh revolt among the Welsh tenants of the 
 Mortimers. On 11th December Llywelyn was slain in 
 an obscure skirmish near Builth. David, who now called 
 himself Prince of Wales, managed to hold out until the 
 next summer, when his hiding-place amidst the bogs of 
 Snowdon was discovered by the treachery of some of 
 his own countrymen. With his capture the triumph of 
 Edward was completed. A special Parliament was sum- 
 moned to Shrewsbury to deal with the double-dyed 
 traitor. On 3rd October 1283 David was hung, drawn, 
 and quartered with the approval of the assembled estates. 
 The Principality was now conquered. Edward re- 
 solved that its future government should be put upon a 
 solid basis. He remained in Wales almost continually 
 until the work was done, living for the most part at 
 Rhuddlan, and not finally quitting the country until the 
 end of 1284. In the spring of 1284 he published at 
 Rhuddlan the Statute of Wales, which contained the 
 chief points of the new scheme. By it the Principality 
 was declared annexed to the crown, and was consti- 
 
 I 
 
114 EDWARD I CHAP. 
 
 tuted shire - ground. The already existing shires of 
 Cardigan and Carmarthen were set up in a more legal 
 and complete manner. Though much smaller in size 
 than the modem counties, they included the whole of 
 the southern possessions of Llywelyn. They were put 
 under a justice of West Wales who held his court at 
 Carmarthen. In the same way the northern dominions 
 of Llywelyn were divided into the three counties of 
 Anglesey, Carnarvon, and Merioneth, the three old 
 shires of Gwynedd. They were ruled over by the 
 justice of Snowdon, who kept his state at Carnarvon. 
 Sheriffs, county courts, coroners, and bailiffs were set up 
 as in England, and a rough copy of English local govern- 
 ment was thus introduced throughout the whole Prin- 
 cipality. Edward's Welsh counties, as a modern writer 
 has well said, bear to the English counties of this time 
 some such relation as the Territory of the United States 
 bears to the fully organised State. But it is to Edward's 
 credit that he set up what form of local government he 
 thought best in his new possession. And if at first the 
 king's bailiffs and ministers had more power than in 
 England, the administration of the Welsh shires fell 
 almost from the first into native Welsh hands, and 
 Edward made the new divisions more acceptable, by 
 building them up out of the cantreds and commots 
 which constituted the immemorial territorial divisions 
 of the Cymry. A sixth Welsh county was also estab- 
 lished by Edward in Flintshire, but this small region 
 was for most purposes annexed to Edward's Palatinate 
 of Cheshire, and Flintshire was for all practical pur- 
 poses a mere dependency of the neighbouring earldom 
 rather than an independent and autonomous shire. With 
 
Yi THE CONQUEST OF THE PRINCIPALITY 116 
 
 the shire system came in a good many English laws, 
 though Edward, made wise by experience, now took 
 good care to uphold such Welsh customs as did not con- 
 flict with his sense of justice. But beyond these limits 
 Edward's reforms did not go. His "Welsh legislation 
 left the Lords Marcher in the enjoyment of their dis- 
 orderly feudal freedom, though the annexation of the 
 Principality to the crown largely diminished their 
 political importance. The Marchers had helped Edward 
 against Llywelyn, and he saw no good reason to disturb 
 their vested rights, and probably feared to provoke the 
 hostility of the many great English barons who would 
 have certainly resented any infringement of their jurisdic- 
 tion in their Welsh lordships. On the contrary, Edward 
 erected new Lordships Marcher in those parts of the 
 Four Cantreds which were not included in the new shire 
 of Flint. The most important of these was the lordship 
 of Denbigh, which Edward bestowed on his faithful 
 follower the Earl of Lincoln. The result of all this 
 was that the separation of Wales into Principality and 
 Marches continued just as before until the reign of 
 Henry VIH. It speaks well for the wisdom of Edward's 
 legislation that it was as much from the Marches as 
 from the Principality that Edward's subsequent Welsh 
 troubles arose. 
 
 The subjection of the' Principality was completed by 
 the establishment of a strong line of castles and fortified 
 towns. Edward now repeated in the Principality the 
 policy already tried so successfully in Gascony. A row 
 of " bastides " or " villes anglaises " were set up on the 
 Menai and the Conway as on the Garonne and the Dor- 
 dogne, to serve the same purposes of protection and 
 
116 EDWARD I CHAP. 
 
 defence, and to further in the same way the spread 
 of commerce and civilisation. Archbishop Peckham 
 advised Edward to make the Welsh live in towns and to 
 send their children to school in England, for thus only, 
 he declared, would the Welsh learn "civility." But 
 Edward's object was not so much to attract the Welsh 
 to live in his towns, as to settle in them little bands of 
 English soldiers, officials, and traders, who would prove, 
 as in Ireland, the rallying points of an English interest. 
 Though, luckily for both England and Wales, the towns- 
 folk soon intermingled with the dwellers in the country, 
 yet the history of Welsh towns is practically the history 
 of English influence in Wales, and down to the days of 
 Queen Elizabeth the separation so far remained that 
 English and not Welsh was the ordinary spoken tongue 
 of every market-town in Wales. But even more than 
 the Welsh towns, the Welsh castles remain to this day a 
 monument of Edward's power. The castle and walls of 
 Conway, where fortress and town alike owed their 
 existence to the Conquest ; Carnarvon Castle, dominat- 
 ing the straits of Menai ; and the rocky stronghold of 
 Harlech, raised far above the waters of Cardigan Bay, 
 are the best memorials of Edward's work in Wales. It 
 has even been suggested that the well-known type of 
 " concentric castle " to which these buildings belong, was 
 first brought into the west by Edward, and based upon 
 his observations in Syria of the mighty strongholds of 
 the Latin Christians of Palestine. But Edward cannot 
 claim this credit, and his boldest castles in Wales were 
 but copies of the already existing Castle of Caerphilly, 
 built a few years earlier by Earl Gilbert of Gloucester. 
 Yet if Edward imitated the Marchers in building castles, 
 
VI THE CONQUEST OF THE PRINCIPALITY 117 
 
 the Marchers imitated Edward in setting up or granting 
 charters to towns, so that the castle-building and town- 
 foundation extended over Principality and Marches alike. 
 The result was a great spread of civilisation, and Wales 
 after 1284, though far from settled even according to 
 the low standards of the Middle Ages, attained a far 
 greater measure of peace and prosperity after that the 
 just though unsympathetic rule of Edward had suc- 
 ceeded the unending factions and the bloody wars of the 
 native princes of Gwynedd. 
 
 Archbishop Peckham busied himself with the ecclesi- 
 astical reformation of Wales. Like Edward, he showed 
 scanty respect for Welsh susceptibilities, but he did good 
 work in rebuilding churches, raising the standard of 
 church discipline, removing the married priests, and 
 improving the education of the clergy. Moreover, he 
 exhorted Edward to maintain fully the ancient liberties 
 of the Welsh Church, and bitterly complained of the 
 rash violence of Edward's officials, who "destroy and 
 overturn every ecclesiastical usage that differs from the 
 Anglican use to the no small peril of their souls." His 
 highest desire was to see the Welsh better educated and 
 accustomed to work for their living. 
 
 In August 1284 Edward celebrated his conquest by 
 holding a "Round Table" tournament at Nevin in 
 Carnarvonshire, where the most famous knights of 
 England and the Continent fought amidst the wilds 
 of Snowdon. Wonderful relics were opportunely dis- 
 covered, including the body of Constantino the Great 
 and the crown of King Arthur. The latter was presented 
 to Edward. "Thus the glory of Wales," says the 
 chronicler, "was transferred to the English." 
 
118 EDWARD I CHAP. 
 
 Edward had no great difficulty with his new subjects 
 during the rest of his reign. There were several revolts 
 which threatened to become formidable, but the only 
 one which really taxed his resources was that which 
 Madog ab Llywelyn and his associates raised in 1294; 
 and this owes its importance to Edward's other embarrass- 
 ments at the time. During Edward's long sojourn in 
 Wales two of his children were born. One of these, 
 Edward, soon became by his brother Alfonso's death 
 his father's heir. His Welsh birth had already endeared 
 him to Edward's new subjects, and he had a Welsh 
 nurse and Welsh attendants to keep up his interest in 
 the land of his birth. The stories that Edward pre- 
 sented him on his birth to the Welsh as their future prince 
 have no more authority than the local tradition which 
 points out as his birthplace a room in Carnarvon Castle, 
 which is manifestly of later date. At last, in 1 301 , Edward 
 created Edward Prince of Wales, thus keeping the 
 Principality separate from the Crown, though retaining 
 it in the hands of the royal family, and using it, as in his 
 own father's time, as a means of training the heir in the 
 work of government. It was a wise measure. Edward 
 of Carnarvon was always a great favourite with the 
 Welsh, who succoured him in his severest troubles, and 
 celebrated his mournful fate in dirges written in their 
 native tongue. 
 
 Edward I.'s whole Welsh policy brings out clearly 
 his characteristic strength and weakness; but despite 
 his narrowness and want of sympathy, his stem love of 
 justice and equal laws made his policy in the long run a 
 success, especially against a power whose open resistance 
 he could crush with an overwhelming strength. He is 
 
VI THE CONQUEST OF THE PRINCIPALITY 119 
 
 generally described as the conqueror of Wales. More 
 accurately he was the conqueror of the Principality. 
 Yet he never sought to annex the Principality to Eng- 
 land, although he incorporated it with the English 
 crown. The Principality, like the Palatine county of 
 Chester, or the still abiding liberties of the Lords 
 Marcher, was still a land standing by itself. Save on 
 two occasions under Edward II., no members of Parlia- 
 ment were summoned to represent the Principality at 
 the king's court. The king's writ and the king's 
 English judges had no jurisdiction, and the whole 
 machinery of administration remained separate and 
 distinct. It was reserved for Henry VIII. to make 
 England and Wales a single political unity. 
 
OHAPTEE VII 
 
 Edward's legislation 
 
 1275-1290 
 
 The thirteenth century was above all things the age of 
 the lawyer and the legislator. The revived study of 
 Roman law had been one of the greatest results of the 
 intellectual renaissance of the twelfth century. The 
 enormous growth of the universities in the early part of 
 the thirteenth century was in no small measure due to 
 the zeal, ardour, and success of their legal faculties. From 
 Bologna there flowed all over Europe a great impulse 
 towards the systematic and scientific study of the Civil 
 Law of Rome. Side by side with the law of the civilians 
 stood the rival legislative system of the canonists. The 
 law of the Church rivalled the law of the State ; the juris- 
 prudence of the popes stood side by side with the 
 jurisprudence of the emperors. Moreover, the northern 
 lawyers were inspired by their emulation of the civilians 
 and canonists to look at the rude chaos of feudal 
 custom with more critical eyes. They sought to give 
 it more system and method, to elicit its leading 
 principles, and to co-ordinate its clashing rules into a 
 harmonious body of doctrine worthy to be put side by 
 
CHAP. VTT EDWARDS LEGISLATION 121 
 
 side with the more pretentious edifices of the Civil 
 and Canon Law. In this spirit Henry de Bracton wrote 
 the first systematic exposition of English law in the_ 
 reign of Henry HI. The judges and lawyers of the 
 J reign of Edward sought to put the principles of Bracton 
 I into practice. Edward himself strove with no small 
 success to carry on the same great work by new legisla- 
 tion. He had for his chief guide and adviser the 
 chancellor Kobert Burnell. A series of great judges 
 like Hengham and Britton supplied him with practical 
 knowledge. A great Italian jurist, Francesco Accursi^ 
 son of the more famous Glossator of Bologna, gave him 
 the technical skill and the grasp of legal principle which 
 were the great marks of the trained civilian; but the 
 times were but little favourable to the acceptance in 
 free England of the Eoman law. The most popular 
 law book of the reign — which later generations have 
 Xj ascribed to Chief Justice Britton — marks in this respect 
 a going back as compared with Bracton. It is Bracton 
 in substance, but Bracton rearranged, purged of his 
 speculative aspect, and done into French that it might 
 be more generally understood. It is very significant 
 that the whole book is put into the mouth of King 
 Edward himself, as if the whole law issued directly as 
 the king's command. This alone shows that Edward 
 was not regarded by his age as a merely passive instru- 
 ment in the hands of his advisers. If he had not the origin- 
 ality to strike out new paths, he had at least the practical 
 wisdom which absorbs and appropriates what is best in 
 the common thoughts and actions of his age. Edward 
 had an unerring eye for details, and great skill in order- 
 ing, arranging, and working out a legal principle to its 
 
122 EDWARD I chap. 
 
 utmost consequences. Since Henry 11. had first systemat- 
 ised and arranged the legal system which grew out of 
 the Norman Conquest, there had been a century of rapid 
 development, fruitful in great and original ideas, but 
 throwing out its results without order or method, and 
 with little care for clearness or consistency. English 
 law had grown like a great wood where the trees stand so 
 close together that none attain their proper proportions, 
 and where a rich tangle of underwood blocks up all 
 paths and access. It was the work of Edward and his 
 ministers to prune away this too luxuriant growth. 
 Their work was a task of ordering, of methodising, of 
 
 1 arranging. Edward's age was, as Bishop Stubbs tells us, 
 a period of definition. His aim was to group together 
 and codify, in such informal ways as the spirit of his age 
 and country allowed, the legal system which had grown 
 up in disorderly abundance in the previous generations. 
 His well-known title of the " English Justinian " is not 
 so absurd as it appears at first sight. He did not merely 
 resemble Justinian in being a great legislator./ Like 
 ^ the famous codifier of the Roman law, Edward stood at 
 the end of a long period of legal development, and 
 sought to arrange and systematise what had gone before 
 him. ^Some of his great laws are almost in form 
 attempts at the systematic codification of various 
 branches of feudal custom. The whole of his legislation is 
 permeated by a spirit which is at bottom essentially 
 the same as the impulse which makes for codification. 
 ( We shall therefore seek in vain for anything very new 
 or revolutionary in Edward's legislation. We shall 
 find a minute adaptation of means to ends, a spirit 
 of definition and classification rather than any great 
 
VII EDWARD'S LEGISLATION 123 
 
 originality or insight.( But Edward did just what was 
 most wanted at the time, and his work became all the 
 more important and lasting because of its narrow 
 adaptation to the needs and circumstances of his age. 
 His work as a legislator puts him on a level with the 
 greatest of the famous series of law -giving monarchs 
 who adorned the thirteenth century. Neither St. Louis, 
 nor Philip the Fair, nor Alfonso the Wise, nor even the 
 Emperor Frederick II., attained a higher position as a 
 legislator. 
 
 (Edward was greedy for power, and a constant object 
 of his legislation was the exaltation of the royal pre- 
 rogative. But he nearly always took a broad and com- 
 prehensive view of his authority, and thoroughly grasped 
 the truth that the best interests of king and kingdom 
 were identical. He wished to rule the state, but was 
 willing to take his subjects into partnership with him, if 
 they in return recognised his royal rights. In the same 
 spirit he ungrudgingly recognised the rights and im- 
 munities of the various orders of the State. St. Louis 
 himself was not more careful than Edward in acknow- 
 ledging the franchises of the baron, the clerk, or the 
 townsmen, as they were understood by the general 
 opinion of the age. But Edward, like St. Louis, was very 
 Vcareful to permit of no extension of feudal authority, 
 and happier than his French uncle, was in a better 
 position for enforcing the supremacy of the sovereign 
 over all persons and in all causes. Just as he refused 
 to be bound by the bad Welsh laws which went against 
 his sense of justice, so he never brought himself to 
 recognise any evil custom that trenched upon the 
 inalienable and sovereign supremacy of the English 
 
124 EDWARD I chap 
 
 crown. He would co-operate with the baronage in 
 enforcing the feudal rights of the lords, but he never 
 admitted that the feudal tenure of land gave the vassal 
 any political rights that enabled him to set up a little 
 state within the state. Thoroughly feudal as was 
 Edward's conception of law and society, he laboured 
 successfully in removing the last traces of the political 
 effects of the doctrines of feudal tenancy. He narrowly 
 circumscribed every old right; he refused to recognise 
 any new ones. The same spirit marks his ecclesiastical 
 legislation, for with Edward all his policy was a part of 
 a concerted whole, in which there was very little that 
 was irregular or capricious. A brief survey of the chief 
 monuments of the secular legislation of his reign will 
 show us the principles upon which Edward acted as a law- 
 giver. The details of his laws can only be profitably 
 studied by the legal antiquary ; but the broad principles 
 on which they were based profoundly affected not only 
 his own times but the whole subsequent course of English 
 judicial history. 
 V Edward's real reign begins with his arrival in England 
 
 Vin August 1274. This event put an end to the peaceful 
 government of the regency which had acted in his 
 name since his father's death. Bold legislation now 
 succeeds the monotony of administrative routine. 
 
 Iln 1275 Edward met his first general Parliament, and 
 published as the result of their joint labours the Statute 
 of Westminster the First. None of Edward's legislative 
 acts better illustrate the position of the English Justinian. 
 The whole ground of the law is covered in the long and 
 comprehensive statute, which is almost a little code by 
 itself. Next year saw the Statute de Bigamis and the 
 
VII EDWARD'S LEGISLATION 126 
 
 Statute of Rageman, which instituted a special inquiry 
 into cases of trespass. Far more important was the 
 Statute of Gloucester of 1278, which was an attempt 
 to strictly define and regulate the special franchises of 
 the feudal barons. Nothing was more vexing to the 
 orderly mind of Edward than the way in which the 
 great immunities of the feudal lords broke up the regu- 
 larity and uniformity of the administration of justice. 
 He regarded the feudal jurisdictions as dangerous to the 
 authority of the crown and as obstacles to cheap, sure, 
 and uniform justice among the people. One of his 
 first acts had been to send out commissioners to examine 
 into the character and extent of the baronial immunities. 
 The two large folios of the Hundred Rolls contain the 
 results of this inquiry, which in its turn suggested the 
 methods adopted by the Statute of Gloucester. Under 
 this law fresh royal commissions traversed the country, 
 inquiring by what authority the lords exercised their 
 exceptional powers. Many of these franchises were found 
 to be based on no specific charter, and to have no better 
 warranty than ancient custom. But the very insecurity 
 of their titles increased the anger of the baronage at 
 the king's attack upon their vested rights. The great 
 lords found a spokesman in the Earl o f Warenn e, 
 who, though the husband of one of Edward's Poitevm 
 aunts, and a strenuous upholder of the royal cause at 
 Lewes, had no mind to see the ancient privileges of 
 his order diminished. When the king's lawyers came 
 with their writ of quo warranto, the Earl refused to 
 base his rights on papers and parchments. He bared 
 a rusty sword and exclaimed, "Here is my warrant. 
 My ancestors came with William the Bastard and won 
 
126 EDWARD I chap. 
 
 their lands with the sword. With my sword will I 
 defend them against all usurpers." Such an atti- 
 tude taught Edward to proceed more cautiously. He 
 made no more such direct attacks upon the political 
 privileges of feudalism. He sought by indirect methods 
 to compass an end that could hardly be procured openly. 
 Every year was marked by its great law. In 1279 
 Edward issued the Statute of Mortmain, which, though 
 aimed most directly against the growth of ecclesiastical 
 power, was but a part of Edward's general policy, and 
 stood in close relation to his feudal legislation. The king, 
 as the ultimate lord of English soil, had certain interests 
 that were opposed to those of his tenants, while his 
 vassals, in their capacity of lords over their mesne 
 tenants, had in their turn certain common interests with 
 Edward as lords. Edward now sought to approach the 
 points of common interest, and thus to carry the great 
 barons with him in a course which, though immediately 
 equally advantageous to all lords alike, could not but prove 
 in the long run to help forward the interests of the crown. 
 I i'he Statute of Mortmain sought to protect the rights of 
 all lords of land, who were not seldom exposed to loss 
 of their chances of relief, wardship, marriage, forfeiture, 
 or escheat, by the transference of land held under 
 them from an individual holder, whose heirs might be 
 minors, unmarried, traitors or non-existent, to a per- 
 petual ecclesiastical corporation that never died, that 
 had perpetual succession, that could not commit treason, 
 or fall into any of those feudal positions which gave to 
 a lord the excuse for a fine or a forfeiture. The statute 
 prohibited for the future grants of land to corporations 
 whose " dead hand " never relaxed its grasp. K We shall 
 
VII EDWARD'S LEGISLATION 127 j 
 
 see later how important this statute was as affecting the i 
 relations between Edward and the Church. It was no 
 
 less important as the first step of the union of king and i 
 
 baronage to protect the interests of the feudal lords, i 
 
 which ultimately produced the Statute of Quia Emptores. I ' 
 
 The Welsh war hardly relaxed the legislative activity j 
 
 of Edward. Amidst the trials and troubles of the j 
 
 settlement of "Wales, Edward found time to issue in j 
 
 1283 the Statute of A cton ^Bar nellj which gave mer- j 
 -tJEants an easier way of recovering their debts, and in 
 
 1284 the Statute of Rhuddlan, which regulated the 
 royal exchequer. But the return of Edward to England j 
 was marked by greater and more sweeping measures. : 
 The year J 285 saw the passage of two of the most ' 
 important laws of the reign — the Statute of Westminster 
 the Second and the Statute of Winchester. ; 
 
 The Statute of Westminster the Second has in its j 
 
 comprehensive character and wide survey of the whole I 
 
 field of legislative action no inconsiderable resemblance | 
 
 to the Statute of Westminster the First. It re-enacted : 
 
 and. amended many of the greatest laws of the reign. It ; 
 revived old laws, cleared up difficulties, proposed im- 
 portant amendments. But important as many of its 
 clauses were, they sink into insignificance as compared 
 
 with the famous first article, J9g Don is Conditionalibus^ i 
 
 which had a most momentous bearing on the whole future "^ 
 land law of England. There had long been a custom of 
 lords making a grant of land to a vassal or tenant, under 
 
 some condition. For example, a man might grant a ^ 
 
 piece of land to another to be held by him " and the j 
 heirs of his body." This was a " conditional gift," but 
 
 it conveyed a full estate in fee simple to the recipient, j 
 
128 EDWARD I chap. 
 
 except in so far as the succession after his death was 
 limited by the words of the grant. But if the condition 
 were fulfilled, the estate became in every respect like 
 any other estate, like an estate in fee simple, which 
 was at the complete disposal of the tenant for the time 
 being. The grantee of an estate under condition who 
 / had a son born to him could if he liked sell the estate 
 to somebody else. Also if he committed treason his 
 "conditional estate" was liable to forfeiture. Such a 
 state of things was, however, directly contrary to the 
 interest of the capital lords. It was their obvious in- 
 terest to limit the scope of the grant as far as possible, 
 so that the chances of the estate reverting to their 
 
 (hands might be increased. Here the interests of 
 Edward as the ultimate capital lord of the realm were 
 exactly the same as those of the capital lord of every 
 //manor. The result was the Statute de Bonis, which 
 I I provided that the rights of the heir of a conditional 
 I estate were not to be barred by the alienation of that 
 VJ estate by its previous tenant. The effect of this law was 
 to create a new species of heritable estates, which were 
 more limited in their scope than an estate in fee simple. 
 They were called estates tail, because they were some- 
 thing "cut off" {taille) from the fee. A further result 
 was that estates of this description were tied up much 
 more strictly than other estates. The tenant was but a 
 tenant for life, and had no power of alienating or dis- 
 posing of them in perpetuity. In a later age the action 
 of the judges broke down the severity of the rule, but 
 not before the habit had grown up of regarding entail 
 as the rule and alienation as the exception. One 
 characteristic feature of the English landed system was 
 
VII EDWARD'S LEGISLATION 129 
 
 thus established. There were a large number of estates 
 so strictly tied up that the actual tenant of them had 
 but very limited power over them. It was thought a 
 good thing to keep the property of a family as strictly as 
 was possible within the grasp of the family circle. But 
 many evils finally resulted from the practice, evils 
 that the reforming legislation of our own day has 
 hardly swept away. The unhappy coincidence of 
 interest between Edward and his barons brought more 
 harm to the land than the temporary confusions that 
 would have resulted from the conflicts of the king and 
 his lords. 
 
 The thirtieth article of the Statute of Westminster of 
 1285 worked a revolution in the English judicial system 
 by instituting the justices of nisi ])rius, who were to 
 traverse the country three times a year ^v^ith a compre- 
 hensive commission that empowered them to hear nearly 
 all sorts of civil suits. Fifteen years later a further act 
 empowered the same justices to transact criminal busi- 
 ness by acting as justices of gaol delivery, and proved a 
 precedent for the further acts of Edward's grandson 
 which concentrated on the itinerant justices all the 
 various powers of the modern justices of assize. The 
 result was a great simplification and economy of judicial 
 force, a great saving to the crown, and a still greater 
 relief to the people. Since the days of Henry II. it had 
 been the custom to send round to the shires a constant 
 swarm of royal justices, each with a vei;:^ restricted com- 
 mission. The counties were forced to" entertain them, 
 and they took good care that each visit should enrich 
 the royal exchequer by a long series of fines and for- 
 feitures. The result was that while the nation was 
 
 K 
 
180 EDWARD I chap. 
 
 burdened with their exactions, justice was often delayed 
 for years, because it might so happen that the particular 
 sort of court which was in request was only held at far 
 
 (distant periods. In consolidating and amalgamating the 
 various judicial commissions, Edward added nothing fresli 
 to the legal system of the country. Even in Bracton's 
 time some justices were empowered to hear all sorts of 
 pleas. But Edward made the rule of what had pre- 
 viously been the exception. Moreover, Edward by 
 another act divided the country into definite circuits^ 
 and without any special legislation, his care for etfi- 
 ciency and zeal for definition led to the final and com- 
 
 (plete separation from each other of the three courts 
 of common law — the King's Bench, Court of Common 
 Pleas, and Court of Exchequer, with separate staffs 
 of judges, each presided over by a special chief judge, 
 and with special spheres of activity that were not 
 yet evaded by the subtlety and pertinacity of a later 
 
 (generation of lawyers. Edward's reign also marks the 
 establishment on a firm basis of the equitable juris- 
 diction of the chancellor. Burnell was thus botn a 
 chief minister and a great~Jflt9ge, Mid under him the 
 chancellor bade fair to become a successor to the 
 Norman and Angevin justiciar, a sort of prime minister. 
 The Stat ntfl 9f W jjpchester stands in strange con- 
 trast to the Statute of Westmmster. While the latter 
 is of the utmost importance in its bearing on later times, 
 the former goes back to the earliest institutions of the 
 / land. It was an attempt to revive and reorganise the 
 / ancient popular jurisdiction of the local courts. It strove 
 [ to give new life to the Hundred Court, the Fyrd, the 
 Assize of Arms, and other ancient means of preserving 
 
VII EDWARD'S LEGISLATION 181 ; 
 
 \ 
 
 peace and order by the action of the people themselves. ; 
 
 [ It strove in particular to establish on the old lines a I 
 
 \ sufl&cient system of police. By the reinforcement of the i 
 
 military obligations which old English law had imposed - 
 on every freeman, it dealt another blow at the political 
 
 importance of feudalism. It illustrates the conservative i 
 
 side of Edward's policy, his care and respect for the primi- ; 
 
 tive custom of the land. It also shows how he sought - 
 
 to define that custom and adapt it to new conditions. ] 
 
 By it and other measures Edward passed in review the ; 
 
 jurisdiction of the lower courts as well as he had dealt 1 
 
 with the jurisdiction of the higher sources of justice. | 
 Nor did the petty courts of the manor escape his atten- 
 
 ytion. The practice of recording the acts of the manorial ; 
 ( jurisdiction in court-rolls seems to have first become 
 
 \ universal during his reign. Thus Edward's fostering ' 
 
 care gave firm consistency and definition to every I 
 
 branch of the judicial system. He was not only a ^ 
 
 legislator, but a judicial reformer of the first rank. \ 
 
 The years succeeding 1285 were not fertile in legis- ' 
 
 . lation. Between 1286 and 1289 Edward and Burnell ■ 
 
 1 were absent abroad, and the regent, Edmund of Cornwall, i 
 j was not the man to plan great schemes of law-making. 
 No sooner was Edward back in England than another 
 
 great law was passed, almost the last practical and con- < 
 
 structive piece of law-making in the reign. This was J 
 
 the Statute of Westminster the Third, better known ' 
 from the first two words of the Latiirtext as the Statute 
 
 Quia Emptores. This law, passed in 1290, stands side by ^ 
 side with rhe*Statute De Bonis in its importance for the 
 
 history of the law of real property, while it marks, as | 
 regards the political aspects of feudalism, the secular *^ 
 
182 EDWARD I chap. 
 
 counterpart of the Statute of Mortmain. Like de Bonis, 
 it provided for a case where the interests of the crown 
 and the barons seemed at least to be identical. In 1285 
 king and lords sought to protect their interests by pro- 
 hibiting alienation altogether on one large class of 
 estates. In 1290 they strove to regulate the manner of 
 alienating those estates whose tenants were still free to 
 dispose of them at will. Up to the passing of this act 
 a man who held an estate in fee simple of a lord was 
 free to aliene it either in whole or in part. If he gave 
 up the estate altogether the new possessor simply 
 stepped into his place, and stood for the future as he 
 had stood in the past as regarded his relations with his 
 overlord. But if a tenant of a lord wished to get rid of 
 part of his estate, he could only do so by making the 
 alienee his subtenant. He had, in short, to add a new 
 link to the long chain of feudal dependence. The new 
 purchaser was in consequence the under-tenant of the 
 alienor, and stood in no direct relation at all to the 
 overlord of the grantor. The result was often prejudi- 
 cial to the interests of the overlords. Their rights over 
 the land were diminished. The failure of the new 
 owner's line would not give the overlord but his sub- 
 tenant the benefit of the escheat. In the same way 
 he would Dfit have the guardianship or the right of 
 marriage.^ Moreover, it often happened that the grantor 
 aliened so much of his land that the part remaining was 
 not enough to adequately discharge the feudal duties of 
 the fief, and the absence of direct relations between 
 overlord and the subtenant in the second degree made 
 it easy to avoid discharging the obligations altogethey, 
 Hence the need, from the lords' point of view, for new 
 
VII EDWARD'S LEGISLATION 188 
 
 legislation. Hence the Statute Quia Emptores^ which 
 provided that, in a case where a part of an estate was 
 aliened, the alienee was not in the future to become the 
 subtenant of the alienor, but was to stand to the capital 
 lord in exactly the same relation as the alienor. The 
 result was to prohibit all further acts of subinfeudation, 
 and so to stereotype all existing feudal relations. Be- 
 fore long it was clear that a deadly blow had been given 
 to the feudal principle itself. The constant creation of 
 fresh links of feudal obligation was a necessary part of 
 the vitality of the system. The number of tenants- 
 in-chief soon became very much greater, now that each 
 sale of land by an existing holder-in-chief of the crown 
 created a fresh tenant in capite, holding his land as 
 directly of the crown as the alienor himself. It was soon 
 found that feudal obligations became gradually relaxed, 
 and finally sank out of sight altogether. In those cases 
 where military service was the rent payable for an estate, 
 some sort of feudal relation was kept up as long as the 
 exigencies of local and border warfare still required 
 from time to time the summons of the feudal levies. 
 But in the numerous cases of socage tenure, where no 
 rent was paid and no valuable service rendered, the 
 empty obligation of fealty, which alone was left, soon 
 fell into oblivion. The result was that it became a 
 matter of no importance whether a man was a tenant in 
 chief or a mesne tenant. Long before the act of Charles 
 II. got rid of the very forms of military tenure, the 
 legislation of Edward had effected its purpose. Tenure 
 had no longer any political bearing. Even in its legal 
 aspects tenure was rapidly becoming a matter of archaeo- 
 logical rather than practical interest. It was a fitting 
 
184 EDWARD I chap, vii 
 
 conclusion to the great legislative work of Edward's 
 reign. For the seventeen years that remained of the 
 great king's life, there was other work to be done. The 
 attempt on Scotland, the struggle with Philip the Fair, 
 the constitutional conflict with his subjects, were more 
 than sufficient to occupy Edward's attention. Moreover, 
 he had now lost his old helpers. The great generation 
 of lawyers died gradually away, and left no successors 
 worthy to occupy their place. Burnell himself died in 
 1292, and the ministers of Edward's declining years had 
 no share in the great and comprehensive schemes of 
 law-giving which have given its peculiar importance to 
 his reign. 
 
OHAPTEK VIII 
 
 EDWARD AND THE THREE ESTATES — THE DEVELOPMENT 
 OF THE PARLIAMENTARY SYSTEM 
 
 The same principles which influenced Edward as a law- 
 giver stand out clearly in his relations to every class of 
 his subjects. Long before Edward had entered on 
 his political career, the centralised despotism which 
 Henry II. had built up had been overthrown, and the 
 ideal of a limited monarchy, controlled by a great 
 national council, and rfeigning in accordance with the 
 principles of the Great Charter, had become dimly per- 
 ceptible to the minds of EnglishmenJ But the strong 
 tendency was to rely almost exclusively upon the great 
 barons to keep the crown in check. //The Oxford Parlia- 
 ment had set up a baronial oligarchy, which proved 
 almost as oppressive to the nation at large as it was 
 derogatory to the dignity of the crown. [ But the clash 
 of interests between the crown and the barons forced 
 both alike to fall back upon a broader platform, and to 
 take into partnership with them the lesser landholders 
 and the merchants and traders of the towns. This was 
 the policy of Earl Simon, and this had been Edward's 
 own policy, even before Montfort had gathered together 
 
136 EDWARD I chap. 
 
 his famous Parliament of 1265. The fuller realisation 
 of the ideal rested, however, with the able and ambitious 
 Earl. But no part of th^ heritage of Simon was more 
 valuable to Edward than his uncle's policy of trusting 
 in the people at large. It was the greatest work of 
 Edward's life to make a permanent and ordinary part 
 of the machinery of English government, what in his 
 father's time had been but the temporary expedient of 
 a needy taxgatherer or the last despairing effort of a 
 revolutionary partisan. Edward I. is — so much as 
 one man can be — the creator of the historical English 
 constitution. It is true that the materials were ready 
 to his hand. But before he came to the throne the parts 
 of the constitution, though, already roughly worked 
 out, were ill-defined and ill-understood. Before his 
 death the national council was no longer regarded as 
 complete unless it contained a systematic representa- 
 tion of the three estates. 
 
 All over Europe the thirteenth century saw the 
 establishment of a system of estates. The various 
 classes of the community, which had a separate social 
 status and a common political interest, became organised 
 communities, and sent their representatives to swell the 
 council of the nation. By Edward's time there had 
 already grown up in England some rough anticipation 
 of the three estates of later history. The clergy had, 
 through their special spiritual character and their 
 common organisation in Church councils, acquired a very 
 definite status of their own. The baronage had become 
 narrowed down by the strong tendency of the lesser 
 tenants in chief to dissociate themselves from the great 
 lords, and act with the mass of the lesser gentry in the 
 
VIII EDWARD AND THE THREE ESTATES 
 
 shire courts. The policy of Montfort had already 
 brought together the knights of the shires and the 
 representatives of the towns in a single organised 
 community. I By dexterously combining the new system 
 of estates with the old ideas of local representation, 
 Edward erected the estate of the commons as a neces- 
 sary part of the machinery of the constitution] He is 
 also in a very real sense the creator of the House of 
 Lords. It was no fault of his if the clerical estate did 
 not also take up its part side by side with the two more 
 permanent elements in our later constitutional life. 
 
 In regard to this development of the system of 
 estates, Edward's relations to the various classes of the 
 community assumes a special importance. It will be 
 necessary to speak later of his uneasy dealings with the 
 clerical body; but the course of the development of 
 our parliamentary institutions can perhaps be made 
 clearer by a short account of Edward's early attitude 
 towards the barons and the commons. 
 
 During the earlier part of Edward's reign the baronial 
 opposition, which had so constantly kept his father in 
 check, had almost no existence at all. The barons were 
 perhaps a little suspicious of some of Edward's legislative 
 tendencies, and we have seen how the opposition to the 
 writs of quo warranto might easily have produced another 
 organised effort at resistance. But Edward, by his 
 careful regard for his barons' legal rights, gradually won 
 their complete confidence. His policy of legal reforma- 
 tion, in those directions in which the king and the barons 
 had a common interest, did much to strengthen his good 
 relations with the great nobles. 
 
 So far as there was any baronial opposition to 
 
138 EDWARD I chap. 
 
 Edward at this period, its leader was Earl Gilbert of 
 Gloucester. The Red Earl's extreme tenacity in up- 
 holding his own rights was constantly embroiling him 
 with his neighbours. His love of strong-handed local 
 feuds often involved him in private wars which were 
 altogether hateful to Edward's orderly and law-loving 
 mind. More than once his relations with the king were 
 very strained. At one time he was suspected of sheltering 
 Welsh fugitives in his Irish estates. He was on very 
 bad terms with his wife, Alice of Angouleme, Edward's 
 Poitevin cousin, whom he ultimately divorced. At 
 last, in 1 288, he headed the baronage in refusing to pay 
 any subsidy until the king came back to England. But 
 in 1290 his hostility was bought off by his marriage 
 with Joan of Acre, Edward's daughter, though a year 
 later he carried on open war against the Earl of Hereford 
 for the possession of the Marcher lordship of Brecon. 
 But for this contumacy both earls were fined and im- 
 prisoned; and Earl Gilbert's death in 1295, just before 
 the reconstitution of a baronial opposition, prevented 
 him from ever having again the opportunity of renewing 
 the turbulent scenes of his youth. His attitude was 
 typical. If Earl Gilbert could find so little to oppose 
 in Edward's policy, the mass of the barons had still less 
 to say against it. And it was in the years of this 
 absence of opposition that Edward carried through the 
 organisation of the historical House of Lords. 
 
 Edward's dealings with the commons are more com- 
 plicated. There is little to show that he was often in 
 opposition to the shire communities. On the contrary, the 
 statesman, who in his youth had been the greatest 
 upholder of the political claims of the knighthood, 
 
VIII EDWARD AND THE THREE ESTATES 189 
 
 continued to find in the gentry of England his best and 
 strongest support. It was otherwise with the towns, 
 with whom Edward was constantly quarrelling. This 
 was due largely to his constant financial embarrassment, 
 and especially to his tendency to bargain with the foreign 
 merchants, who, in return for increased facilities for 
 carrying on their trade, made him large grants of money, 
 and that the more willingly as what they conceded to the 
 king came ultimately out of English pockets. But the 
 memory of the Barons' War was not yet quite dead, 
 and had a great deal to do with the exceptionally bad 
 relations between Edward and London. 
 
 London was now ruled by a civic oligarchy, whose 
 most conspicuous leader, Henry le Waleys, a wine 
 merchant, and probably a Gascon by birth, was on 
 many occasions Mayor of London and once Mayor of 
 Bordeaux. The rule of this body seems to have been 
 politically offensive to Edward, and not very successful 
 in maintaining order. After many quarrels Edward took 
 a decisive step in 1285. He ordered the mayor to 
 appear before the treasurer, John Kirkby, who kept his 
 court in the Tower. The mayor attended, but he 
 declared that his summons was against the franchises of 
 London, and that he appeared but as a simple citizen 
 anxious to show respect to the king's representative, 
 and not as an official. Thereupon Kirkby "took the 
 mayoralty and liberties of the city into the king's 
 hand, because the city was found to be without a 
 mayor." A royal official, Ralph Sandwich, was made 
 warden of the city, and from 1285 to 1298 the 
 Londoners were deprived of their right of electing their 
 chief magistrate, and forced to pay obedience to a royal 
 
140 EDWARD I ohap. 
 
 nominee. In other respects their liberties were pre- 
 served, and, as at Bordeaux, Edward did his best to 
 encourage their trade. Perhaps Edward's hostility to 
 the Londoners accounts for the great efforts made by 
 him to encourage the growth of other towns. He was, 
 moreover, one of the few English statesmen who have 
 definitely founded new towns in England, and he chose 
 the sites for his new foundations so well that they have 
 for the most part subsequently prospered. When Old 
 Winchelsea was overwhelmed by the sea, Edward 
 founded New Winchelsea, which, until the sea receded 
 from its walls, remained one of the great ports of 
 Southern Britain. He also established the town of 
 Hull, which took from him its full name of the Kings- 
 town -upon -Hull. These foundations show how the 
 ideas which Edward had already realised in Gascony 
 and Wales were extended, to England. But despite his 
 uneasy relations with certain towns, Edward was 
 fortunate in the early part of his reign in meeting with 
 so little opposition from the estate of the commons. 
 
 Edward's high-handed dealings with the English 
 towns show how tenacious he was of his prerogative. 
 It was with no intention of diminishing his power, but 
 rather with the object of enlarging it, that Edward 
 called the nation into some sort of partnership with him. 
 The special clue to this aspect of his policy is his con- 
 stant financial embarrassment He found that he could 
 get larger and more cheerful subsidies if he laid his 
 financial condition before the representatives of his 
 people. Apart from the special difficulties wnigh 
 Edward inherited, there were more general causes for 
 his financial distress. We have seen already how the 
 
vni EDWARD AND THE THREE ESTATES 141 
 
 elaborate machinery of government set up by Henry 11. 
 was rapidly becoming obsolete. Now this partial break- 
 down of the Angevin system extended to its financial 
 organisation, and the complex arrangements which made 
 the sheriff the king's general tax-gatherer was already 
 becoming worn out. Edward was therefore forced 
 to seek new sources of revenue for himself. One such 
 stream of income he found in the ancient tolls or 
 duties levied upon merchandise of all sorts, both on its 
 coming into and leaving the realm. The growing 
 commerce which attended a more settled state of 
 society and a better system of government made these 
 duties or customs more important and valuable than they 
 had been before. For the same reason the rude old 
 way of levying the customs by taking a certain portion 
 of all goods sent in or out of the realm for the king's 
 use became irksome to the traders and unsatisfactory to 
 the king. In 1275 accordingly Edward agreed, with the 
 same Parliament that passed the Statute of Westminster 
 the First, to accept a specified custom in money in lieu 
 of his rights of prize over the staple commodities of 
 English trade, conspicuous among which were wool and 
 leather. Thus originated the Ancient Custom or Great 
 Custom, which remained for the rest of the Middle Ages 
 an important source of royal revenue. But the king's 
 vague old rights still remained, except in the case 
 of certain specified commodities, and in times of 
 distress Edward could not resist laying violent hands 
 upon a larger share of the merchants' goods than he had 
 any customary or statutable right to possess. His 
 violent and excessive Maltoltes provoked a storm of 
 opposition in the great crisis of his reign which ended 
 
142 EDWARD I chap. 
 
 in 1297 with their formal abolition. But even after 
 this Edward made a special bargain with the alien mer- 
 chants trading to England, who in return for certain 
 trading privileges granted him in 1303 a New CustoTtiy 
 which, after much opposition, was at a later time 
 accepted by the representatives of the nation. Mean- 
 while Edward had gradually organised and developed a 
 better system of collecting the Customs revenue. But 
 as he handed over its collection to companies of Italian 
 merchants, much of it, no doubt, never reached his 
 hands. Edward was still forced to seek for further 
 supplies. He was therefore compelled, as his predecessors 
 had been, to have recourse to the representatives of his 
 people, and asked them for many direct parliamentary 
 grants and subsidies. Hence the close connection 
 between the financial and the parliamentary history of 
 the reign. 
 
 Edward's early parliaments strike us as very chaotic 
 and anomalous. One year the king assembled the knights 
 of the shires, but next year he was contented with sum- 
 moning the barons and bishops. And both the full 
 representative parliaments and the old-fashioned baronial 
 parliaments seem to have discharged exactly the same 
 functions, and to have been looked upon as of equal 
 authority and competence. In 1282 Edward fell back 
 on an even more ancient expedient. He sent John 
 Kirkby, his trusted financier, on a tour round the 
 different shires and boroughs, and asked each community 
 separately to help him to bear the cost of the war against 
 Llywelyn. The answers being inadequate, the king 
 summoned knights of the shire and borough represen- 
 tatives to meet side by side with the clergy in two 
 
VIII EDWARD AND THE THREE ESTATES 143 
 
 assemblies, the one for the province of Canterbury and 
 the other for that of York, thus modelling a secular parlia- 
 ment on an ecclesiastical council. The response of these 
 anomalous bodies proved so far satisfactory to Edward 
 that he never seems to have fallen back upon negotia- 
 tions with the local courts. The result was a step in 
 advance. Local and individual consent to taxation was 
 superseded by national and general consent, and the old 
 notion of a tax as a voluntary grant to the king was 
 replaced by the more refined conception of it as a 
 universal duty of citizenship. In strong contrast to the 
 parliaments of 1282, Edward summoned in 1283 a par-*^' 
 liament to Shrewsbury that contained nobles, knights, 
 and burgesses, but no clergy. The composition of a 
 parliament seemed still to depend upon the nature of 
 the business to be laid before it. So late as 1290 a 
 merely baronial parliament passed the important Statute 
 Quia Emptares. The third estate was summoned, but 
 its representatives only appeared after the act was 
 passed. It was a question for the barons specially, and 
 the commons had no need to concern themselves with it. 
 The period of experiment now rapidly passed away. 
 Various as are the elements of Edward's early parlia- 
 ments, yet we can still see the direction in which the 
 current was steadily setting. People were getting so 
 accustomed to the presence of the popular element that 
 it had almost become the exception for it to be 
 absent. Then came a period of crisis — a time of unsuc- 
 cessful war abroad, of sedition at home, of rebellion in 
 the newly-annexed districts, and of open war with the 
 great power of the Church. Edward felt that he could 
 only meet his difficulties if he got the support of the 
 
144 EDWARD I chap. 
 
 mass of the nation on his side. He also realised that it 
 was only by national grants that he could permanently 
 keep up suflBcient forces to get the better of his enemies. 
 He enunciated the great and pregnant maxim that what 
 touches all should be approved by all. In 1293 and 
 1294 large representative parliaments laid great burdens 
 upon the nation, but upon the practical condition that it 
 was necessary to ask the clergy and the commons for 
 their consent before any taxes could be constitutionally 
 imposed upon them. In 1 295 a further and final step was 
 taken. Edward then assembled a parliament so full and 
 complete that it rightly became looked upon as a Model 
 Parliament for succeeding ages. To it came the earls and 
 barons as a matter of course. But by their side gathered 
 two knights chosen by the popular court of each shire, and 
 ,two citizens or burgesses from every city or borough town, 
 summoned like the county members by writs sent in the 
 first instance to the sheriff of the shire. Moreover, the 
 clergy was also fully represented. The archbishops, 
 bishops, abbots, and other dignitaries down to the deans 
 and archdeacons, were there in person ; but each chapter 
 also sent its proctor or representative, and the parochial 
 clergy of each diocese sent in the same way two proctors. 
 The result was a complete parliairrcnt of the three estates. 
 From this year no other great council can be regarded 
 as possessing supreme and exclusive power in matters 
 of great weight. In the great parliaments in the later 
 years of Edward's reign the precedent set by this famous 
 assembly was carefully followed. 
 
 The parliament of 1295 suggests a comparison with 
 the parliament of 1265, but its differences are as in- 
 structive as its similarities with the earlier and perhaps 
 
VIII EDWARD AND THE THREE ESTATES 145 
 
 more famous assembly. Both were roughly based upon 
 the same broad lines of general national representation ; 
 and it was the good fortune rather than the merit of 
 Edward that the parliament of 1295 was a real gathering 
 of the whole nation, and not, like that of 1265, a mere 
 parliamentary assemblage of partisans of the dominant 
 faction. By summoning the borough members by writs 
 addressed to the sheriffs of the counties, Edward effected 
 one important improvement in detail on the arrangement 
 of Simon, who had sent the borough "^ts direct to the 
 towns themselves. Edward's practice afterwards pre- 
 vailed, and had the good result of teaching the towns- 
 folk to look upon themselves as parts of the shire, and 
 not as isolated communities cut off from the life of the 
 nation at large. But the really important thing was 
 that Edward, like Montfort, brought shire and borough 
 representatives together in a single estate, and so taught 
 the country gentry, the lesser landowners, who, in a 
 time when direct participation in politics was impossible 
 for a lower class, were the real constituencies of the 
 shire members, to look upon their interests as more in 
 common with the traders of lower social status than with 
 the greater landlords with whom in most continental 
 countries the lesser gentiy were forced to associate their 
 lot. The result strengthened the union of classes, pre- 
 vented the growth of the abnormally numerous privileged 
 nobility of most foreign countries, and broadened and 
 deepened the main current of the national life. More- 
 over, in the summonses issued to the baronial class 
 Edward strictly limited himself to a small and restricted 
 number of magnates. No doubt the main lines on which 
 the barons were summoned were marked out for Edward 
 
 L 
 
146 EDWARD I • chap. 
 
 by long precedent, but it was left to the king and to 
 no other to draw the exact line where he did. The 
 "lesser barons" of the Angevin times — the smaller 
 tenants in chief — no longer received a baronial summons, 
 for Edward, faithful to his doctrine of the elimination 
 of tenure from politics, forced them to throw in their lot 
 with the mesne tenants in the shire courts, and be repre- 
 sented by the chosen men of the shire community at 
 large. The special writs now issued to the few score of 
 remaining barons were looked upon as practically involv- 
 ing the summons of their successors as well. Though 
 life peers by no means disappeared altogether, the custom 
 of hereditary peerage was also established by Edward's 
 action. The lawyers have always held that the male 
 heirs of those whose lawful ancestors received a summons 
 to his model parliament can claim a right to a writ of 
 summons. Even more than the House of Commons, 
 the House of Lords thus largely owes its limited and 
 hereditary character to the action of Edward and his 
 advisers. The clerical estate did not, however, long 
 retain its position in parliament. The separatist class 
 feelings of the clergy, the irksome tie of papal obedience, 
 and the extravagant immunities which mediaeval tradi- 
 tion allowed to the spiritual caste, were all unfavourable 
 to their remaining on the same lines as the other estates. 
 Moreover, the clergy had in their provincial councils 
 or convocations assemblies whose constitution was 
 essentially similar to that of the clerical estate in par- 
 liament, and whose composition was being fixed and 
 defined by Archbishop Peckham, in the same way and 
 at the same time as Edward himself was defining the 
 composition of parliament. In after ages the clergy 
 
VIII EDWARD AND THE THREE ESTATES 147 
 
 preferred to tax themselves in convocation, and kings, 
 anxious to avoid difficulties, let them have their way. 
 Meanwhile the bishops and abbots, who, like the earls 
 and barons, were also magnates, sat side by side with 
 the secular lords, with the result that the next century 
 saw the establishment of the two houses of Lords and 
 Commons, instead of the three separate gatherings of 
 the three estates which might have been anticipated 
 from Edward's action in 1295. But to trace this process 
 would carry us far away from the biography of Edward. 
 Enough has been said to show how important a part the 
 great king played in the development of our parlia- 
 mentary system. 
 
 At the same time Edward's neighbours, the kings 
 of Western Europe, were engaged in the same task of 
 building up a national kingship on the basis of a repre- 
 sentative system of estates. -f-The work of Edward has 
 alone in any way survived./^'The wildest upholder of the 
 claims of Edward to greatness would not ascribe to him 
 the sole or the main merit of this superior permanence. 
 The reasons for it are deeply seated in the whole of 
 the previous and subsequent history of England. Yet 
 we must not forget that our national pride in our 
 own institutions has led us to exaggerate rather than 
 minimise the differences between thirteenth -century 
 England and her main continental neighbours. (^ There 
 is, in truth, hardly such deep gulf as has been cominonly 
 supposed between the England of Edward and the 
 France of Philip the Fair; between Edward's parlia- 
 ment and the States -General which Philip called into ^ 
 being to resist the forces of Roman aggression) What ^ 
 differences there were certainly lay in favour of England, 
 
US EDWARD I CHAP, vm 
 
 where a happier past had produced a broader and richer 
 stream of continuity from remote ages, and where 
 there existed institutions and traditions that made for 
 nationality, and did not rest on the personal basis of a 
 despot's goodwill. But some share at least of the credit 
 of the superior success of the working of parliamentary 
 institutions in England may not unjustly be set down 
 to the credit of Edward. His skilful union of national 
 and dynastic purpose, his selection of the best and 
 most fruitful precedents, his strong good sense and 
 business-like adaptation of means to ends, all united to 
 further the growth of that national parliamentary con- 
 stitution which, though its roots lay deep in the past, 
 took under his auspices the shape and form which it 
 retained with but little variation until the Kevolution of 
 1688, and even, so far as externals went, until the Eeform 
 Bills of the present century, following the true spirit of 
 Edward, recast the old institution to meet new and 
 changed necessities. 
 
CHAPTER IX 
 
 EDWARD AND THE CHURCH 
 
 1272-1294 , 
 
 The relations of Edward to the Church shed a strong 
 light on his policy and character. Edward was himself 
 a man of sincere and ardent religious feeling. He was 
 rigidly orthodox, and never so much as questioned the 
 right of the Church to reign supreme in all matters of 
 faith and practice. A crusader in his youth, he never, 
 as we have seen, altogether relinquished his hope of 
 joining in a great movement for the recovery of the 
 Holy Sepulchre. He was an unwearied attendant at 
 the offices of the Church. He was a founder of monas- 
 teries and an ardent pilgrim to holy places. To what 
 he conceived to be lawful ecclesiastical authority he 
 yielded an absolute and ungrudging obedience. Yet 
 Edward's personal piety and unblemished orthodoxy did 
 not prevent the greater part of his reign being occupied 
 in a long and stem fight both with the papacy and with 
 the leading representatives of the national Church. And 
 it was inevitable that this should be so. The thirteenth 
 century witnessed both the culmination of ecclesiastical 
 pretensions and the first vigorous growth of that national 
 
160 EDWARD I chap. 
 
 power which was in the long run to subject the Church 
 to itself. It was an age of strange contrasts. The 
 successors of Pope Innocent III. indulged in dreams of 
 universal domination such as would have appeared 
 strange to a Gregory VII. or an Alexander III. Their 
 pretensions could not but trench upon the political 
 sphere. The chronic difficulty of determining the relations 
 of the king, as the representative of the nation and the 
 secular arm, with the pope, as the recognised head of 
 the Church universal, was never presented in a more 
 perplexing and bewildering form than to Edward. And 
 the difficulty of the situation was increased when we 
 remember, what some moderns would fain forget or 
 ignore, that to every Christian of the age of Edward the 
 pope was the divinely appointed head of the Church, 
 with large judicial and taxative powers over the whole 
 of Christendom, and the main if not the sole source of 
 ecclesiastical jurisdiction. Yet hard as was the question 
 of determining the royal relations to the papacy, the 
 difficulties of this side of the problem sink into in- 
 significance as compared with the difficulty of determin- 
 
 r ing the relations between the Crown and the national 
 Church itself, where all through the Middle Ages the 
 chronic conflict of Chui'ch and State was wont to assume 
 
 ' its bitterest and most irreconcilable form. A strong 
 king like Edward, who was resolved to be really supreme 
 over the State, and who waged constant war against all 
 
 " forms of class privilege, could not but stand in an 
 attitude of permanent hostility to the pretensions of the 
 
 ! clerical caste to absolute immunity from the secular 
 jurisdiction, and to the constant tendency of the ecclesi- 
 astical high-fliers to treat the State as a mere means for 
 
IX EDWARD AND THE CHURCH 161 
 
 carrying out the will of Holy Church. Yet though 
 there was a constant undercurrent of opposition between/ 
 Edward on the one side, and the Koman Curia and the I 
 English hierarchy on the other, it is no small testimony j 
 to the tact and skill of the king that these chronic 
 difficulties came so seldom to the surface, and that the 
 reign passed by without a new struggle on the lines 
 of that of Henry I. with Anselm or Henry II. with 
 Becket, and that even the fierce fight of Boniface 
 Vin. with Philip the Fair awoke but a faint echo in 
 England. 
 
 In treating of Edward's ecclesiastical policy we must 
 distinguish between his dealings with the papacy and 
 his dealings with the English Church. We must further 
 remember that in the Middle Ages, even more than in 
 our own time, the Church did not form a single corpora- 
 tion and hardly a single organisation. The Church 
 included in its ranks every class of society, every variety 
 of lawful opinion. It is unreasonable then to expect 
 any unity of action from so great and many-sided a 
 body. In the same way too much precision must not be 
 given to the distinction between the English Church 
 and the Church universal as represented by the papacy. 
 In the thirteenth century no hard and fast line can be 
 drawn between the two. The ecclesiastical problem was 
 sometimes presented in a two-fold aspect, on other occa- 
 sions in a single one. Moreover, the great religious 
 revival, which had witnessed the establishment of the 
 Mendicant Orders, had tended on the whole to bridge 
 over the gulf between the Roman Curia and the National 
 Church. Edward's difficulties were therefore for the 
 most part presented to him in a complicated form. 
 
162 EDWARD I chap. 
 
 Edward had been brought up to look upon the papacy 
 as the undoubted superior of the English crown, both in 
 Church and State. The humiliating submission of John 
 to Innocent III., by which England had been formally 
 constituted a papal fief, was still so recent in men's 
 minds that it almost efifaced the fading memory of the 
 times when England was another world in matters 
 ecclesiastical, and when the ties which bound England 
 to the Roman see were scarcely more substantial than the 
 ties which now bind Canada or Australia to the mother 
 country. All through the Barons' Wars, Henry III. had 
 made unsparing use of the friendship of the Roman Court, 
 as a convenient weapon against his rebellious subjects. He 
 obtained from two successive popes a release from his 
 plighted oath to observe the Provisions of Oxford, and 
 Edward himself had not scrupled to take advantage of 
 the same papal dispensation. Yet all the thunders of 
 the papacy had not detached a considerable section of 
 i the best of English Churchmen from the patriotic side. 
 The good bishop, Walter of Cantilupe, had blessed Earl 
 Simon's soldiers as they drew up to meet the royalist 
 forces on the field of Lewes. The nameless scholar who 
 wrote in the Song of Lewes the clearest statement of the 
 principles and policy of the baronial party; the mass 
 of the monastic chroniclers who describe with ardent 
 partisanship the mighty deeds of Montfort for the good 
 cause ; the simple priests and laymen who worshipped 
 the dead earl as a saint, were all alike careless or hardly 
 conscious that their hero died under the ban of the 
 Roman Church. Now Edward was at least as much the 
 heir of Montfort as the inheritor of the policy of his 
 father. His heart was at least as much stirred by the 
 
IX EDWARD AND THE CHURCH 168 
 
 patriotism of the native English Churchman as by the » 
 thunders of a papal legate. He parted, unwillingly- 
 enough, yet none the less thoroughly, with the foreign 
 bishops and clerks, who had come in the train of the 
 foreign lords and ladies. It was his difficult task to 
 absorb and appropriate the national Church feeling 
 which had stood so strongly on the side of Montfort 
 At the same time he could foresee an endless series of 
 difficulties if he abandoned his father's friendship for the / 
 papacy. He realised very fully the utility of papal 
 support in carrying out both his English and his general 
 European policy. Moreover, Edward was fully conscious 
 of the need of keeping up the traditions of the absolute 
 supremacy of the Crown, which William the Conqueror 
 and his sons had upheld and handed down as a binding 
 tradition to later ages. Priests no less than laymen must 
 submit themselves to the king, who was not less truly 
 the Lord's Anointed than the bishop or the abbot. 
 Like the lords of a feudal franchise, the clergy might 
 continue to rule within their own sphere ; but it was 
 Edward's constant care to define that sphere as narrowly ) 
 as circumstances allowed. 
 
 The first step to set aright the relations of Church 
 and State was to secure for friends of the king the chief » 
 posts of the Church as they fell vacant In the early 
 period of his rule Edward was more lucky in his personal 
 relations to the popes than to his archbishops. Just as 
 Edward was starting for his Crusade, the death of his 
 unworthy uncle, Boniface of Savoy, had ended the weak V. 
 and nerveless tenure of the primacy of the English 
 Church by one of the most hated of the queen's kins- 
 men. Edward, who always stood by his friends, made • 
 
164 EDWARD I chap. 
 
 a vigorous effort to secure the election of his favourite 
 ' clerk, Eobert Bumell, to the vacant archbishopric. 
 Disgusted that his letters provoked no response, Edward 
 hurriedly abandoned the preparations for his embarka- 
 tion and hastened to Canterbury. The monks of the 
 cathedral of Christ Church, in whom the canonical right 
 of election was vested, were deliberating in the chapter- 
 house with locked doors. Edward violently burst open 
 the fastenings and, almost beside himself with rage, 
 vehemently urged the frightened monks to choose his 
 1 friend as their archbishop. But not even the ravings of 
 ' the king's son could force the clannish monks to elect a 
 secular clerk. Edward withdrew in impotent anger, and 
 started at once on his Crusade. The monks chose in 
 due course one of their own number, but Gregory X. 
 persuaded the candidate of the chapter to resign his 
 claims. When Edward came back to England as king 
 ) he found the pope's nominee, Robert Kilwardby, seated 
 upon the throne of St. Augustine. 
 
 Kilwardby was a Dominican friar, and the first 
 Mendicant vowed to absolute poverty who occupied a 
 high place in the English ChurcL He was a learned 
 theologian and a famous master of scholastic dialectics, an 
 ardent churchman, a strong papalist, and an upright and 
 honourable man. His appointment was probably due 
 to the desire felt at Rome that the new archbishop 
 , should be a zealous upholder of the extremest ecclesi- 
 astical pretensions. But the excellent understanding 
 that prevailed between Edward and the good pope 
 Gregory X. prevented any possibility of conflict as long 
 as Gregory lived. Succeeding popes found a further 
 diflBculty in pushing forward their claims, in the 
 
IX EDWARD AND THE CHURCH 165 ; 
 
 j 
 limited interests and senile inactivity of the Domini- \ 
 can archbishop. So thoroughly did Kilwardby dis- | 
 
 appoint the hopes which the papal Curia had formed | 
 
 of him, that in 1278 he was dexterously removed from ! 
 his see by his translation to the cardinal-bishopric of ^ j 
 Porto. In the thirteenth century the cardinalate had ' 
 not yet become that merely honorary dignity which 
 might be fitly borne by the primate of a remote trans- ^-^ 
 alpine province. The cardinals were still bound to resi- i| 
 dence at the papal court, and promotion to the purple | 
 involved therefore the abandonment of such distant ' 
 preferment as the English primacy. Kilwardby accord- j 
 ingly gave up his archbishopric, and meekly accepting • 
 the covert censure implied in his formal promotion, took j 
 
 up his residence at the papal court, where he died soon i 
 afterwards. j 
 
 Edward made a second effort to promote Burnell, 
 now Chancellor and Bishop of Bath and Wells, to the ] 
 archbishopric of Canterbury. This time the monks of * I 
 Christ Church interposed no obstacle, but Pope Nicolas \ ' - 
 III., after appointing a special commission to inquire , 
 
 into Burnell's fitness, declared that circumstances had j 
 
 come to his ears which made it impossible for him to \ 
 
 accept Edward's minister as archbishop. It was probably ' 
 
 the scandalous looseness of the great chancellor's private > 
 life which gave a good reason to the pope for refusing \ 
 
 to advance to so high a post a man so absolutely devoid ^ 
 
 of high clerical ideals and hierarchical pretensions. Two '] 
 
 years later Nicolas would not even allow Burnell's trans- ] 
 lation to Winchester. Thus did his strong friendship i 
 
 for his minister and his desire to reward him adequately 
 for his good service to the State expose Edward to two j 
 
156 EDWARD I chap. 
 
 well-merited rebuffs from Rome, as well as to the 
 scandalous imputation of desiring to make the great 
 , places of the Church mere rewards for political good 
 service. 
 
 Nicolas III. now appointed an archbishop of his own 
 
 « mere motion. His choice fell on John Peckham, a 
 
 Sussex man, a Franciscan friar, a famous doctor of 
 
 theology and writer upon optics and mathematics, who 
 
 at the time was a teacher at the university of the papal 
 
 court. Peckham was not less distinguished for his 
 
 V learning than for the austerity of his life. He fasted 
 
 seven Lents in every year, and performed all his journeys, 
 
 however long, on foot, disdaining the paltry evasion of 
 
 the rule forbidding friars to ride on horseback, which 
 
 led Mendicants of less austere principles to travel on 
 
 mules or asses. He was an active, bustling, fussy man, 
 
 I pompous in his talk and gesture, with little tact, but 
 
 unbounded energy and zeal, devoted, as the best spirits 
 
 of his order then were, to the highest doctrines of papal 
 
 ^ infallibility and hierarchical power, but transparently 
 
 honest and absolutely devoid of self-seeking. He started 
 
 for England conscious of a high mission to stamp out 
 
 immorality, laxity, and pluralities, and to put an end to 
 
 the rule of worldly bishops and careless kings over the 
 
 ( Church of England. 
 
 Edward was high-minded enough to bear no malice, 
 and received Friar John with a kindness that the new 
 archbishop cordially and gladly recognised. But no 
 personal motives could turn Peckham from the strict 
 path of duty. As soon as he got to England he sum- 
 moned a Church council to Reading. This assembly 
 passed at the archbishop's instigation a series of thorough- 
 
IX EDWARD AND THE CHURCH 167 
 
 going canons against pluralities, an act which excited ' 
 the alarm of the benefice-hunting clerks of the king's 
 household. It also ordered the clergy to hang up in j 
 every great church a copy of Magna Carta, and to / 
 denounce periodically all offenders against the Charter 
 as ipso facto excommunicate. This measure was con- 
 strued as a personal insult to Edward himself, and a 
 suggestion that his rule was not in accordance with the 
 Charter of Liberties. Edward was much incensed, The 
 very next month he assembled his parliament at West- 
 minster. He forced Peckham to make a humiliating 
 retractation in full parliament of all the canons dealing 
 with Magna Carta and other secular points, which 
 had been passed at Eeading in defiance of the rights of 
 the Crown. Not content with this, Edward answered ' 
 the pretensions of the archbishop with rival pretensions 
 of his own. This parliament passed at the king's instiga- 
 tion the famous Statute of Mortmain. 
 
 The Statute of Mortmain was Edward's reply to the 
 Canons of Eeading. It was not altogether a new 
 measure, and, as we have already seen, it had a more 
 general aspect in its relation to Edward's constant policy 
 of breaking down class privilege and upholding the • 
 legal rights of the feudal lords. But it was, like so 
 much of Edward's work, a real step in advance, though 
 in form largely a definition of previous custom. Its 
 clearness and definiteness make it in essence a startling 
 innovation. It expressly prohibited all future grants ofl 
 land to ecclesiastical corporations, under penalty of the 
 land thus granted becoming forfeited to the capital lord 
 of the fief. Priests and monks had, in Edward's ♦ 
 opinion, land enough already, and it was hard for 
 
-; 
 
 158 EDWARD I chap. 
 
 Peckham, as a Mendicant who believed that the wealth 
 of the Church was at the root of its corruption, to fight 
 with any show of grace against the king's legislation. 
 ^ Still, as an ardent defender of ecclesiastical privilege, 
 * Peckham could not but reckon that a deadly blow had 
 been dealt to the future aggrandisement of the Church. 
 ^ In 1281 the struggle was renewed. Peckham 
 assembled another provincial council at Lambeth, and 
 again threw down the gauntlet to Edward, by proposing 
 1 to take all suits concerning patronage and the personal 
 property of clergymen entirely out of the jurisdiction 
 of the king's courts, that he might deal with them 
 in church courts according to canon law. The old 
 question about which Becket had fought so fiercely 
 against Henry II. seemed now on the verge of revival. 
 Edward peremptorily cancelled the proceedings of the 
 council, and again, as in 1279, Peckham yielded to his 
 fierce and uncompromising wrath. In the years that 
 immediately succeeded king and archbishop had a 
 common work to perform against the Welsh ; but no 
 sooner was Wales reduced to order than the old disputes 
 were renewed. At last in 1285 a royal ordinance or 
 statute, called Circumspede agatis, was passed, which, 
 while recognising the right of the church courts to deal 
 with suits purely spiritual, rigidly and narrowly defined 
 the limits of the ecclesiastical jurisdiction in matters 
 which had in them a temporal element. With this 
 formal recognition of his rights Peckham had perforce 
 to be contented. Edward came out the real victor in 
 >the struggle, though he employed his victory -vvith 
 his customary moderation. But he had been helped 
 by the indiscretion of the archbishop, who, in his zeal 
 
.<i- 
 
 IX EDWARD AND THE CHURCH 159 
 
 for reformation, had raised up for himself a whole 
 host of enemies. Peckham's constant and vexatious 
 metropolitical visitations of his province had excited the 
 liveliest indignation of his suffragans, who saw in his 
 exaggerated estimate of his archiepiscopal powers an 
 attack upon the liberties of every bishop in England. 
 Thus, while Peckham was quarrelling with Edward, the 
 bishops of the southern province were quarrelling with ^ ' 
 Peckham. So early as the Council of Eeading the holy 1 
 
 Thomas of Cantilupe had led the resistance to the { 
 
 Franciscan primate. Peckham persecuted him with ^ j 
 exceeding vindictiveness, and involved him in costly and ■ 
 
 vexatious suits at the papal court. When, in 1282, ] 
 
 Thomas died in Italy, worn out with asceticism and 
 anxiety, Peckham strove to refuse Christian burial to 
 his remains. Edward showed warm sympathy with the ] 
 
 persecuted bishop. He attended the great solemnities j 
 
 which ushered in the translation of the holy bishop's i 
 
 remains to their noble shrine in Hereford Cathedral, \ 
 
 where, as men of that age firmly believed, a long series ! 
 
 of miracles attested the dead man's claims to sanctity. i 
 
 Edward urged upon the papal Curia that Thomas should 
 be enrolled among the saints, and before his death had 
 secured the appointment of the commission which finally 
 led to his canonisation. Thus did the former Chancellor "^r"^ 
 of Simon de Montfort obtain the honours of sanctity ^^^, 
 through the victor of Evesham. It was a convincing 
 answer to Peckham's insinuation that Edward did not 
 rule in the spirit of the Great Charter. i 
 
 Even when most at variance with the archbishop • 
 
 Edward had never failed to respect Peckham's honesty | 
 
 and energy. But as age and ill-success dimmed the j 
 
 ~\. 
 
160 EDWARD I chap. 
 
 activity of Peckham Edward's relations with the 
 Church became easier. For the next few years the 
 king's great complaint was not against the archbishop,, 
 but against the greedy popes, whose partisan spirit 
 and lust of strife were the greatest obstacles in the 
 way of his plans for the pacification of the Continent. 
 At home Edward now co-operated with Peckham in a 
 long series of assaults on the Jews. 
 
 The Jews had held a strange position in England 
 since the growth of trade, which attended the Norman 
 Conquest, had first attracted them to settle in large 
 numbers in the country. They had accumulated much 
 wealth, owing to their practical monopoly of all banking 
 business ; but, as usurers and as infidels, they had made 
 themselves exceedingly unpopular. They were accused of 
 foul crimes, such as murdering and crucifying Christian 
 children, and occasional outbursts of Christian fanaticism 
 had involved them in outrage and massacre. But the 
 Jews had powerful friends. They were the special sub- 
 jects of the Crown, and were nearly always protected in 
 their usury by the royal officials, on the simple condition 
 that a good share of their spoil found its way to the king's 
 coff'ers. But as thirty and forty per cent were allowable 
 and moderate rates of interest at this time, the Jews 
 were able to pay great tallages to the king, and still 
 live luxuriously and grow rich. Many of the greater 
 nobles emulated the royal example, and formed an 
 unholy league with the Jews to ruin or buy out their 
 smaller neighbours. During Henry III.'s reign the 
 king's necessities had forced him into constant depend- 
 ence on the Jews, so that the religious zeal that might, 
 if he had been a free man, have led him in the direction 
 
IX EDWARD AND THE CHURCH 161 
 
 of persecution, found a sufficient outlet in building the 
 Domus Conversorum, a home for converted Jews, on the 
 site of the present Record Office, and in entertaining its 
 few inmates with pensions. As a consequence of this 
 alliance between the Jews and the Crown, the baronial 
 opposition was always strongly opposed to the Jews. 
 In 1215, and again in 1258, the baronial triumph 
 involved the unlucky crown agents in much wanton 
 spoliation and persecution. 
 
 Edward disliked the Jews both on religious and 
 economical grounds. The crusading spirit, that had 
 almost lost hope of fighting against the Moslem, saw some 
 satisfaction in wreaking its vengeance on the Israelites. 
 Edward held strongly the mediaeval belief in the sinful- 
 ness and harmfulness of usury. He was angry that the 
 Jews fleeced his subjects, and saw with disgust that the 
 lands of an impoverished and spendthrift nobility could 
 hardly render him their due service, because they were 
 mortgaged up to the hilt to Jewish usurers. His own 
 embarrassed finances and constant burden of debt did 
 not make him the more friendly to the money-lender. 
 Early in his reign Edward drew up severe laws, forbid- 
 ding Jews to hold real property, enjoining on them the 
 wearing of the distinctive and degrading Jewish dress, 
 which was bidding fair to become obsolete, and pro- 
 hibiting usury altogether. The Jews knew no other 
 way of living, and turned in their distress to even less 
 legitimate methods of earning a livelihood. They 
 sweated and clipped the king's coin so unsparingly that 
 the prices of commodities became disorganised, and 
 foreign merchants shunned a realm whose money 
 standard fluctuated so widely and constantly. In 1278 
 
 M 
 
162 EDWARD I ohap. 
 
 the royal vengeance came down upon the unlucky sweaters. 
 Nearly three hundred Jews were imprisoned in the 
 Tower on the charge of depreciating the coinage. More 
 than two hundred of them were hanged and their goods 
 confiscated to the Crown. But very few of the Christian 
 goldsmiths and moneyers, who had been the partners 
 of their guilt, were likewise partners in their punish- 
 ment. Edward caused them to be arrested, but, with 
 a very few exceptions, they were released through the 
 partiality of the Christian juries that tried them. 
 
 The lot of the Jews became constantly more grievous. 
 The old charges of murdering Christian children were 
 revived and eagerly believed in. Archbishop Peckham 
 added to the thunders of the State the thunders of 
 the Church. He finally closed up their synagogues alto- 
 gether, and sternly rebuked Queen Eleanor for suffering 
 her love of money to lead her into unholy alliances with 
 Jews against Christian landowners. But if Edward's 
 wife was lukewarm, his mother Eleanor of Provence, 
 who now played at being a nun, urged on her son to 
 harsh measures against the blasphemers. In 1287, 
 during Edward's long absence abroad, all the Jews in 
 England were imprisoned, and only released on pay- 
 ment of a huge fine. A little later Edward banished 
 the Jews from Guienne. On his return to England, 
 he applied the same policy to his island kingdom. In 
 1290 he finally expelled the Jews from England. But 
 he allowed them to take with them their movable 
 property, and sternly punished the brutal sailors of 
 the Cinque Ports who had robbed and murdered their 
 Jewish passengers on their way over the Channel. The 
 expulsion of the Jews was a popular act, and the parlia- 
 
IX EDWARD AND THE CHURCH 163 
 
 ment granted Edward a fifteenth as a thank-offering. 
 The king was himself a heavy loser by the transaction, 
 and was thought to have shown rare unselfishness and 
 high religious principle in consenting to get rid of a 
 race so profitable to the royal exchequer. But the Jews 
 were no longer indispensable. Christian usurers from 
 Cahors in Guienne and from northern Italy had deprived 
 them of their monopoly. The Italian agents of Edward's 
 finances were soon as much hated as the Jews themselves 
 had been. 
 
 In 1292 Archbishop Peckham died. This time Edward 
 and the monks of Christ Church were in harmony, and 
 Robert Winchelsea, a secular priest and a learned schol- 
 astic, but much more a man of action than of letters, was 
 duly elected archbishop. A papal vacancy delayed his 
 consecration, and it was not until 1294 that the new 
 primate entered into complete possession of his office. 
 He at once took up the ultra-clerical policy of Peckham, 
 and combined it with an alliance with every element of 
 secular opposition to the Crown. But the great strife 
 between Edward and Winchelsea, the culminating point 
 in the struggle between Church and State in this reign, 
 can only be properly appreciated in connection with the 
 general history of the latter part of Edward's life. 
 In entering the political sphere Winchelsea was 
 gradually forced into an attitude very diff'erent to the 
 purely ecclesiastical standpoint of Peckham. 
 
CHAPTER X 
 
 THE SCOTTISH OVERLORDSHIP 
 1286-1292 
 
 During the long and peaceful reigns of the second and 
 third Alexanders, the strangely composite territories 
 which make up the modern Scotland had been gradually 
 acquiring unity and national self-consciousness. The 
 western Highlander, the Scot properly so called, had 
 been for centuries joined together with the Pict of the 
 north and north-east. The Welsh of the south-western 
 shires and the English of the Lothians had similarly 
 come into close relationship. The English element had 
 established itself all over the south, and only in the 
 fastnesses of the north or the wild moorlands of Galloway 
 did the old Celtic tongues still continue to be spoken. 
 The silent spread of Norman influence over southern 
 Scotland, in the century succeeding the landing of 
 William the Conqueror, had made the whole nobility of 
 the Lowlands as much and as little French as the nobility 
 of England. Except that the Highlanders retained 
 their lawless old Celtic freedom, and that the Norse 
 settlements, on the Western Isles and the extreme north 
 of the mainland, still kept aloof from their neighbours, 
 
CHAP. X THE SCOTTISH OVERLORDSHIP 166 
 
 the kingdom of Scotland had become a feudal monarchy 
 of the Anglo-Norman pattern, preserving, however, a 
 still stronger Celtic element than the English state, while 
 the newness of any idea of Scottish national feeling, and ' 
 the weakness of the royal authority, threw greater power 
 into the hands of the nobility and gave less influence 
 to the people at large. The fourfold character of the 
 land — British, Gaelic, Norse, English — still remained, but 
 Scotland was fast settling down into its modern divisions 
 of Highlands and Lowlands. The elaborate process by 
 which Highland chieftains, such as the early Scottish 
 kings were, had become English feudal monarchs had 
 almost been forgotten. The variety of their powers 
 and titles in the various parts of their dominions was 
 rapidly becoming a matter of mere antiquarian curiosity. 
 Even the Norsemen had ceased to look for help to their 
 old Scandinavian homes, after the battle of Largs had 
 put an end for ever to the invasions of the descendants 
 of the ancient Vikings. 
 
 The relations between the Scottish kings and the ^ 
 English crown became vaguer as the process of amalgama- 
 tion went on, and the power of the northern monarchy 
 grew greater. In the old days before the Norman Con- 
 quest, there had been countless instances of the Scottish ' 
 kings acknowledging the English monarch as their father 
 and lord ; while the ties which bound them, as lords of 
 Lothian and Strathclyde, to their southern neighbours 
 were undoubtedly still more rigorous and precise. But 
 the feeling that the sovereign's dignity was in some 
 way disparaged by even the most formal acknowledg- 
 ment of an external overlordship was rapidly extending, 
 and all through the thirteenth century there had been 
 
166 EDWARD I chap. 
 
 constant bickerings between the English and Scottish 
 kings as to the nature and limitations of the homage, 
 which the former exacted and which the latter in some sort 
 of fashion bestowed. There is, however, little doubt but 
 that the common feeling of the time recognised that the 
 Scottish kings were in a vague way dependent on the 
 English kings, though it is equally clear that it was 
 a supremacy of a very indefinite and old-fashioned sort 
 which brought with it none of those onerous feudal 
 obligations which a potentate so great as the Duke of 
 Guienne paid to his French overlord. The very title of 
 king suggested a greater freedom than this, though the 
 Scottish kings were not in the same rank, according to 
 mediaeval notions, as the greater kings of Europe, who 
 alone received the mystic unction of the Church. It was 
 the height of the ambition of the Welsh princes to 
 vindicate for themselves the substantial position of in- 
 dependence which the Scottish kings enjoyed, despite 
 their nominal subordination to the English crown. 
 
 As long as a good personal understanding prevailed 
 between the English and Scottish courts, it was every- 
 body's interest to let sleeping dogs lie. Accordingly 
 Henry III. and Edward I. had contented themselves 
 hitherto with being on good terms with their northern 
 neighbours, and not bringing forward too prominently 
 any unpleasant questions of right. Alexander II. 
 married a daughter of John. Alexander III. married 
 Margaret, a daughter of Henry III, though there was a 
 vigorous national party at his court which sought to 
 ill-treat the young queen as a practical way of protesting 
 against southern influence. Alexander, however, re- 
 mained firm in his friendship for his father-in-law and 
 
X THE SCOTTISH OVERLORDSHIP 167 
 
 brother. If he sent troops to fight for Henry at Lewes, 
 what did it matter that he protested that they were 
 sent by special favour and not as a duty incident to any 
 feudal relations with England? If he protested, on 
 performing homage to Edward, that he saved the rights 
 of his kingdom, it was of little importance to the English 
 king as long as he went through the ceremony publicly 
 and deliberately. Accordingly good peace prevailed 
 between the two realms. But for occasional disturb- 
 ances on the Borders nothing occurred to break the 
 harmony between the brothers-in-law. 
 
 Alexander III. died early in 1286. Margaret of 
 England had already died in 1275, and all her three 
 children had followed her to the grave. The only 
 representative of Alexander and Margaret was their 
 granddaughter, Margaret of Norway, a sickly child 
 scarcely three years old, whose mother, Margaret, the 
 daughter of the King and Queen of Scots, had died in 
 giving her birth, and whose father, a youth still in his 
 teens, was Eric, King of Norway. But the provident 
 care of Alexander had already arranged for the succession 
 of the little Maid of Norway. She was peacefully pro- 
 claimed queen, and a commission of regency ruled Scot- 
 land in her name. The regents strove, with a moderate 
 measure of success, to put down the disturbances caused 
 by the greedy and unscrupulous nobles, who put forth 
 pretexts to the succession as an excuse for disturbing 
 the realuL Things remained in this condition for nearly 
 three years, when the return of Edward from Gascony 
 to England brought about a new development. 
 
 Edward had anxiously watched the progress of 
 Scottish affairs. He resolved that the best way of 
 
168 EDWARD I chap. 
 
 turning Margaret's succession to the advantage of the two 
 realms, was to negotiate a marriage between the little 
 queen and his only surviving son, Edward of Carnarvon, 
 a boy a few months younger than Margaret. With this 
 object he procured from the pope a bull of dispensation 
 to permit of the union between the cousins, and nego- 
 tiated dexterously and delicately, both with the regents 
 of Scotland and Eric of Norway. The result was the 
 .Treaty of Salisbury, of November 1289, by which the 
 Ibhree powers agreed that Margaret was to be sent to 
 Britain before All-Hallo wtide 1290, free and unbound 
 by any contract of marriage, while the " good folk of 
 Scotland" gave security that they would make no 
 arrangements for her marriage without Edward's con- 
 sent. In March 1290 a parliament of Scottish magnates 
 assembled at Brigham on the Borders and solemnly 
 confirmed the Treaty of Salisbury. Edward's success 
 in his first measures led him to take up a more decided 
 line. The excessive caution which kept all mention of 
 Margaret's marriage to Edward out of the Salisbury 
 treaty was now thrown aside. A second set of nego- 
 tiations were begun at Brigham, the result of which was 
 the Treaty of Brigham of July 1290, in which the 
 marriage between young Edward and Margaret was 
 arranged, and in which King Edward pledged himself 
 and his heirs that, in the event of the match being carried 
 out, the laws, customs, and liberties of Scotland should be 
 for all time observed, and the realm of Scotland should 
 under any circumstances remain " separate and divided 
 and free in itself, without subjection to the realm of 
 England, as has been observed in former times, saving 
 certain ancient rights of Edward over the Marches or 
 
^' 
 
 r ». 'BF?/ 
 
 X THE SCOTTISH OVERLORDSHIP 
 
 elsewhere." The upshot was that, if the crowns became 
 united in the offspring of the union, the kingdoms were 
 to remain separate, while any vague superiority that 
 Edward was still at liberty to claim over the Scots by 
 the terms of the treaty was so whittled away that it 
 could have no practical effects. It was a highly states- 
 manlike and moderate measure. England abandoned 
 any real overlordship over Scotland that the heirs of the 
 two thrones should unite the kingdoms on equal terms. 
 Very elaborate care was shown to maintain the self- 
 respect of the weaker party, and so to bring about a 
 real and solid union. It had been well for both lands 
 if the Treaty of Brigham had been carried out. 
 
 Everything now depended on Edward getting the 
 Maid of Norway into his possession before All Saints' 
 Day. A large and well-equipped Yarmouth ship was 
 despatched to King Eric's court to bring Margaret to 
 her husband and kingdom. So careful was Edward of 
 the little queen's childish wants that a stock of small 
 luxuries — such as walnuts, sugar, ginger, figs, raisins, 
 and gingerbread — was added to the more solid stores 
 provided for the vessel. Norway was safely reached, 
 and in due course the ship of Yarmouth sailed with 
 Margaret from Bergen. But the perils and discomforts 
 of an autumn voyage over the Northern Ocean were too 
 severe for the endurance of the delicate child. She 
 became so ill that the ship put in to the Orkneys to 
 give her relief. But all was in vain. i!h.e Maid of 
 Norway died, and with her perished the best hope of a 
 true union of Britain. 
 
 The. regency continued to rule as before; but its 
 task, hard enough during Margaret's lifetime, became 
 
170 EDWARD I chap. 
 
 impossible after her death. A swarm of claimants to 
 the throne started up, and sought to prove their rights 
 by an immediate appeal to arms. Anarchy threatened 
 Scotland. It seemed as if the Lowlands were likely to 
 dissolve into a series of petty feudal states like the 
 Lordships Marcher of Wales, for not one of the com- 
 petitors had strength enough to make head against the 
 others, and there was no strong national feeling to 
 insist upon the maintenance of the unity of the Scottish 
 State. 
 
 There was no longer any representative left of the 
 stock of William the Lion, the grandfather of Alexander 
 in. The best claims to the throne were based upon 
 descent from David, Earl of Huntingdon, the brother of 
 King William, and the great-uncle of the last King of 
 Scots. But David himself had left no sons behind him. 
 His heirs were three daughters, whose living repre- 
 sentatives were the grandsons of the first and third 
 daughter and the son of the second. It was, however, 
 by no means settled whether females had any right at 
 all over the Scottish succession, so that, apart from the 
 main claimants, a swarm of minor pretenders, repre- 
 senting even bastard branches of the royal family, added 
 to the confusion by pressing forward their fancied rights. 
 Moreover, as regards the claims of the descendants of 
 David of Huntingdon, there were further legal points of 
 great difficulty. John Balliol, the grandson of Margaret, 
 the eldest daughter, demanded the throne as the repre- 
 sentative of the senior branch. But Robert Bruce, son 
 of the second daughter, Isabel, claimed to have a better 
 right inasmuch as he was a generation nearer the 
 parent tree than his cousin Balliol. At the same time 
 
X THE SCOTTISH OVERLORDSHIP 171 
 
 John Hastings, lord of Abergavenny, a valiant Lord 
 Marcher and a dexterous judge, whom Edward honoured 
 highly, who was the grandson of the youngest daughter 
 of David, argued that the throne should at least be 
 divided according to the ordinary rule of feudal law 
 that co-heiresses had equal ' shares of the estates that 
 they had inherited. If the kingdom of Scotland was 
 like the earldom of Huntingdon this was no doubt good 
 law. And when the estate was divided among females, 
 the title, unless specially revived, remained in abeyance. 
 But it was not very likely that this doctrine would 
 obtain a favourable hearing in Scotland. It involved an 
 extinction or a division of the kingdom itself. The real 
 dispute then was between Balliol and Bruce, in whose 
 favour most Scots naturally declared themselves ; though 
 there was always the danger that the greed of the many 
 claimants should prove too strong for the national ab- 
 horrence of the division of the kingdom. 
 
 Balliol and Bruce both belonged to the higher feudal 
 aristocracy of Scotland, and both were, characteristically 
 enough, of good north French descent, and at least as 
 much English as Scottish in character, history, and posses- 
 sions. Balliol was lord of Barnard Castle in Durham, and 
 held by right of his father thirty knights' fees in various 
 parts of England, besides considerable estates in Picardy. 
 He had also by right of his mother, Devorgilla, heiress 
 of Galloway and the pious founder of Balliol College, 
 Oxford, a share in two great inheritances, the half inde- 
 pendent lordship of Galloway and the large possessions of 
 David, Earl of Huntingdon. His connection with Scot- 
 land was therefore of no long standing, though very 
 considerable. Bruce's family had been settled longer in i 
 
172 EDWARD I chap. 
 
 Scotland, where they ruled over Annandale from their 
 castle of Lochmaben ; but Bruce himself had been more 
 occupied during his long and busy career in England 
 than in Scotland, having served for many years as 
 Sheriff of Cumberland and for a time as Chief Justice 
 of the Court of King's Bench. But he was a very 
 old man, and the practical enforcement of his claims 
 lay with his son Eobert Bruce, who, by another rich 
 marriage, had acquired the lands and title of the 
 Earls of Carrick. Both the Bruces and Balliols had 
 long aspired to the Scottish succession, and were 
 already on terms of deadly rivalry. Round them the 
 lesser claimants grouped themselves in two fiercely 
 hostile factions. 
 
 The regents of Scotland anticipated civil war, and 
 even before Margaret's death the most important of the 
 regents. Bishop Eraser of St. Andrews, had urged that 
 the claimants should peacefully refer their claims to 
 Edward of England. Edward's great moderation and 
 discretion during the Brigham negotiations pre-eminently 
 marked him out as fit to decide so difficult a question. 
 All the claimants agreed to accept Edward as the 
 final judge of their pretensions. The strong sense 
 and clear judgment, which had already arbitrated 
 between the rivalries of Aragonese and Angevins, 
 was now to be brought to bear upon difficulties 
 nearer home. Edward at once accepted the arbitration, 
 and convoked a meeting of the magnates of both realms 
 to assemble at Norham on the Borders on 10th May 
 1291. Thither there came, side by side with the 
 barons, clerks skilled in the Civil and Canon Laws, and 
 many monks, with the chronicles kept in their respective 
 
X THE SCOTTISH OVERLORDSHIP 173 
 
 houses, to instruct the king as to historical precedents 
 for his acts. The assembly met in Norham parish 
 church, where Eoger Brabazon, Chief Justice of 
 England, declared that the king had come resolved to 
 do justice to all, and to derogate in no case from the 
 ancient liberties of Scotland. Before, however, Edward 
 would act, he insisted on obtaining from the assembled 
 gathering a recognition of the position, which he now 
 asserted had always belonged to him, as superior lord of 
 Scotland. The Scottish barons were not prepared for 
 so rigorous and sudden a claim, and demanded time for 
 consideration. This Edward granted. The chronicles 
 were consulted and much argument exchanged, but 
 after nearly a month's delay the competitors all 
 accepted Edward's claim, and further agreed that he 
 should have seisin of the land and castles of Scotland 
 until the suit was decided and for two months after- 
 wards. Edward met them half-way by promptly reap- 
 pointing the former regents, with the addition of one 
 border English baron. The castles were duly sur- 
 rendered, Edward's peace proclaimed, and the mass of 
 the Scottish barons took oaths of fealty to Edward as 
 their superior lord. 
 
 The great suit was appointed to be heard at Ber- ^ 
 wick, then a Scottish town, and the one great centre of 
 commerce in that poor and disorderly land. A special 
 tribunal was appointed to pronounce judgment, consist- 
 ing of eighty Scots, of whom Bruce and Balliol each 
 appointed forty, and twenty-four Englishmen chosen 
 by Edward himself. Before the sessions of the great 
 court began, Edward went on a short tour through 
 southern Scotland, visiting Edinburgh, Stirling, Dun- 
 
174 EDWARD I chap. 
 
 fermline, and St, Andrews, and receiving the homages 
 of Scotsmen of every sort, while in places not 
 visited by himself in person his agents did the like. 
 The great court then began its sessions in the castle 
 chapel at Berwick in August 1291. It sat, with fre- 
 quent and long adjournments, until November 1292. 
 Every point was elaborately investigated, and the 
 strictest regard was paid to the formal law. At last 
 the king's decision was declared in favour of Balliol. 
 Edward rejected the specious but unsound claim of 
 Bruce on account of his greater proximity by blood. 
 He spoke with equal decision against the clever attempt 
 of Hastings to break up the kingdom into three, much 
 as such a course would have helped forward the political 
 interests of England He declared that the Scottish 
 kingdom was indivisible, and that, both by English and 
 Scots law, John Balliol was the rightful heir of Scotland. 
 The new king was at once put in possession of his king- 
 dom. He was speedily crowned at Scone, and, a few 
 weeks after, performed homage to Edward at New- 
 castle. Scotland accepted the decision, and for some 
 time King John reigned in peace. All through the 
 great suit Edward's conduct had been thoroughly 
 just and moderate. No one nowadays would deny 
 that his decision was based upon sound law. It 
 was eo^^ly sound in policy. If Edward showed a 
 little^^Hnuch eagerness in taking advantage of the 
 help^Hess of the Scots to entrap them into an acknow- 
 ledgement of his supremacy, it should be remembered 
 th^he thought that he was advancing no new claim, 
 butrrather one that had been constantly upheld by his 
 predecessors, and supported by plenty of such proof as 
 
X THE SCOTTISH OVERLORDSHIP 176 
 
 the vagueness of the relations of the two crowns allowed. 
 He seemed well satisfied, for the pains he had taken 
 in determining the suit, by the unequivocal recognition 
 of his supremacy which he had obtained. If his great 
 scheme for the union of the kingdoms had died with the 
 Maid of Norway, he had at least cleared up and defined 
 wherein his superiority really consisted. Had he gone 
 no further, we should but have had to indicate a new 
 and striking example of his all-embracing policy of 
 definition. As it was, it was but the beginning of a 
 new series of difficulties. 
 
 The Scottish arbitration may be looked upon as the 
 culminating point of the power of Edward I. In the 
 eventful twenty years since his accession he had 
 attempted many tasks, but had sought to deal with 
 nothing beyond his strength, and had, allowing for the 
 narrowness of his resources, proved singularly and uni- 
 formly successful. He had secured for his people 
 strong and just governance. He had drawn up a great 
 code of epoch-making laws. He had reorganised the 
 finances, and regulated and defined every portion of the 
 constitution. He had annexed and assimilated the 
 turbulent Principality of Wales, and had neutralised 
 the feudal liberties of the unruly Lords Marcher. He 
 had checkmated the great barons, and kept at arm's 
 length the eager and aggressive churchmen. He had 
 secured just limits for Gascony, and reformed its system 
 of government. He had, on both sides of the sea, 
 sought for the good of his subjects, and set up a firm 
 alliance between king and people. He had arbitrated 
 successfully in the greatest European dispute of the day, 
 and had built up a system of alliances which secured his 
 
176 EDWARD I chap. 
 
 position on the Continent as the great moderating and 
 mediating power. The subjection of Scotland was the 
 crown of a long, a vigorous, and successful career. So 
 strong was Edward's position that Pope Nicolas IV. now 
 again appealed to him to lead the long postponed Crusade 
 against the infidels. Acre had fallen in 1291. Were 
 the princes of Europe to make no effort to recover it, 
 Syria seemed hopelessly given over to Mohammedan 
 rule. For a short time Edward seems to have thought 
 that the hour of the Crusade was come ; but before any 
 serious preparations for it had been accomplished, there 
 ensued a period of trial and difficulties, severe enough 
 almost to break down even his dauntless nerve and 
 energy, and from which he had not extricated himself 
 when old age and death at last overtook him. 
 
 New scenes are now opened up, and Edward was 
 forced to go on in his work, unaided by the faithful 
 counsellors on whom he had hitherto placed his trust. 
 Between 1290 and 1292 nearly all the chief actors in the 
 earlier part of Edward's reign pass away. Just before 
 the Scottish troubles began, Edward sustained an irre- 
 parable loss in his faithful consort Queen Eleanor, who 
 died of some sort of low fever at Harby, near Grantham, 
 in November 1290. "I loved her dearly during her 
 lifetime," wrote Edward ; " I shall not cease to love her 
 now that she is dead." Her body was borne with every 
 show of reverence and affection to its last resting-place 
 at Westminster, and Edward's pious care erected a 
 sumptuous tomb over her remains, and a fair cross, a 
 miracle of sculptors' and masons* work, on every spot 
 where her beloved corpse had reposed, on its final sad 
 journey to the Abbey. The chroniclers celebrate her 
 
X THE SCOTTISH OVERLORDSHIP 177 
 
 piety, her modesty, her pitifulness, and above all 
 her love for all good Englishmen, and her complete 
 sympathy with the ways of her adopted country. 
 Within a year of her daughter-in-law's decease the 
 less popular Eleanor, Edward's mother, died in her 
 retirement among the nuns of Amesbury, where she 
 had sought to atone for the follies of her past career by 
 a show of entering into religion, without however re- 
 nouncing those beloved possessions, to obtain which she 
 had incurred so much ill-will among her husband's and 
 son's subjects. But however little Eleanor was beloved 
 by the people, Edward was a good son and deeply felt her 
 loss. Soon after Bishop Burnell, the faithful Chancellor, 
 died, his last public act being the declaration of the 
 king's judgment in the great Scottish suit. John Kirkby, 
 Bishop of Ely and Treasurer, the sharp shrewd financier 
 who served the king so well that he was hated by the 
 people, had already died in 1290. The most famous 
 of Edward's judges had disappeared in the thorough 
 purging of the judicial bench in the same year. And 
 lastly Archbishop Peckham ended his meddlesome and 
 bustling career in 1292, fighting and quarrelling with his 
 clergy down to his dying day. The death-roll of English 
 worthies was, however, trifling as compared with the clean 
 sweep of the older actors on the Continental stage in the 
 years between 1285 and 1292. Both at home and abroad, 
 Edward's later years brought him in contact with another 
 generation, and a generation of meaner stature than that 
 which had gone before. His strong stern figure stands out 
 in increasing loneliness, as his difficulties gathered with 
 his advancing years. So many were his troubles, that we 
 can no longer pursue our former method of dealing with 
 
 N 
 
178 EDWARD I chap, x 
 
 the various aspects of his policy in separate sections. In 
 the critical years which follow, home and foreign affairs, 
 the French war and the Scottish troubles, the strife with 
 the barons and the difficulties with the Church, the 
 constitutional movement and the effort of the king to 
 attain arbitrary power, are all jostled together in hope- 
 less confusion. It is only by examining Edward's action 
 in the midst of so many simultaneous troubles that we 
 can fully realise what manner of man he was. 
 
CHAPTER XI 
 
 THE YEARS OF CRISIS 
 1293-1297 
 
 While Edward was successfully establishing his feudal 
 supremacy over Scotland, fresh troubles were brewing 
 between him and his overlord Philip the Fair, who 
 availed himself of a series of petty quarrels between 
 French and Gascon seamen, to press severely against the 
 English king the same claims of superiority, which 
 Edward was now exercising over King John of Scot- 
 land. 
 
 In the thirteenth century there was no hard and fast 
 line between lawful trade and piracy. The narrow 
 seas swarmed with robber craft, and even in the most 
 peaceful times, seamen and merchants found in the sword 
 the readiest means of satisfying their local rivalries and 
 commercial jealousies. In the course of 1292, the chronic 
 hostility of the Norman and Gascon sailors had assumed 
 a new and fiercer aspect. The Bretons, Flemings, and 
 other seafaring partisans of the French king backed up 
 the Norman subjects of Philip, while the EngHsh and Irish 
 sailors, conspicuous among the former being the men of 
 the Cinque Ports, lent their aid to the Gascon subjects of 
 
180 EDWARD I chap. 
 
 Edward. Ships were loaded, says a chronicler, not only 
 with merchandise, but with weapons ; and though the 
 sea was calm, many a good ship went down, not through 
 being dashed against the rocks, but from the violence of the 
 enemy's attack. At last the Normans gathered together 
 a fleet of two hundred ships, and defiantly sailed through 
 the Channel and Bay of Biscay, hoping that through their 
 immense numbers they would cut off the Gascon wi^e 
 fleet on its way to England. A fierce sea-fight followed 
 off Saint-Mah^ in Brittany, in which fortune favoured 
 the smaller fleet that the Gascons with their English 
 allies had been able to bring together against the Norman 
 Armada. Many French ships with a rich booty were 
 captured, and a vast number of French seamen perished 
 miserably in the fight. The complaints of the defeated 
 crews soon reached the ears of King Philip, who 
 promptly sent to Edward to exact reparation for the 
 injury inflicted by his subjects. 
 
 Edward's answer was a characteristic one. The king 
 of England, he said, was a sovereign prince. His courts 
 were subject to no earthly superior. If any man com- 
 plained of injury done by subjects of the English king, 
 let him come before the English courts with his grievances, 
 and due justice should be done to him. But this high 
 style was mere bravado, for Edward knew quite well 
 that as Duke of Gascony his court had no such 
 sovereignty as he claimed for it. He abated his pre- 
 tensions so far that he suggested that, if Philip were not 
 contented with the opening of the English courts to his 
 aggrieved subjects, the dispute might be settled by arbi- 
 tration, or by a personal interview between the two kings. 
 
 Philip contemptuously brushed aside all Edward's 
 
XI THE YEARS OF CRISIS 181 
 
 proposals of compromise, and cited his vassal to appear 
 before his parliament at Paris to answer for the wrongs 
 inflicted by his men on the subjects of his overlord. 
 Edward neglected to appear, whereupon Philip went down 
 in person to the parliament, pronounced the Duke of 
 Aquitaine contumacious, and declared his duchy forfeited 
 for his treason. The Constable of France appeared on 
 the Gascon frontier with sufficient force to execute the 
 royal sentence. A fierce and bloody conflict seemed 
 inevitable. 
 
 For more than twenty years Edward had steered clear 
 of a great continental war. He was of no mind to be 
 involved in one at a time when his best efforts were 
 needed to secure his position in Scotland, and when the 
 prospects of leading a Crusade seemed less hopeless than 
 usual. While sending the valiant John of Saint-John 
 with a strong force to protect Gascony from invasion, he 
 still strove by negotiation to avoid the dangers of a 
 long conflict. 
 
 Edward sent his brother Edmund of Lancaster to Paris 
 to try and bring about an accommodation. Edmund's 
 wife's daughter was the queen of Philip the Fair, and 
 both she and the widowed queen of Philip the Hardy 
 had powerful influence over Philip. Moreover, Edmund 
 himself had everything to gain by peace, as his wife's 
 dowry in Champagne would inevitably follow the fate of 
 Gascony, were war to be declared. In conjunction with 
 the two queens, Edmund patched up terms of reconcilia- 
 tion, by which Philip's honour was to be satisfied by the 
 surrender of six Gascon castles, and the admittance of 
 one French official into each of the rest of the strong 
 places of Edward's fief as a sign of formal possession, 
 
182 EDWARD I chap. 
 
 while a proper investigation was to be made, and reason- 
 } able compensation offered, for the injuries done by the 
 sailors of Bayonne and Bordeaux to the French. There 
 was further talk of a marriage between the widowed 
 Edward and the French king's sister, which was to be 
 the badge and token of a complete restoration of the 
 ancient friendship. 
 
 The six castles were surrendered, and John of Saint- 
 John sold off his military stores and left Gascony. But 
 Philip's ministers were much too astute for the sanguine 
 and confident Earl of Lancaster. The French king 
 now declared, with barefaced treachery, that he had 
 never consented to the arrangements made by the two 
 queens on his behalf. In vain the peers of France 
 backed up the rights of their comrade, the Duke of 
 Aquitaine, against the grasping despot. Gascony was 
 invaded, and as Edward's loyal acceptance of the treaty 
 had deprived him of all means of resistance, the whole 
 duchy passed without so much as a blow being struck 
 into the hands of the French. Edmund in great disgust 
 left his son-in-law's court. Trickery and lying had got 
 the better of straightforward and honest diplomacy. 
 Edward was over-reached, and the war which he had 
 made such sacrifices to avert burst forth with redoubled 
 violence. 
 I Edward now set his diplomatists to work, and soon 
 built up a formidable alliance against the grasping Philip. 
 At the head of this great confederacy was the new king of 
 I the Romans, the strenuous but poor and powerless Adolf 
 of Nassau, just raised to the German throne through the 
 unwillingness of the electors to encourage hereditary 
 succession by the choice of the son of Rudolf of Haps- 
 
XI THE YEARS OF CRISIS 188 
 
 burg. Adolf realised, even more fully than Rudolf had 
 done, the dangers with which French aggression menaced 
 the kingdom of Aries and the whole of those western 
 regions of the Empire, which, with their French tongue 
 and sympathies, were rapidly becoming drawn under the 
 influence of the French crown. The foremost prince 
 of Christendom did not scruple to take the pay of 
 the English king and serve as a mercenary in his 
 hosts. With Adolf came all the princes of the Empire 
 who adhered to his party, having at their head the 
 Archbishop of Cologne. Still closer reasons of fear 
 drew the Netherlandish princes to the English side, 
 including Count Guy of Flanders among the subjects of 
 the French king, and the Counts of Holland and Brabant 
 among the imperial vassals. The heir of Brabant had 
 already been married to one of Edward's daughters, 
 and now another daughter was wedded to the eldest son 
 of the Count of Holland. The still living friendship 
 between Edward and his Savoyard kinsmen gave special 
 importance to the hot championship of the English 
 cause by Count Amadeus the Great of Savoy. Another 
 timely marriage with one of Edward's daughters 
 drew the Count of Bar into the great confederacy. 
 The fierce hatred of the king of Aragon to the French 
 lords of Naples secured him also for the alliance. 
 Philip on his side was scarcely less active, and almost 
 as successful. The dispute about Guienne bade fair to 
 divide Europe into two great camps. Contemporaries 
 were reminded of the old struggle of John of England 
 and Philip Augustus. It was believed that another 
 battle of Bouvines might well be fought. 
 
 Edward trusted much to his foreign allies, but he 
 
184 EDWARD I chap. 
 
 trusted more to the goodwill of his English subjects. 
 These are the years in which Edward's constant recourse 
 to his subjects' pockets brought about, as we have seen, 
 the permanent establishment of the Parliament of the 
 Three Estates. Much indignation was excited by the 
 extraordinary demands which Edward in his supreme 
 necessities laid upon every order of his people. The 
 chroniclers tell us with infinite disgust how the king's 
 officers searched the uttermost corners of the realm for 
 money. They spared neither priest nor monk; they 
 broke open every money-chest; they ransacked the towers 
 and belfries of the churches : and did not even leave 
 unvisited the very lazar-houses where the poorest and 
 wretchedest of the king's subjects dragged out their hope- 
 less and weary life of pain and suffering. Two unpopular 
 
 r classes felt most severely the stress of the national 
 effort. These were the French monks, who fattened on 
 English soil in those " alien priories " which depended on 
 
 ; foreign houses of religion ; and the foreign merchants, 
 whose debts were collected in the king's name, and 
 whose merchandise was confiscated. But the English 
 clergy, who could not fight, were also expected to 
 exceed all the laity in liberality. The ecclesiastics were 
 at the moment peculiarly defenceless through the 
 vacancies in the papacy and in the archbishopric of 
 Canterbury. Edward at last demanded a half of a 
 whole year's revenue of every beneficed churchman. The 
 unlucky clerks were smitten with terror, and as the king 
 raged and stormed before the assembled convocation, 
 the dean of St. Paul's dropped down dead with fright. 
 By such violence men and money were gathered to- 
 gether, and a general muster was ordered to assemble 
 
XI THE YEARS OF CRISIS 186 
 
 at Portsmouth in September 1294, whence the army, 
 with the king at its head, was to take ship for Gascony. 
 But the extraordinary claims of Edward had done some- 
 thing to check his subjects' loyalty. "What business was 
 it of plain Englishmen, they might ask, whether Gascony 
 was ruled by Edward or Philip ? 
 
 The French king's best hopes rested in the dis- 
 affection which Edward's strong and imperious policy 
 had excited within Britain itself. His main trust lay 
 in the Scots and the Welsh. King John of Scotland 
 had attended Edward's parliament and promised him help 
 against the French. But even Balliol's sluggish soul had 
 been stirred to indignation by Edward's encouragement 
 of his Scottish subjects to appeal from the decisions of 
 the local courts to the court of the overlord at West- 
 minster. This was a new and unexpected result of 
 Edward's admitted position as feudal superior of Scot- 
 land. To Edward it seemed reasonable enough that 
 Scots should appeal to London, just as Gascons appealed 
 to Paris. But to the Scots, who were not litigants, 
 Edward's reception of the appeals clearly gave the lie 
 to his constant declaration that he claimed no rights over 
 Scotland which were not based on ancient custom. On 
 King John's return from the English parliament, he was 
 subjected to the same treatment by the Scottish barons 
 which the parliament of Oxford had imposed on Henry III. 
 in 1258. A council of twelve peers was set up, by whose 
 advice John was for the future to govern. This meant 
 the transference of the government of Scotland into the 
 hands of the worst enemies of Edward's policy. In 
 1295 a formal alliance was concluded between Scotland 
 and France. It was the first beginning of that memor- 
 
186 EDWARD I chap. 
 
 able connection of Scotland with England's greatest 
 enemy, which inflicted such incalculable mischief upon 
 all Britain for the next three hundred years. 
 
 Even before the alliance between the Scots and the 
 French, a threefold revolt had broken out in 1294in"Wales, 
 where discontent with Edward's new arrangements had 
 long been simmering. A partisan named Madog, of the 
 stock of the last Llywelyn, raised the highlands of the 
 north, burnt Carnarvon, and posed as a native prince of 
 Wales. In the southern parts of the Principality, a 
 youth named Maelgwn spread devastation throughout 
 Cardiganshire and Carmarthenshire ; while in the great 
 marchland of Glamorgan one Morgan broke out in 
 rebellion against his lord, Earl Gilbert of Gloucester, 
 Edward's son-in-law, and the foremost baron of the 
 realm. With a heavy heart Edward turned away from 
 the Gascon expedition on which he had based all his 
 hopes, and betook himself at the outset of winter to 
 North Wales. The whole work of conquest had to be 
 done over again. 
 
 Edward kept his Christmas court at Conway, and 
 afterwards led a winter expedition amidst the snow- 
 bound fastnesses of Snowdon. Bands of wild Welsh cut 
 off his convoys. Beer and fresh meat proved wholly 
 lacking, and the fastidious English army had to live, as 
 best it might, on water sweetened with honey, on 
 bread and salt meat. But the Welsh suffered real hard- 
 ships. As in 1277 and 1283, all supplies were stopped 
 from entering the mountains. By the spring, famine 
 had brought the rebels to their knees, and Edward, hav- 
 ing built a new castle at Beaumaris, was able to return 
 to England in May 1295. While he was fighting in 
 
XI THE YEARS OF CRISIS 187 
 
 Snowdon the great expedition had sailed to recover 
 Gascony under the command of the king's nephew, John 
 of Brittany, who had as his chief councillor the wise 
 and experienced John of Saint-John. At the same 
 time a memorable step was taken in the history of the 
 English navy, by the appointment by Edward of three 
 Admirals charged with the defence of the eastern, 
 southern, and western coasts respectively. The latter 
 division included Ireland, and the Admiral of the West 
 was a valiant Irish knight. It was high time that some- 
 thing was done. The French had begun the war by 
 burning Dover ; but the English retaliated by devastat- 
 ing Cherbourg. The Gascon expedition proved a fair 
 success. Its appearance off the coast led to a rising 
 against the French. The loyal fisherfolk and merchants 
 of Bayonne joyfully welcomed back the host of their 
 lawful duke. Bayonne became the centre of a vigorous 
 attempt to win back Gascony ; but though some strong 
 places were captured, the greater part of Gascony re- 
 mained in Philip's hands. Next year (1296) Edmund of 
 Lancaster went to Gascony, but his valour as a soldier 
 could not undo his weakness as a diplomatist. After fail- 
 ing in an attack on Bordeaux, Edmund died of sheer vexa- 
 tion and despair. It was clear both that Edward could 
 not drive out Philip, and that Philip could not expel 
 Edward. 
 
 The great northern alliance against France was now 
 the mainstay of Edward's hopes ; but as usual in the 
 Middle Ages it was easier to construct an elaborate plan 
 than to carry out a modest one. Very little came of 
 the boasted confederacy. The Count of Holland was 
 murdered and the Count of Flanders changed sides. 
 
188 EDWARD I chap. 
 
 Many of the great imperial dignitaries thought that 
 they had done their share in the work when they had 
 pocketed Edward's money. King Adolf himself set 
 them a bad example by neglecting his obligations to his 
 English ally and throwing all his scanty strength into a 
 purely personal expedition to the east of Germany. 
 With Adolf's march into Thuringia the last of his 
 grand schemes against French aggression in the Middle 
 Kingdom faded into thin air. 
 
 Edward's relations to Scotland partly explain the 
 weakness of the campaign of 1296 on the Continent, 
 and the final failure of Edmund of Lancaster. After 
 forming a close alliance with the French, the Scots 
 rejected all Edward's demands, misused and imprisoned 
 the Englisji merchants at Berwick, and threatened the 
 English border with invasion. For a second time 
 Edward was forced to give up his cherished expedition 
 to the Continent to deal with his foes on British soil. 
 Just as in 1295 the Welsh revolt had prevented him 
 to going in person to Gascony, so now in 1296 he was 
 obliged to betake himself to the Scottish border, leaving 
 his brother Edmund to meet his untimely fate in the 
 south. Balliol had been summoned to appear at New- 
 castle to justify his conduct before his lord. On his 
 refusal to put in an appearance, Edward got together a 
 great host to invade Scotland, and chastise his con- 
 tumacious vassal. But Edward had to cope not only 
 with the open hostility of the Scots, but also with the 
 treachery of some of his own subjects. A Welsh squire 
 from Glamorgan, named Turberville, who had been taken 
 prisoner by the French in Guienne, made common cause 
 with his captors and was sent back to England, in name 
 
XI THE YEARS OF CRISIS 189 
 
 a ransomed prisoner, in reality the agent of a plot 
 against Edward in the French interest. Turberville's 
 plans were detected and he himself was hanged. But 
 he was not the only traitor. A lord of the northern 
 Border called in the Scots to his castle of Wark, and 
 while Edward hurried up to besiege the stronghold of 
 the traitor, seven Scottish earls burst over the western 
 March and spread death and destruction found the walls 
 of Carlisle. 
 
 Treason was outwitted and invasion repelled. At 
 last Edward was able to begin his campaign. A goodly 
 host followed the English king over the border. An- 
 thony Bek, the warlike bishop of Durham, called away 
 from foreign diplomacy by the danger to which his Pala- 
 tinate was exposed, attended Edward's camp with a train 
 of 500 horsemen and 1500 foot. The sacred Ipanner of 
 St. John of Beverley was displayed at the head of the 
 invading army. On 30th March 1296 the great com- 
 mercial town of Berwick was captured by a sudden and 
 ill -planned but vigorous and persistent assault. A 
 Scottish herald now brought to Edward King John's 
 renunciation of his plighted homage. "The false fool !" 
 cried Edward. " If he will not come to us, we will go to 
 him." Reckless of the havoc which a Scottish invasion 
 of Upper Tyndale was causing in his rear, the king bade 
 his troops press forward. The Scots gathered to with- 
 stand the invaders on the heights that surround Dunbar. 
 But on the English approach, they foolishly left their 
 strong position and marched down into the plain, just as 
 the Covenanting army in 1650 delivered themselves in 
 the same way into the hands of Cromwell. On 27th 
 April the van of the English host, under Earl Warenne, 
 
190 EDWARD I chap. 
 
 fell upon them in their unfavourable quarters and easily 
 scattered them. Next day Dunbar opened its gates to 
 Edward. 
 
 The rest of the campaign was but a military promenade. 
 Edinburgh surrendered on 14th June. St. John's day 
 was celebrated within the walls of conquered Perth. 
 On 10th July King John appeared before the bishop of 
 Durham at Brechin and surrendered his person and his 
 kingdom to the English king, bewailing the errors into 
 which he had fallen " through evil counsel and our own 
 simplicity." Edward now pushed on northwards to 
 Aberdeen, whence he marched to the furthermost ex- 
 tremity of the Lowlands at Banff and Elgin. Before 
 the end of August, Edward was back at Berwick. He 
 brought with him the mysterious stone from Scone 
 Abbey, seated upon which the Scottish kings had been 
 wont to be crowned. At Berwick he held a parliament, 
 where those of the Scottish magnates who had not 
 already made their submission vied with each other in 
 performing homage to the conqueror. Few estates were 
 forfeited ; no lives were threatened ; and no attempt was 
 made to interfere with the ancient laws of the land. 
 The bloodless conquest gave Edward little opportunity 
 of showing his generalship. His fixed resolve to leave 
 things alone in the conquered land was the best proof 
 of his statesmanship. It was a triumph of the most 
 brilliant and unexpected sort. But what probably best 
 pleased Edward at the moment was, that his Scottish 
 conquest at last set him free to try conclusions in person 
 with the hated king of the French. After appointing 
 English officers to rule the Scots, Edward returned to 
 the south, resolved that the forthcoming year should 
 
XI . THE YEARS OF CRISIS 191 
 
 settle the affairs of the Continent, if it lay in mortal 
 power to bring matters to a conclusion. 
 
 Despite the fatigues of the campaign Edward allowed 
 himself but little rest. Further supplies were necessary 
 if the king's twice deferred expedition to France were 
 to be a success in 1297. In November 1296 Edward 
 gathered together a parliament at Bury St. Edmunds, 
 and requested large subsidies. The laity made their 
 grant, but the clergy asked for delay that they might 
 deliberate further on the matter. Their debates were 
 long and stormy. The bishops urged upon the priests 
 their obligations as loyal subjects and honourable men. 
 The dignitaries expatiated upon the danger of French 
 invasion. But the proctors of the inferior clergy 
 declared that the purses of the poor parish priests 
 had been drained dry by Edward's previous exactions, 
 and their practical objections to pay anything more 
 were supplemented by the theoretical difficulty which the 
 abbots and priors (the monks were always the strongest 
 papalists) found in the recent action of the pope. 
 Boniface VIII., who had ascended the papal throne 
 in 1294, had issued, early in 1296, his famous bull 
 " Clericis laicos," forbidding clerks to pay taxes to the 
 temporal authority. Archbishop Winchelsea was him- 
 self strongly inclined to the view upheld by the monks, 
 but he persuaded the impatient Edward to allow the 
 question to be postponed until January 1297, when a 
 clerical synod was summoned by the Archbishop to St. 
 Paul's in London to further consider the matter. 
 Edward filled up the weary delay by a pilgrimage to 
 Our Lady of Walsingham. The clerical assembly duly 
 met, and after long debates all orders of the clergy 
 
192 EDWARD I chap. 
 
 united in a point-blank refusal to help the king. Their 
 obligations to Eome had prevailed over their duty to 
 England. 
 
 Edward was furious with the clergy. " Since you 
 do not observe," he said, " the homage and fealty which 
 you have sworn to me, I too will not be bound to you 
 in anything." He ordered that no clerk should be 
 allowed to sue in the king's courts, and that such of the 
 Church's lands as were held by ordinary lay tenures 
 should be taken into the king's hands. If any layman 
 met a monk or clerk riding a better horse than he had 
 himself, it was declared lawful for him to appropriate it 
 for his own uses. The whole clerical estate was put 
 out of the law. Tidings of a severe defeat of the 
 English in Gascony had come opportunely to hand. In 
 their rage the clergy saw in the disaster to our army 
 the finger of an avenging Providence. But Edward 
 was not so easily turned from his purpose. Archbishop 
 Winchelsea hurried to the king's court to seek to mitigate 
 his sovereign's wrath. On his way the king's officers 
 seized the horses ridden by himself and his followers. 
 Winchelsea got to court as best he could, and found 
 that his intercession was of no avail. Edward gave out 
 that, unless the clergy submitted by Easter, he would 
 confiscate the whole of their lands. Another Church 
 synod met, where love of country and love of gain, fear 
 of the king and fear of the pope, tore asunder the whole 
 order in hopeless divisions. At last Winchelsea was 
 forced to adopt a middle course. He advised each 
 clerk to follow his own conscience, and announced that 
 no ecclesiastical penalty would follow upon submission 
 to the royal will. Most clerks now gladly paid their 
 
XI THE YEARS OF CRISIS 193 
 
 share of taxation, and were received back into the 
 king's protection. Winchelsea held out obstinately, and 
 Edward took possession of all his lands. The king had 
 thus gained a substantial victory, but only after great 
 friction and a considerable waste of precious months. 
 He never forgave Winchelsea for forcing the conflict 
 upon him and laying clear to all men how divided was 
 the allegiance of the clergy between the pope and the 
 king. 
 
 Winchelsea's unpatriotic conduct could have only 
 become successful through the real exhaustion of the 
 tax-payers and the widespread ill-will which Edward's 
 spirited foreign policy had excited. There was no such 
 strong national animosity between France and England 
 as that intense feeling which, in the succeeding century, 
 made it an easy task for Edward's grandson to exact 
 abundant supplies to carry on a war of aggression in 
 France. The laity silently shared in the dislike ex- 
 pressed by the clergy to make Edward further advances ; 
 and, just as the dispute with the clerks was approach- 
 ing settlement, a new difficulty raised by the nobility 
 interposed a further obstacle to Edward's cherished 
 plans. 
 
 In February 1297 Edward had assembled a parlia- 
 ment of nobles at Salisbury. He did not summon the 
 clergy, as they were still regarded as outlaws ; and he 
 did not convoke the third estate, as the commons had 
 already made their offering at Bury. Edward laid 
 before the nobles a plan of campaign against the French. 
 He proposed to go in person to Flanders in the hope 
 of reviving the energy of the confederate princes, while 
 he requested the leading earls to go to Gascony, where 
 
194 EDWARD I chap. 
 
 little but Bayonne now remained in English hands. 
 Since the death of Gilbert of Gloucester in 1295, the 
 leadership of the English baronage had passed to Roger 
 Bigod, Earl of Norfolk and Earl Marshal, and Humphrey 
 de Bohun, Earl of Hereford and High Constable. Both 
 earls refused to go to Gascony, on the ground that they 
 were bound by their offices as Marshal and Constable 
 to attend the king in person. " Willingly," said the 
 Earl Marshal, " will I go with thee, O King, and fight 
 before thee in the first line of battle, as I am bound by 
 hereditary duty." — " Thou shalt also go along with the 
 others without me," was Edward's answer. " This I am 
 not bound to do," replied the Marshal ; " nor do I in- 
 tend, my lord, to serve abroad save with thee." Edward 
 burst into a passion. "By God, Sir Earl," he ex- 
 claimed, "you shall either go or hang." — " By that same 
 oath. Sir King," answered the Marshal, " I will neither 
 go nor hang." The parliament broke up in disorder. 
 The two earls took arms, and a band of fifteen hundred 
 well-trained horsemen soon gathered together under their 
 banners. 
 
 Edward was thus farther off his goal than ever. 
 Despairing of regular grants, he had laid violent hands 
 upon his subjects' goods, and had appropriated all the 
 vast stores of wool and hides which in those days were 
 the only commodities largely produced in England for 
 export. But the followers of the two earls forbade the 
 king's ministers seizing the wool and hides upon their 
 lands, and bade them begone under pain of death or 
 mutilation. Moreover, the townsfolk now began to throw 
 in their lot with the rebellious barons. Nevertheless 
 Edward's fierce will still held out against every obstacle. 
 
XI THE YEARS OF CRISIS 196 
 
 Inflexible in his great purpose, he ordered a general 
 military levy to assemble at London early in July. 
 But he so worded the writs that it might seem that the 
 military tenants attended, not because bound to appear 
 by reason of their legal obligations, but as a favour at 
 the special request of the king. Availing themselves of 
 this pretext, the Earls of Norfolk and Hereford con- 
 descended to appear. With reflection came calmer 
 councils on both sides. Edward appointed other nobles 
 to execute the offices of Marshal and Constable, and the 
 two earls went back to their estates. The king also 
 promised to give pay to all his tenants who served in 
 Flanders, and restored the temporalities of Archbishop 
 Winchelsea and the recalcitrant clergy. On 14th July 
 a formal reconciliation between the king and the 
 archbishop was brought about, in the presence of the 
 king's son, many bishops and barons, and a great 
 multitude of people outside the great hall at "West- 
 minster. "For your sakes," declared Edward to his 
 people, "I am going to meet danger. If I return, 
 receive me as you have been wont to do, and I will 
 give you back all that I have taken from you. If I die, 
 here is my son, take him as your king." Winchelsea 
 burst into tears. The people declared their fidelity 
 with uplifted hands. But the touching scene was no^ 
 sign of hearty reconciliation. The two earls still held 
 aloof ; the clergy held long and acrimonious debates as 
 to the precise conditions of their reconciliation ; and the 
 Scots burst out into open revolt. The baronial leaders 
 would be content with nothing less than complete sub- 
 mission to their demands, and Edward, after struggling 
 against them for a month longer, resolved to go to Flanders 
 
196 EDWARD 1 chap. 
 
 and let English affairs take what course they might. 
 On the eve of his departure he "vvrote a frank and high- 
 spirited letter to his people, justifying his violent action 
 by his extreme necessity. The heavy taxes and the 
 illegal exactions were as painful to him as to his subjects. 
 He did not impose them to buy lands, or tenements, or 
 castles, or towns for himself, but for the defence of the 
 whole commonwealth against foreign enemies. The 
 whole tone of the letter brings out clearly how Edward 
 valued the opinion of his subjects. Common dangers 
 were still, as in 1295, to be met by common action. 
 
 The month of August was nearly over when Edward 
 at last went to New Winch elsea to take ship for 
 Flanders. A few days before his embarkation he had 
 narrowly escaped death from a horse accident. He was 
 riding along the earthen rampart, which then protected 
 the side of the town next the harbour, and which, 
 crowning the brow of a steep hill that sank rapidly 
 towards the sea, gave him an admirable view of his 
 assembled ships. Suddenly the king's horse took fright 
 at the whirr of the sails of a windmill, carried round 
 rapidly by a brisk breeze. The animal refused to stir 
 a step farther, and as Edward plied whip and spur to 
 urge it on, it slipped from the earthen rampart, and 
 fell into the road, many feet beneath, which led down 
 in sharp zig-zags from the town to the harbour. Every- 
 body thought that the king was killed, but the road 
 was soft from recent rain, and the horse miracu- 
 lously fell on his feet, so that Edward, no worse for 
 his fall, rode back into the town, amidst the rejoicings 
 of the townsfolk and soldiers. He soon afterwards 
 crossed over to Flanders. 
 
1 
 
 XI THE YEARS OF CRISIS 197 
 
 No sooner was the king gone abroad than the two ' 
 earls united with the archbishop in formulating their 
 grievances and demanding redress. On the very day 
 of Edward's departure, the two earls appeared before 
 the Barons of the Exchequer and forbade the collec- 
 tion of the aid until the Charters of Liberties had been 
 confirmed. The regency, at the head of which was 
 the king's son Edward, had neither the means nor the 
 spirit to resist their demands. In a tumultuary and 
 incomplete parliament which assembled in October, the 
 regents reissued Magna Carta and the Charter of the 
 Forests, with additional articles of the utmost import- 
 ance. By them the recent unlawful aids were utterly ) 
 renounced, and it was promised that no such taxes should 
 henceforth be levied save by the common consent of the 
 realm, and to the common profit thereof. Next month ' 
 Edward himself ratified his son's act at Ghent. The long ' 
 constitutional crisis thus ended for the moment in the 
 complete submission of the king. 
 
 The Confirmation of the Charters of 1297 is one of 
 the turning-points in our constitutional history. It 
 sums up the whole advance won by the people in the 
 long struggle, that had raged with but little cessation 
 since the first submission of John to the popular will 
 upon the field of Kunnymede. It stands in the closest 
 relation to that development of the parliamentary system 
 which is among the chief est glories of the reign of Edward. 
 Edward had called into being the parliament of the 
 three estates. By his concessions in 1297, he invested 
 the body that had first met in 1295 with the highest and 
 choicest of its powers. It was the greatest triumph of 
 the popular principle that the age witnessed, and the 
 
198 EDWARD I chap, xi 
 
 triumph became all the greater when it was won from 
 so fierce and strong a king as Edward. But the politic sub- 
 mission of the king ended in a fashion the long crisis that 
 had begun with the French king's attack on Gascony. 
 Edward seemed now again set free to carry on his policy 
 as a leader of the English nation. If the last years of 
 his reign — ^upon which we are now entering — were less 
 glorious than might have been anticipated, it is not 
 because of his concession, but because he did not continue 
 to act in the spirit of his concession ; because, while 
 agreeing with his lips to the great principles of popular 
 control and assent, which he himself had enunciated, he 
 acted in his heart in a spirit opposed to them. 
 
CHAPTEE XII 
 
 THE CONQUEST OF SCOTLAND 
 
 1297-1305 
 
 The last few years of Edward's reign were full enough 
 of bitterness to the aged monarch. His disputes with 
 the nobility were only ended by a humiliating renuncia- 
 tion of the dearest prerogatives of the Crown. His 
 attack on France led to nothing better than an unsatis- 
 factory compromise. Even his triumph over the plerical 
 opposition was only obtained as the result of infinite 
 heart-burnings and vexatious personal disputes. If the 
 king's second marriage brought him some measure of 
 domestic happiness, it was more than counterbalanced by 
 the growing certainty that his son Edward was in every 
 way unworthy to succeed to so great a charge as the 
 monarchy of Britain. But all the other troubles of 
 Edward were insignificant as compared with the chronic 
 and growing difficulty of keeping Scotland subdued. 
 He made many sacrifices to get leisure and opportunity 
 to put down the stubborn pride of his Scottish subjects. 
 But one rising was scarcely put down than another burst 
 out. Again and again the thankless work of conquest 
 had to be renewed. And at last the king went down to 
 
200 EDWARD I chap. 
 
 his grave with the full consciousness that success was 
 farther off than ever. 
 
 We have followed the course of Edward's policy in 
 Scotland down to his first conquest of that land in 1296. 
 That conquest had been accomplished with such con- 
 summate ease, that Edward very reasonably inferred that 
 it was as final and thorough as his conquest of Wales had 
 been twelve years before. But Scotland was not like 
 Wales. It was not only that it was bigger, stronger, and 
 richer than the western Principality, though these facts 
 in themselves went a long way to explain the difierence. 
 In the very divergencies in race and type that Scotland 
 presented, a further explanation of these differences was 
 to be found. Both the Scottish nobles and the Scottish 
 people were made of sterner stuff" than the excitable, 
 hot-headed, and disorganised AVelsh. It was easy by an 
 appeal to their interests for Edward to obtain a tem- 
 porary submission from the greedy and self-seeking 
 Norman nobility of Scotland. But the Scots nobles only 
 acknowledged Edward as king so long as they believed 
 that his distant rule would be a nominal rule. Under his 
 guidance they expected to enjoy the turbulent independ- 
 ence of their brethren in Ireland and the Welsh Marches. 
 They had no love for King Edward, though they had a 
 contempt for King John. As soon as they perceived that 
 Edward intended that the conquest should be a real one, 
 they began to manifest symptoms of opposition. They 
 had not signed the Eagman Roll that English ministers 
 should lord it over the land, and ride roughshod over 
 their most cherished liberties. Moreover, behind the 
 politic opposition of the Scottish nobles, there lay the 
 growing sense of indignation of the Scots people. The 
 

 XII THE CONQUEST OF SCOTLAND 201 
 
 violent policy of Edward was gradually welding together 
 the sturdy Anglian peasant of the Lothians, the 
 Anglicised Gael of the north-east, and the half -Anglicised 
 Briton of the south-west, into a real and vigorous national 
 unity. As the Norman conquerors of England had 
 fused together Mercian, Northumbrian, and West Saxon 
 by common servitude, so that a single English nation, 
 strong, determined, and united, rose out of the opposition 
 to Angevin despotism, so now the oppressive policy of 
 Edward in Scotland was slowly but surely creating the <^ 
 modern Scottish people. The very fact that the chief 
 formative elements in the new nation were English only 
 added to the severity of the struggle. The Scots, or the 
 most vigorous part of them, shared nearly everything with 
 their would-be conquerors — tongue, institutions, tradi- 
 tions, and character. It was not, truly regarded, a war 
 of two races ; it was more properly a civil strife, a great 
 schism of the English race within itself. The struggle 
 was on that account the more stubbornly and persistently 
 fought. And all the statecraft of the great Edward could 
 not reconcile a proud and haughty people to the ex- 
 tinction of its local life. 
 
 The fears of the Scots nobles that Edward meant 
 to make himself a real king may have first suggested 
 an opposition to the conqueror. The opposition of the 
 Scottish people to the tyranny of Edward's ministers 
 soon made the struggle an irreconcilable one. As 
 usual Edward was very badly served. Just as twenty 
 years before, all Edward's professions of allowing 
 the Welsh of the Four Cantreds to continue in the 
 enjoyment of their old laws were but a mockery in the 
 face of the misdeeds wrought by a Geoffrey de Langley 
 
202 EDWARD I chap. 
 
 in Edward's name, so now the English king's protestations 
 that he would rule Scotland justly, after the ancient 
 way, were belied by the greedy vain-gloriousness of a 
 Cressingham and the grim unreasoning severity of an 
 Ormesby. Before long a whole crowd of outlaws and 
 fugitives had been driven by the severity of Edward's 
 ministers to take refuge among the hills and moors. 
 The misgovernment grew worse through the non-resi- 
 dence of Earl Warenne, the king's lieutenant, who shirked 
 the rigours of a northern winter and spring. The out- 
 lawed bands came down from their hiding-places and 
 wreaked a bloody revenge on their English oppressors. 
 The rural population welcomed them as deliverers. 
 Before long guerilla forays were exchanged for open 
 warfare. In May 1297 a formidable revolt broke out, 
 headed by William Wallace, whose name (Wallace means 
 simply the Welshman) bespoke his affinity to the old 
 Strathclyde Welsh, and whose gentle birth, gigantic form, 
 iron courage, unbending resolution, and persistent and 
 heroic opposition to the English, to whom, it was believed, 
 he had sworn no oaths of fealty, made him an ideal leader 
 of a revolted nation. The people flocked to his standard 
 with enthusiasm. More slowly and with greater caution 
 many of the nobles and bishops forgot their oaths to 
 Edward, and banded themselves with the national hero. 
 In September Wallace put to flight the English army at 
 Stirling Bridge, and slew Hugh Cressingham, the worst 
 of the oppressors. Next month the victorious partisan 
 dashed over the borders and harried Cumberland and 
 Westmorland. Earl Warenne, recalled to his post by 
 the rebellion, was powerless to withstand the mighty 
 rush of the popular wave. Scotland was freed from end 
 
XII THE CONQUEST OF SCOTLAND 208 
 
 to end. The rule of the English earl had been suc- 
 ceeded by the government of William Wallace and 
 Andrew Murray, "the generals of the army of the 
 kingdom of Scotland" and the wardens of the absent 
 King John. 
 
 While the Scots insurrection was running its course, 
 Edward was still occupied in Flanders, whither he had 
 taken a large army of Englishmen and Welshmen. 
 But he made no way against the French, and was 
 involved in all sorts of diflBculties with his allies. 
 Philip the Fair burst into Flanders, captured Lille, 
 and occupied Bruges. The conquest of Bruges cut 
 off Edward, who was at Ghent, from the sea. A 
 vigorous attack was therefore ordered to be made 
 upon the French positions. The French were almost 
 defeated, when the two wings of the ill-assorted allied 
 army destroyed by their mutual animosities the hope 
 of victory. The Flemings fought so fiercely with the 
 English and Welsh about the booty that the day was lost. 
 
 Boniface VIII. now offered his mediation. Both 
 Edward and Philip were averse to recognising any 
 right of the pope to interfere in his official capacity 
 in the disputes of sovereign and independent princes ; 
 but both wished to end the struggle, and agreed, while 
 rejecting the proposals of the pope, to accept the friendly 
 offers of the man, Benedict of Gaeta, who then filled 
 the papal throne. A two years' truce was patched up, 
 which finally ripened into a definite peace. 
 
 After the truce was signed, there arose a violent dis- 
 pute between Edward's turbulent soldiers, largely Welsh 
 and Irish, and the townsmen of Ghent. It culminated 
 in a two days' pitched battle in the streets, during which 
 
204 EDWARD I chap. 
 
 Edward was exposed to considerable personal risk 
 Extricated from this trouble by the strenuous efforts of 
 Count Guy, Edward had now leisure to return to 
 Britain, where his presence was sorely needed. In 
 March 1298 he landed in his kingdom, and at once 
 busied himself with preparations for an expedition to 
 suppress the revolt of Wallace. He held a hasty parlia- 
 ment at York, but the Scots lords, to whom sum- 
 monses had been sent as well as to the English peers, 
 unanimously disregarded his commands. The feudal 
 levies were then summoned to meet at Roxburgh, a 
 strong Scottish fortress that still remained in English 
 hands. Edward piously prepared himself for his work 
 of conquest by a pilgrimage to his favourite shrine of 
 St. John of Beverley. On Midsummer Day the English 
 host mustered at Roxburgh. There was a splendid 
 array of heavily armed knights and men-at-arms, all 
 mounted on horseback. Edward, who was in many 
 ways an old-fashioned soldier, regarded the feudal 
 cavalry as the real strength of an army, and on this 
 occasion he had so little concern of the infantry that he 
 only enforced the attendance of those who were bound 
 to serve on horseback. Nevertheless, a large number 
 of volunteers served on foot, nearly all of them being 
 Welsh and Irish. But the gallant show was far from 
 unanimous or whole-hearted. The Earls of Norfolk and 
 Hereford refused to fight unless the king again con- 
 firmed the Charters. But the Bishop of Durham and 
 the Earls of Lincoln and Warenne pledged their word 
 that if the king came back victorious he would do what 
 the two earls required. 
 
 The English host now advanced into Scotland. 
 
XII THE CONQUEST OF SCOTLAND 205 
 
 Wallace had retired beyond the Forth, and no opposi- 
 tion was offered to Edward's advance to Edinburgh, 
 whither the army went on slowly, plundering and devas- 
 tating the country on the line of route. Having taken 
 possession of the capital, Edward marched westwards as 
 far as Kirkliston, a village on the borders of Mid- and 
 West-Lothian, where he made a long halt. It was danger- 
 ous to advance farther until Dirleton Castle, between 
 Edinburgh and Dunbar, which -was strongly held by the 
 Scots, had been captured ; and when the warlike Bishop 
 of Durham at last succeeded in this task, there were such 
 grave difficulties in provisioning the army that Edward 
 was still forced to remain stationary at Kirkliston. A 
 contrary wind prevented the provision ships from sailing 
 up the Forth, and the only vessel that arrived had a large 
 cargo of wine which, by Edward's orders, was distributed 
 among the soldiers. The irregular Welsh infantry had 
 suffered most from the lack of victuals, and were dying 
 off in large numbers; but Edward now sent such a bounti- 
 ful supply of wine to revive their spirits that they all 
 got drunk. A quarrel broke out between the Welsh 
 and the English men-at-arms. The Welsh slew eighteen 
 Englishmen, but the English retaliated, killing a large 
 number of Welshmen and putting the rest to flight. 
 The Welsh now talked of joining the Scots. Edward 
 professed to set little store on their action either way. 
 " What does it matter," he said, " if enemies join with 
 enemies. Welsh and Scots are alike our enemies. Let 
 them go where they like, for, with God's blessing, we 
 shall in one day obtain our revenge over both nations." 
 But the lack of victuals continued, and on 21st July 
 Edward gave orders to retreat to Edinburgh. At that 
 
206 EDWARD I chap. 
 
 moment a boy brought the news that Wallace, having 
 marched to within six leagues on the English, was en- 
 camped at Falkirk, and proposed to follow the English 
 up on their retreat to Edinburgh and to surprise their 
 camp on the following night. "As the Lord lives," 
 cried Edward, "there will be no need for them to 
 follow me, for on this very day I will march forward 
 and meet them face to face." He at once ordered 
 the English army to advance to Linlithgow, where 
 it encamped in the presence of the enemy on the 
 open heath. That night was an anxious one in the 
 English camp. The prospect of battle had again recon- 
 ciled the Welsh and English, and every man slept as best 
 he might with his shield as his only pillow and his armour 
 as his bedclothes, while the horses, kept ready for action 
 by their masters' sides, had nothing to taste but the hard 
 steel of their bits. In the midst of the night a wild cry 
 arose in the English ranks. Every one believed that 
 the enemy was at hand. But all that had happened 
 was that the horse of the king, tethered like that 
 of the meanest trooper to his rider's side, had trodden 
 upon the sleeping Edward and broken two of his ribs. 
 But when day dawned the king mounted his horse as if 
 nothing had happened, and marshalled his troops for 
 the great battle that was at hand. 
 
 It was the 22nd July, the feast of St. Mary Magdalen. 
 At early dawn the English marched through the streets 
 of Linlithgow, and saw the Scots lances glistening on 
 the crest of a neighbouring hill. But when the English 
 advanced, the enemy retreated to a remoter and stronger 
 situation. A halt was therefore ordered, and mass was 
 said before the king and bishop. The English then 
 
XII THE CONQUEST OF SCOTLAND 207 
 
 advanced against the army of Wallace, now drawn up to 
 meet their attack. 
 
 The generals of this period placed all their trust in 
 the heavy armed feudal cavalry, but with half the Scots 
 nobles still waiting upon events, there was but a scanty 
 muster of horsemen among the insurgent host, and 
 Wallace was forced to rely on the foot folk that consti- 
 tuted the mass of his army. The great danger to 
 infantry was lest they should be swept away and over- 
 whelmed in the fierce rush of a heavy armed cavalry 
 charge. To prevent this Wallace hit upon a novel plan, 
 the conception of which shows him to have had the mak- 
 ing of a great general in him, and strikingly anticipates 
 Wellington's tactics at Waterloo. He drew his pikemen 
 up in four great squares or circles in close formation, and 
 with palisades to further strengthen their ranks. A 
 morass protected their front ; archers filled up the gaps 
 between the squares; and a scanty corps of mounted 
 knights formed a rear guard. It was a strange order of 
 battle, and nothing like it had been seen in Britain since 
 the cavalry of William the Norman had scattered the 
 foot folk of Harold on the hill of Hastings. An English 
 poet describes vigorously enough the strange scene : — 
 
 " There speres poynt over poynt, so sare and so thikke. 
 And fast togidere joynt, to se it was verlike. 
 As a castelle thei stode that were 'walled with stone, 
 Thei wende no man of blode though tham suld haf gone." 
 
 As Wallace contemplated the novel array, he ex- 
 claimed triumphantly, " I haif brocht you to the ring, 
 hop gif ye can." But though the Scottish partisan had 
 conceived the possibility of resisting cavalry by closely 
 
208 EDWARD I chap. 
 
 trained infantry planted in a compact mass, he was not 
 destined to see the triumph of a system which within a 
 generation was to revolutionise the art of warfare. The 
 Scots at Falkirk did not succeed as the Flemings at 
 Courtrai, the Swiss at Morgarten, and the very Scots 
 themselves at Bannockburn, succeeded in withstanding 
 the fierce rush of the line of mail-clad warriors on their 
 mail-clad steeds. The main reason for this was to be 
 found in the generalship of Edward, who while adhering 
 in the main to the old-fashioned tactics of a cavalry 
 charge, had skill enough to modify them in such a way 
 as to meet the new danger involved in Wallace's 
 formation. In three great "battles" or divisions, 
 Edward poured his host on to the Scots army. The first 
 line stuck in the morass and fell into some confusion, 
 but the second line wheeled about and vigorously 
 assailed the enemy in flank. The scanty Scots horse 
 galloped away in a panic. Their numbers were much 
 too few to make resistance possible. But their with- 
 drawal compelled the Scots archers also to seek safety 
 in flight. This left the four squares to bear the whole 
 brunt of Edward's attack. For some time the serried 
 masses of pikemen held their own gallantly behind their 
 palisades. Edward saw that there was no prospect of 
 breaking through their ranks by the mere momentum of 
 a cavalry charge; he therefore poured in showers of 
 arrows upon the squares, and before long the deadly 
 hail began to have its effect. Gaps were soon made in 
 the ranks, through which the English knights galloped 
 in. With the breaking up of their ranks the Scots 
 army was turned into a mob of fugitives. The light 
 armed Welsh and Irish footmen reaped the spoils of the 
 
XII THE CONQUEST OF SCOTLAND 209 
 
 victory. While heavy loss was inflicted on the Scots, 
 only two knights and a few of the "common folk" 
 fell on the English side. Wallace fled, and soon withdrew 
 from the country. His short strange career of general- 
 ship ended as suddenly as it had begun. This is the more 
 wonderful as Edward reaped no very great results from 
 his brilliant victory at Falkirk. He consumed a fortnight 
 inactively at Stirling, while his broken ribs grew together 
 again. Lack of victuals prevented an advance beyond 
 Perth, and compelled the abandonment of all thoughts of 
 a conquest of the Highlands. Edward on his recovery 
 resolved on the conquest of the south-west, where 
 Robert Bruce, the young son of the cautious Earl of 
 Carrick, and the grandson of the competitor, held the 
 chief power and strove to secure his own independence 
 with little care for either side. But provisions were still 
 harder to find upon the barren moors of Galloway than 
 in the fair corn-fields and pastures of the Lothians. Sep- 
 tember saw Edward back at Carlisle. Despite his great 
 victory, the conquest of Scotland had hardly been begun. 
 Operations for the year were perforce suspended, when 
 the selfish policy of Norfolk and Hereford insisted on 
 an immediate return to their homes. 
 
 For nearly six years Edward strove to complete that 
 conquest of Scotland which he had begun by his victory 
 at Falkirk. Year after year he entered Scotland, and 
 little by little the stubborn Scots bent their backs to the 
 English yoke. The courts of justice and the apparatus 
 of government were transferred from London to York, 
 and it seemed as if the old Roman city was again about 
 to become the permanent capital of a united Britain. 
 But all sorts of difficulties still stood in Edward's way. 
 
 P 
 
210 EDWARD I chap. 
 
 He still had to deal with the persistent agitation of his 
 subjects for the renewal of the Confirmation of the 
 Charters. He had still to conclude his intricate negotia- 
 tions with the French king. He did not establish any 
 real understanding with his subjects until 1301. His 
 French troubles were not finally over until 1303. 
 
 The peace with France involved both delays and 
 difficulties. The truce was turned into a formal peace, 
 which was signed at the famous Cistercian Abbey 
 of L'Aumdne in the Chartres country in the summer 
 of 1299. In accordance with its provisions Edward 
 was married to Philip's sister Margaret, and his son 
 Edward promised to Isabella, Philip's daughter. In 
 return for this Edward tacitly abandoned his Flemish 
 allies to the vengeance of the French king, though the 
 Flemings declared that in so doing he broke an oath 
 which he had sworn to Count Guy. But Edward was 
 seldom over-scrupulous, and his real object was to get 
 from Philip a similar abandonment of the Scots. Against 
 this his brother-in-law long held out, and on various 
 pretexts still kept Gascony in his hands, but in 1302 the 
 stubborn Flemings utterly defeated the chivalry of 
 France in the famous battle of Courtrai, where the tactics 
 with which Wallace had failed to win the day at Falkirk, 
 were repeated with overwhelming effect against the best 
 cavalry of Christendom. Philip now saw that he had 
 plenty of work cut out for him at home, especially as his 
 old strife with Boniface VIII. had been recently renewed 
 in a more inveterate and deadly form, and Boniface, 
 changing his policy, strove to induce Edward to renew 
 his attack on Philip. But Edward was of no mind to 
 serve the pope's turn, the more so as Philip, induced by 
 
XII THE CONQUEST OF SCOTLAND 211 
 
 necessity, now gave way about the Scots. In 1303 a 
 definitive peace was signed between France and England ; 
 Gascony was restored, and an ofi'ensive and defensive 
 alliance entered upon by the two kings. For the 
 rest of his reign Edward remained at peace with the 
 nations of the Continent. His persistency had in the 
 long run overcome the duplicity of his neighbour. The 
 struggle for the mastery in Britain could now be fought 
 out on British soil unhindered by foreign intervention. 
 
 The constitutional struggle was much harder to 
 settle. The Confirmation of the Charters in 1297 proved 
 not the end, but the beginning of a new and acrimonious 
 controversy between the king and his subjects. The 
 two earls were not satisfied with Edward's first ratifica- 
 tion of his son's acts, and their hesitation to discharge 
 their obligations against the Scots, unless Edward again 
 confirmed the Charters, was, as we have seen, a source 
 of weakness to the king all through the Falkirk cam- 
 paign. Next year (1299) the demand for the further con- 
 firmation both of the Great Charter and of the Forest 
 Charter was again raised. But, like a true descendant of 
 the Norman kings, Edward regarded the forests as the 
 special property of the crown and resented all restriction 
 of his forest rights as an insult both to his person and 
 to his dignity. He was forced indeed to give way, 
 but the blessings of the people were changed into curses 
 when it was found that he had confirmed the Forest 
 Charter with the proviso " saving the rights of the 
 crown." A long agitation now broke out, during 
 which neither side showed much temper or forbearance. 
 Edward's evident reluctance to yield up any tittle of 
 his prerogative, and his strong tendency to interpret 
 
^ 
 
 ^ 
 
 212 EDWARD I chap. 
 
 any concession he made, in the narrowest and most 
 technical spirit, added to the exasperation of his 
 subjects ; while the old king grew beside himself with 
 fury when he found his barons and parliaments perfectly 
 indifferent to the progress of his Scottish conquest, and 
 persistently refusing all help except on the terms of 
 his complete submission. Very reluctantly and un- 
 willingly, Edward yielded to the inevitable in the 
 parliament of 1300, and by the issue of the Articuli 
 super Cartas evaded a formal confirmation by accepting 
 in another way the main conditions imposed on him by 
 his subjects. But even then he had no peace. In 1301 a 
 new parliament assembled at Lincoln, where a clever 
 combination against the king was carried through by 
 the dexterous diplomacy of Archbishop Winchelsea. 
 The estates demanded the removal of the treasurer 
 Walter Langton, Bishop of Lichfield, and the chief minister 
 of Edward's later years. Again Edward was forced to 
 an almost unconditional submission, through which he 
 saved his minister. After all the Scots war lay nearest 
 to his heart, and he at length saw that, as long as king 
 and people were divided, the Scots could never be 
 subdued. 
 
 Edward had made great concessions both to France 
 and to his parliaments, in order to isolate the Scots from 
 all moral and material support. But a third obstacle now 
 interposed itself between him and his revolted subjects 
 in a peremptory order from Boniface VIII. that Edward 
 should desist from the Scots war. Scotland, said the 
 pope, was a fief of the Holy See. To wage war against the 
 I Scots was to rob the papacy of its choicest prerogative 
 of protecting its obedient subjects. The claim was first 
 
.XII THE CONQUEST OF SCOTLAND 213 
 
 put before Edward while on his Scots campaign. Win- /' 
 chelsea was, as usual, on the pope's side. He now sought ^ 
 out the king in Galloway with a papal envoy in his 
 train. Edward's hot temper fired up as the archbishop 
 exhorted him in Biblical phrase to desist from further ""^^ 
 hostilities. " By God's blood," he cried, " I will not hold 
 my peace for Sion, nor keep silence for Jerusalem ; but I 
 will maintain my right, which all the world knows, with 
 all my might." In the Lincoln parliament, Winchelsea <' 
 was again active in pressing the pope's claim. But the 
 barons, though they joined with the archbishop in his 
 demand for the confirmation of the Charters, stood man- 
 fully by the king in resisting this new and unheard-of 
 papal pretension. A spirited remonstrance was drawn 
 up in the name of the barons, which declared in good 
 round terms that the pope's interference was meddlesome ^"^^ 
 and intolerable. The result was that the relations 
 between England and Eome again became strained. As i 
 a further result, Boniface's attitude left Edward in no 
 mood to listen to the entreaties of the pope to take up 
 his side in the great struggle that now broke out between 
 France and the papacy. Edward was too pious, and too 
 busy at home, to join actively in Philip's violent and 
 brutal onslaughts on the unhappy pope. But the fall 
 and death of Boniface in 1303, and the thorough sub- 
 jection of the papacy to France which followed, taught 
 Edward to estimate at their true value the thunders of \ i 
 Eome. He was at last free from papal as from baronial j | 
 and foreign opposition. 
 
 During the weary years of threefold strife, Edward had 
 still turned his whole available energies to the reconquest 
 of Scotland, though he had made little progress. In 1299 
 
214 EDWARD I chap. 
 
 the barons had refused to follow him, as his promises to 
 keep the Charters were still unratified. After his sub- 
 mission in 1 300, Edward was able to take the field with 
 a gallant army, that marched from Carlisle to the con- 
 quest of the south-west. The most famous incident in 
 this campaign was the capture of Carlaverock, a strong- 
 hold held by only sixty men against Edward's great host, 
 and commemorated in a French poem, dear to genea- 
 logists and heralds. In 1301 Edward was again in 
 Scotland, and, after conquering the greater part of the 
 lands south of the Forth, he took up his winter quarters 
 in the old palace of the Scots kings at Linlithgow. Early 
 in 1302 Edward held a "Eound Table" at Falkirk to 
 celebrate the progress of his conquest. But though the 
 Scots yielded before the advance of his troops, they 
 were still far from being subdued. In 1302 the Scots 
 surprised and defeated the king's troops at the battle of 
 Roslin. This was their last great success. 
 
 In 1303 the real conquest of Scotland began. Edward 
 was at last free to devote all his energy to the task, and 
 long years of warfare had worn out the energies of 
 the long-sufi'ering Scots. Edward's work now seemed 
 quite a simple one. Edward next made a great progress 
 throughout Scotland, which recalls the famous march 
 in 1296. He marched through Perth, Brechin, and 
 Aberdeen to Banff". As far noith as Caithness the 
 weight of his arm was felt, and the Highland chieftains 
 flocked to his camp to make their submission. At last 
 John Comyn, who had governed Scotland since Falkirk 
 as regent for King John, despaired of further resistance 
 and made his peace with Edward. The only strong 
 place that now held out was Stirling. Edward took up 
 
XII THE CONQUEST OF SCOTLAND 216 
 
 his winter quarters at Dunfermline, where (so peaceful 
 was the country now) he was joined by his young queen. 
 With the spring of 1304 the attack on Stirling began. 
 It was a siege conducted with all the military skill known 
 at the time. Huge wooden machines cast stones weighing 
 two or three hundredweight into the castle. Battering- 
 rams were brought to bear against the walls. Movable 
 turrets were wheeled up against the battlements, and 
 the fosses were filled up with stones and earth. At last, on 
 20th July, the scanty garrison surrendered. There was 
 no longer any organised resistance to Edward's authority 
 in Scotland. But Wallace, the hero of the first revolt, 
 who had almost disappeared from history after his defeat 
 at Falkirk, now again came on the scene. His old fame 
 was half forgotten, and the long struggle had dishearttaed 
 the Scots too much for them to venture upon a fresh 
 rising. The hero lurked in the woods and hills with a 
 scanty following, while Edward, secure of his triumph, 
 returned to England, and, as a sign that the war was 
 over, ordered the return of the courts of justice and 
 officers of state from York to Westminster. Nor was 
 the king's confidence ill-grounded: In the summer of 
 1305, Wallace was captureathrough the treachery of a 
 Scot, and brought to London for trial. Condemned as 
 traitor, murderer, and incendiary, Wallace suffered in 
 due course the terrible penalties of the English law of 
 treason. His death has been made a matter of reproach 
 to Edward, on the ground that, unlike most of his country- 
 men, he had never become the king's vassal ; but the 
 evidence of this fact is not very good. Moreover the 
 laws of war were stem in the fourteenth century, and no 
 technical claim of right was likely to protect the very 
 
216 EDWARD I chap. 
 
 soul of the long resistance of Scotland. Edward acted 
 as any one else would have acted in his place. In hold- 
 ing out against Edward, Wallace knew full well that he 
 carried his life in his hands. It adds rather than lessens 
 the glory of the Scottish hero that in due course he paid 
 the penalty of his heroism and self-devotion. But the 
 special glory of Wallace belongs to a later age, when the 
 songs of the Scottish bards had made him the popular 
 hero of the war of independence. 
 
 Edward now drew up a scheme for the government of 
 Scotland. An English parliament met in September 1 305 
 to settle the question. In this assembly, Edward, true 
 to his doctrine of popular control, caused ten representa- 
 tives of the Scottish estates to appear. These included 
 two bishops, two earls, two abbots, two barons, and two 
 representatives of the commons, one for the north and 
 the other for the south. A committee of twenty English 
 lords was associated with the Scots members to draw up 
 a scheme. From their joint deliberations sprang the 
 "Ordinance for the Government of Scotland," the last 
 and perhaps the most striking of Edward's many claims 
 to statesmanship. 
 
 Admitting that Scotland was to be ruled by Edward 
 at all, it is hard to see how the government of Scotland 
 could have been better arranged than by this plan. 
 John of Brittany, Edward's faithful nephew, was made 
 warden or lieutenant of the whole land, with the ordinary 
 officers of state under him. For the purposes of justice 
 Scotland, like Wales, was divided into large districts. 
 Eight judges were chosen — two for the Lothians and the 
 other English lands south of the Forth, two for the 
 Welsh or British lands of Galloway and Strathclyde, 
 
XII THE CONQUEST OF SCOTLAND 217 
 
 two for the English-speaking lands between the Forth 
 and the Grampians, and two for the Celtic High- 
 lands. Sheriffs, coroners, and the other ofl&cers of the 
 English shire system, were appointed to hold oflfice 
 during the king's pleasure. They were to be either 
 Englishmen or Scotsmen. The rude Celtic laws — the 
 laws of the Brets or Welsh in Strathclyde, and the 
 laws of the Scots or Highlanders — were, like the Welsh 
 laws of Howel Dda, repugnant to Edward's notions of 
 justice. They were therefore to be swept away, and 
 replaced by the English and Norman laws which, since 
 the days of King David, had prevailed in the Scottish 
 Lowlands. John of Brittany was instructed to assemble 
 the " good folk of the land " of Scotland in some fixed 
 place and ascertain from them what King David's laws 
 really were, and what additions had been subsequently 
 made to them. He was also directed to redress and 
 amend such of the Scots laws as are "plainly against 
 God and reason," taking the advice of both English and 
 Scottish councillors in arriving at this result, and 
 referring all decisions of great importance to the im- 
 mediate judgment of the King of England. Thus by 
 Edward's scheme a separate administration was provided 
 for Scotland, though the Scots were secured with some 
 measure of representation in the English parliament. 
 For the most part the Scots administration was put into 
 Scots hands; and the prospect of a great legislative 
 reform in the immediate future was an additional induce- 
 ment for the Scots to accept the new constitution, with 
 its programme of practical reforms and strong sound 
 rule, as a substitute for their old turbulent independ- 
 ence. But it was too late for conciliation. Nearly 
 
218 EDWARD I chap, xii 
 
 twenty years of warfare and hatred had worked out their 
 fateful results. Nothing but sheer force kept Scotland 
 obedient to her foreign conqueror. Half Scotland 
 waited for an opportunity for rebellion. That oppor- 
 tunity was not long in coming. 
 
CHAPTER XIII 
 
 THE END OF THE REIGN 
 
 1305-1307 
 
 With Scotland subdued and apparently appeased, 
 Edward was again able to turn his mind to English 
 affairs. He was a man slow to forgive and tenacious in 
 his policy. He had neither forgotten nor forgiven the . 
 humiliations inflicted upon him by the union of the 11 
 baronial and clerical opposition in the years between II 
 1297 and 1301. He still chafed at the restraints then 
 imposed upon his prerogative, and his pious fear of ; 
 breaking the oath he had so unwillingly sworn only 
 added to his restlessness and uneasiness. The baronial 
 opposition was already broken up. Hereford died in 
 1298, and Norfolk had completely abased himself by a 
 temporary surrender of his estates to the crown, and by 
 receiving them back, fettered with the obligations of a 
 conditional estate that came under the provisions of the 
 Statute Quia Emptores. Edward was thus in a position 
 to carry out a policy which he had devised to prevent 
 a renewal of the baronial opposition. His greatest \ 
 danger was from the higher aristocracy represented by the ^ 
 great earls. The earldom of the days of Edward stood 
 
^ 
 
 220 EDWARD I chap. 
 
 in a very different position to the somewhat common- 
 place dignity which goes by the same name in the nine- 
 teenth century. The earldom was still the highest rank 
 of the peerage. It still retained some traces of its earlier 
 position as the official head of a county. It involved 
 a great position both in the court and in the nation. 
 The number of earls was so scanty that each individual 
 earl was personally and territorially important. In the 
 earls the people saw their natural leaders. 
 
 Edward's plan seems to have been to prevent a renewal 
 of the baronial opposition, and to add to the strength of 
 the crown by getting as many of the great fiefs as he 
 could under his direct control. Circumstances favoured 
 his design, and a series of lucky escheats and well- 
 designed marriages much facilitated the process. In 
 1 300 the death of Edward's cousin, Edmund of Almaine, 
 threw the rich earldom of Cornwall into the king's hands. 
 On the death of the Earl of Norfolk in 1306 his earldom 
 also escheated to the crown for lack of heirs to his body. 
 Contemporary writers put Edward's lucky acquisition of 
 these two great earldoms side by side with his conquests 
 of Wales and Scotland. The young Earl Humphrey 
 of Hereford married in 1302 the king's daughter Eliza- 
 beth the Welshwoman, the widowed Countess of 
 Holland. Meanwhile former efforts in the same direc- 
 tion were bearing fruit. Joan of Acre administered the 
 Gloucester inheritance of Edward's youthful grandson. 
 The young Thomas of Lancaster, Derby, and Leicester 
 was expecting the succession of Lincoln and Salisbury. 
 Edward of Carnarvon now ruled over Wales and the earl- 
 dom of Chester. Edward and his near kin thus enjoyed a 
 remarkable concentration of the great earldoms in their 
 
XIII THE END OF THE REIGN 221 
 
 hands. The policy had a temporary success, and perhaps 
 accounts in part for the cessation of the baronial 
 opposition in the last years of Edward's reign. But 
 the policy had its dangerous side, and its permanent 
 results were by no means favourable either to the 
 dignity of the crown or to the prosperity of the nation. 
 The chroniclers attribute the decadence that set in after 
 Edward's death to the dying out of so many of the 
 old earldoms. Still Edward's policy was at least a 
 thoroughly English policy, and if it failed, it failed 
 largely because, by identifying the younger branches of 
 the royal house with the ancient feudal dynasties, it 
 also identified them with the hereditary jealousies and 
 factions of the old lines of earls. It had the merit of 
 making impossible a royal caste, cut off by rigid laws of 
 etiquette and pride of birth from the general mass of 
 the nobility. It was both the strength and the weakness 
 of Edward, that while he was politically but the greatest 
 official in the kingdom, he was socially but the head 
 of the English aristocracy. Though he firmly believed 
 that his power was of God, he never, aspired to be the 
 semi-divine ruler, set by his birth and position upon a 
 pedestal that kept him solitary and apart from the life 
 of the country over which he ruled. 
 
 The baronial opposition being thus got rid of, the 
 clerical opposition alone remained to be dealt with. 
 Winchelsea was still unreconciled. But Winchelsea 
 held a great position and could not easily be attacked. 
 Since the Falkirk campaign Bishop Bek of Durham 
 had, to Edward's intense disgust, thrown up his diplo- 
 matic and military positions, and, after a vain attempt 
 at mediation, allied himself to Winchelsea. But Bek 
 
222 EDWARD I chap. 
 
 got mixed up in obscure struggles with his chapter, and, 
 -^ on his setting out for Rome in 1302 mthout the king's 
 '^ permission, Edward took into his own hands the rich 
 temporalities of his see. On his return, Bek submitted 
 himself to Edward, who restored him his lands. But 
 fresh difficulties soon drove Bek back to the papal 
 court, where he obtained in 1305 the sounding title of 
 Patriarch of Jerusalem. Edward complained that he 
 had obtained from the pope grants injurious to the 
 rights of the crown, took away from him some of his 
 best manors, and never left him in peace for the 
 rest of his life. When Edward pursued Bek, with 
 whom he had no personal quarrel, with such unremitting 
 rancour, it was plain that he was only waiting his 
 opportunity to inflict an even more signal vengeance 
 on the hated archbishop. 
 
 In 1305 the favour of Philip the Fair secured the 
 papacy for Edward's Gascon subject, Bertrand de Goth, 
 Archbishop of Bordeaux, who assumed the name of 
 Clement V. As evidence of his subservience to the 
 French king, Clement now transferred the seat of the 
 papacy from Italy to France, and began that fatal 
 seventy years of Babylonish Captivity, which did so 
 much to lower the Holy See, both in actual power and 
 popular esteem. Clement showed almost as much 
 deference to Edward as to Philip. His submissive 
 attitude gave opportunity for Edward to work out a 
 ' r^ great plan of revenge, while it encouraged king and 
 nation alike to enter into a course of anti- Roman 
 legislation that was England's revenge for Pope Boni- U 
 face's slights upon her independence. 
 
 Edward still fretted under his obligations to observe 
 
XIII THE END OF THE REIGN 228 
 
 the Charters. As soon as Clement had become pope, 
 he applied for and obtained a dispensation from his oath 
 to observe the Charters in their new and enlarged form. 
 The complaisant pope at once gave the required absolu- 
 tion, and Edward issued a new Ordinance of the Forest in 
 which he repudiated those portions of the revised Forest 
 Charter which had so long offended his sense of dignity. 
 Further action he did not take, and this must be con- 
 sidered a sign of moderation, for Clement's bull was so 
 wide in its wording that it would have empowered 
 Edward, if he had a mind to it, to repudiate the 
 whole of the additions to the Great Charter wrung from 
 him in 1297. This shows that Edward had no design 
 of violating the essential elements of the English constitu- 
 tion, but it was at best a great falling away for the old 
 king to revert to the worst precedents of his stormy 
 youth. This declension from the doctrine of "keep 
 troth " may tend to take the king off the lofty pedestal 
 on which his admirers have sometimes placed him. 
 But nothing was more natural for a mediaeval king, than 
 to submit his conscience to his interests, and in no way 
 did the papacy exercise a more demoralising influence 
 upon Europe, than through the facility with which it 
 gave men of easy or formal honesty a means of shelter- 
 ing their weakness under the protecting aegis of the 
 Church. 
 
 The king's vengeance was now turned on the able 
 and accomplished primate, whose rigid regard for the 
 interests of his cloth and persistent hostility to the 
 crown were now to be atoned for by a signal fall. 
 Winchelsea's relations with Edward had been further 
 complicated by a fierce and unworthy quarrel with 
 
224 EDWARD I chap. 
 
 vl\ Edward's favourite minister, Bishop Walter Langton. 
 The archbishop had accused Langton of simony, 
 adultery, murder, and intercourse with the devil ; but 
 the minister had been triumphantly acquitted of these 
 foul and monstrous charges, and now pursued the 
 primate with a deadly hatred. A long accusation was 
 sent up to Avignon against Winchelsea, of which the 
 most serious part was a charge of treason, based upon 
 his conduct in the parliament of Lincoln in 1301. 
 Clement again showed the utmost willingness to oblige 
 the king. Winchelsea was suspended and summoned 
 to appear before the papal court. In a last stormy 
 interview the archbishop besought the king for leave to 
 quit his kingdom. "Permission to go," said Edward, 
 " right willingly we give, but permission to return thou 
 shalt never have. We know thy craft, thy subtlety, 
 thy treachery, and thy treason. The pope will deal 
 with thee as thou deservest. Favour at our hands 
 thou must never expect. Merciless hast thou been to 
 others, mercy to thyself will we never show." Edward 
 was as good as his word, and for the rest of his reign 
 Winchelsea remained in poverty and exile. But Edward 
 
 V quickly quarrelled with the complaisant pope on the 
 y question of the administration of the lapsed revenues of 
 the see of Canterbury, and Edward was fully backed up 
 l)y the rising anti-papal feeling in the nation. The spirit 
 which had animated the barons at Lincoln culminated in 
 1307 in the famous Statute of Carlisle, the first act of anti- 
 
 ?t.Roman legislation in England. Nothing but Edward's 
 death prevented a regular breach with the pope. 
 
 Never did Edward's affairs seem more flourishing than 
 in the early part of 1306. Scotland remained subdued ; 
 
xrii THE END OF THE REIGN 226 
 
 the French were friendly; the pope was the king's 
 creature ; the barons and commons were alike well 
 disposed; the arch-enemy Winchelsea was in exile. 
 Though old and stiff, Edward remained in good health. 
 He had recently taken vigorous steps to grapple with the 
 administrative disorder which was almost chronic in the 
 Middle Ages, and nothing had made the old king better 
 liked among peace-loving men than his putting down, 
 by his writs of trailbaston, the groups of armed ruffians 
 who worked all sorts of misdeeds. The only drop of 
 bitterness in the cup of his happiness was the unworthy 
 conduct of his son and heir. Immense pains had been 
 taken to instruct the young Edward in martial accom- 
 plishments, and drill him in the principles and routine of 
 business and statecraft. But within the tall, strong, 
 handsome frame of the young prince was the heart of a 
 coward and trifler. He had no serious interests, wasted 
 his time in gambling and rioting in low society, and cared 
 for nothing but his horses, hounds, players, and boon 
 companions. In 1305 the young Edward had incurred his 
 father's ire by a wanton attack upon Bishop Langton, 
 and was with difficulty restored to favour by the good 
 offices of his stepmother. The certainty that there was 
 no guarantee that his poHcy should be continued after 
 his death must have weighed heavily upon the aged king. 
 Terrible news now came from Scotland. Robert 
 Bruce, the grandson of the claimant. Earl of Carrick 
 since 1304 by his father's death, had for several 
 years been among Edward's Scottish partisans. But 
 he now withdrew himself from the court and took 
 horse for Scotland, where on 10th February 1306 
 he met John Comyn, the former regent, in the 
 
 Q 
 
226 EDWARD I chap. 
 
 Franciscan Convent at Dumfries. The two men were 
 old rivals, the representatives of houses long hostile to 
 each other. A dispute broke out. Hot words passed. 
 Swords were drawn, and Comyn was slain. Bruce was 
 now forced to become a fugitive, and in self-defence was 
 compelled to identify himself with the party of Scottish 
 independence, with which in recent years he had been 
 secretly intriguing. He found that the spirit of Scottish 
 nationality still burnt as fiercely as ever. He soon mani- 
 fested a skill and daring that shows him to have been a 
 born leader of men. Before Lent was out, half Scotland 
 was again in revolt. On 25th March Bruce was crowned 
 King of Scots at Scone. A few strong castles with their 
 English garrisons, and a few nobles jealous of Bruce's 
 progress, alone actively upheld the English cause. 
 
 The ill-tidings of the Scottish revolt were brought to 
 Edward at Winchester, whither he had gone to keep his 
 Lenten court. He burst into a terrible explosion of 
 wrath, and resolved to stamp out all resistance in the 
 stubborn and intractable nation on which all clemency 
 was thrown away. Troops were at once despatched to 
 the north, and a great gathering of the younger nobles 
 was summoned to Westminster to prepare for an expedi- 
 tion of crushing numbers and force. The king was now 
 so infirm that he could not ride, and was taken from 
 Winchester to London in a horse-litter. On Whitsunday 
 he held a gorgeous pageant at Westminster. He solemnly 
 dubbed his son Edward a knight. Three hundred young 
 men of noble houses gathered together in the Abbey 
 Church to receive the same honour from their future 
 king. There was such a pressure round the high altar 
 of the Abbey that two of the new knights were crushed 
 
XIII THE END OF THE REIGN 227 
 
 to death by the throng. Then two swans, their necks 
 encircled with chains of gold, were brought in. Edward 
 now vowed by God and the swans that he would at once 
 set out to Scotland, and avenge the wrongs done to Holy 
 Church and the realm by the rebellious murderers of 
 John Comyn. When Bruce was subdued, the king 
 pledged himself that he would no more bear arms against 
 Christian men, but would go to the Holy Land and die 
 fighting against the infidel. The prince and the other 
 new knights took the same vow, and the musters were 
 ordered to assemble early in July at Carlisle. Thither 
 the Prince of Wales was at once sent. Edward followed 
 his son as quickly as his infirmities would allow. 
 
 On Michaelmas day Edward reached the Austin 
 priory of Lanercost, near Carlisle. Here he took up his 
 quarters for more than half a year, as the state of his 
 health and his business with the pope combined to make 
 it impossible for him to take the field in person. But 
 the heavy hand of his generals was laid upon Scotland, 
 and the new King Robert was soon reduced to such straits 
 that he fled to the Western Isles for refuge, while the 
 stern resolve of the old king to have done with clemency 
 involved the unhappy Scots in worse desolation and 
 destruction than ever. Many Scottish nobles were taken 
 prisoners, and at once put to death as traitors. Their 
 lands were confiscated and handed over to English earls 
 in Edward's confidence. Bruce's own domains were 
 overrun. Carrick was bestowed on Henry Percy; 
 Annandale went to the young Earl of Hereford; an- 
 other son-in-law of the king had the great earldom of 
 Athol. This time Scotland was to be held by chains of 
 iron in the merest and barest slavery. Yet even in his 
 
228 EDWARD I chap. 
 
 worst moods Edward bade his soldiers spare the common 
 folk, whose only crime was obedience to the orders of 
 their natural lords. He sternly rebuked the Prince of 
 Wales for his indulgence in an indiscriminate slaughter 
 that distinguished neither leader from follower, nor 
 grown man from woman and child. 
 
 Edward suffered much from sickness during his stay 
 at Lanercost, but he still found energy enough to move, 
 in March 1307, to Carlisle to meet the parliament which 
 he had summoned to assemble in the border city. • With 
 the return of summer, bad news again came from the 
 seat of war. Bruce returned from his hiding-place, and 
 the good-will of the mass of the population again allowed 
 him to make headway against the strong armies of 
 Edward. As soon as parliament was over, the old king 
 resolved to take the field in person. He offered up in 
 the cathedral church the horse -litter which had con- 
 veyed him from the south, and again mounted his 
 charger and put himself at the head of the army that 
 was pouring into Scotland. But his great spirit was no 
 longer able to control his failing body. For two succes- 
 sive days he struggled on ; but each day he could only 
 manage to ride two miles, and on the third day he was 
 forced to rest altogether. On the fourth day Edward 
 managed to reach Burgh-on-Sands, a village less than 
 six miles from Carlisle. He was now attacked by 
 dysentery, and sank rapidly. As he lay dying he sent 
 his last words of counsel to his absent son. He urged 
 him to persevere in the subjection of Scotland, and to 
 avoid unworthy favourites. His last thoughts turned to 
 the two great enterprises on which he had bent his 
 mind — the subjection of Scotland and the recovery of 
 
XIII THE END OF THE REIGN 220 
 
 the Holy Land. Even after his death he longed to 
 share in those great works. He begged his son to carry 
 his bones about with him in his Scottish campaigns, so 
 that even the dead Edward might still lead his warriors 
 to victory against the hated enemy. He also requested 
 that his heart should be sent to the Holy Land with a 
 train of a hundred knights to fight for the recovery of 
 the Sepulchre of the Lord. He then prepared himself 
 for death, and, with a prayer for the divine mercy on 
 his lips, quietly passed away on 7th July 1307, at the 
 age of sixty-eight. With the great king died his great 
 work, and the tragedy of his end was made more pitiful 
 by the wretched farce of the reign of Edward H. His 
 dying wishes were set at nought. The Scots campaign 
 was given up. His body was sent with scanty reverence 
 to an immediate burial-place at Westminster, where 
 it now reposes under a plain monument of gray marble, 
 but little corresponding to his greatness as a king, and 
 upon which has been inscribed — 
 
 "Edwardtjs Primus Scotoeijm Malleus hic est. Pactum Serva." 
 
 But it was not only by reason of his son's unworthiness 
 that Edward's most cherished plans were doomed to 
 failure. He had attempted more than even his strong 
 purpose could have successfully accomplished. But if 
 an independent Scotland bore witness that Edward's 
 greatest ambition was a failure, his work lived on in his 
 own realm of England, where after-ages agreed to recog- 
 nise in him one of the greatest and wisest of her rulers, 
 and where the whole subsequent history of the land 
 he loved so well bore daily witness to the strength and 
 endurance of the great king's work. 
 
 ~ OF THK 
 
 UNIVER8I1 
 
 \ 
 
INDEX 
 
 Abbevtllb, 91 
 
 Aberdeen, 190, 214 
 
 Abergavenny, 171 
 
 Aberystwith, 112 
 
 Accursi, Francesco, legist, 81, 121 
 
 Acre, 50, 51-55, 57 
 
 Acton Bumell, Statute of, 127 
 
 Admirals, 187 
 
 Adolf of Nassau, King of the 
 
 Romans, 82, 182, 183, 188 
 Agen, and Agenais, 88, 91 
 Aigues Mortes, 49 
 Alexander II., King of Scots, 166 
 
 III., King of Scots, 72, 166, 167 
 Alfonse, Count of Poitiers and 
 
 Toulouse, 23, 88, 103 
 Alfonso III., King of Aragon, 99, 
 100 
 
 VIII., King of Castile, 9 
 
 X., the Wise, King of Castile, 
 9, 10, 11, 92, 96, 123 
 
 son of Edward I., 77, 118 
 Alice of Angoulerae, Countess of 
 
 Gloucester, 138 
 "Alien priories," the, 184 
 Alton, 42 
 
 Amadeus, Count of Savoy, 80, 183 
 Amesbury, 78, 177 
 Amiens, 33, 91, 99 
 
 the mise of, 33 
 
 Treaty of (1279), 91, 92, 96 
 Auglesea, 18, 20, 110, 114 
 Anjou, 87 
 Annandale, 172 
 Antioch, 51 
 Aquitaine, Gascony, or Guienne, 
 
 10, 13, 22-25, 49, 88-91, 99- 
 104, 162, 163, 179-183, 187, 
 
 188, 194, 210, 211 
 Aragon, 98, 99, 183; see Peter, 
 
 Alfonso III., and James 
 Aries, kingdom of, or Arelate, 94- 
 
 96, 183, 188 
 Arthur, the crown of, 117 
 Articuli sUper Cartas, 212 
 Aum6ne, L', peace of, 210 
 Axholme, isle of, 41, 42 
 Avignon, 222, 224 
 
 Bacon, Roger, 3 
 
 Balliol, John, King of Scots, 170, 
 171, 173, 174, 179, 185, 186, 
 
 189, 190, 203, 214 
 Devorgilla, 171 
 College, 171 
 
 Banff, 190, 214 
 
 Bar, 183 
 
 Barnard Castle, '171 
 
 Bastides, 101-103, 115 
 
 Bayonne, 23, 77 96, 182, 187 
 
 Bazas, 24 
 
 Beam, Gaston, Count of, 23, 90, 91 
 
 Beatrice, Countess of Savoy, 5 
 
 Countess of Provence and Queen 
 of Naples, 5, 93 
 
 Duchess of Brittany, 76 
 Beaulieu, 6 
 Beaumaris, 186 
 Beaumont, 102 
 
 Bek, Anthony, Bishop of Durham, 
 81, 82, 190, 204, 205, 221, 222 
 
 Thomas, Bishop of St. David's, 82 
 
232 
 
 EDWARD I 
 
 Bergen, 169 
 
 Berwick, 173, 174, 188, 189 
 
 Beverley, St. John of, 69, 189, 
 
 204 
 Bibars, Sultan, 52-55 
 Bigamis, Statute de, 125 
 Bigod, Roger, Earl of Norfolk, 
 
 194-197, 204, 209, 219, 220 
 Blanche of Navarre and Cham- 
 pagne, 92, 93, 181 
 Bohun, Humphry de. Earl of 
 
 Hereford, 138, 194-197, 204, 
 
 209, 219 
 Humphry de, son of the former, 
 
 78, 220 
 Bologna, 121 
 Boniface of Savoy, Archbishop of 
 
 Canterbury, 11, 153 
 VIII., pope, 151, 191, 203, 210, 
 
 212, 213, 222 
 Bordeaux, 11, 23, 24, 25, 99, 101, 
 
 139, 140, 182, 187 
 Born, Bertrand de, 22 
 Bou vines, 183 
 Brabant, 9, 78, 183 
 Brabazon, Roger, 173 
 Bracton, Henry de, 121, 130 
 Brechin, WO, 214 
 Brecon, lordship of, 18 
 Brigham, Ti-eaty and Parliament 
 
 of, 168, 169 
 Bristol, 13, 102 
 Brittany, 179, 180 
 Britton, Judge, 81, 121 
 Brotherton, 78 
 Bruce, Robert, the claimant, 170- 
 
 172 
 Earl of Carrick, 172, 209 
 King of Scots, 209, 225-229 
 Bruges, 203 
 BuUth, 113 
 Burgh-on-Sands, 228 
 Burgos, 11 
 Burgundy, 86, 87, 94 
 Burnell, Robert, Bishop of Bath 
 
 and Chancellor, 7, 73, 80, 81, 
 
 82, 83, 121, 130, 131, 134, 
 
 154, 155, 177 
 Bury St. Edmunds, 191 
 
 Caebphilly, 116 
 
 Cahors, 88, 163 
 
 Cahorsins, 163 
 
 Caithness, 214 
 
 Canon law, 120, 121 
 
 Canterbury, 154, 163 
 
 Cantilupe, St. Thomas de, Bishop 
 
 of Hereford, 35, 109, 159 
 Walter de, Bishop of Worcester, 
 
 152 
 Cantreds, the Four, 18, 20, 21, 43, 
 
 110, 111, 112, 115, 201 ; see 
 
 also Perveddwlad 
 Carcassonne, 103 
 Cardigan, 111 
 Cardiganshire, 20, 111, 112, 114, 
 
 186 
 Car laverock, siege of, 214 
 Carlisle, 189, 209, 214, 227, 228 
 
 Statute of, 224 
 Carmarthen, 43, 111 
 Carmarthenshire, 20, 111, 112, 
 
 114, 186 
 Carnarvon, 114, 116, 118, 186 
 Carnarvonshire, 20, 114 
 Carthage, 49, 53 
 Castile, 9,10, 96 ; see also Alfonso 
 
 and Eleanor 
 Cenis, Mont, 86 
 
 Chalon, the Little Battle of, 73, 87 
 Champagne, 92, 93, 98, 181 
 Channel Islands, the, 13 
 Charles I., King of England, 2, 6 
 of Anjou, Count of Provence 
 
 and King of Sicily, 5, 49, 53, 
 
 55, 93-99 
 II. of Salerno, Count of Provence 
 
 and King of Sicily, 95, 96, 99, 
 
 100 
 Chartres, 210 
 Cherbourg, 187 
 Chester, Palatine earldom of, 13, 
 
 16, 20, 38, 69, 109, 111, 114, 
 
 119 
 city of, 109, 112 
 justice of. 111 
 Church, the English, 149-160, 184, 
 
 185, 191-193 
 the Welsh, 117, 118 
 
INDEX 
 
 283 
 
 Cinque Ports, the, 35, 42, 109, 
 
 162, 179 
 Gircumspecte agatis, ordinance, 
 
 158 
 Cistercian Order, 6, 68, 69 
 Civil law, the, 120, 121, 122 
 Clare, Richard de, Earl of Glouces- 
 ter, 28, 30, 31 
 Gilbert de, surnamed the Red, 
 
 Earl of Gloucester, 32, 38-41, 
 
 48, 77, 116, 138, 186, 191 
 Gilbert de, son of Gilbert the 
 
 Red, Earl of Gloucester, 78, 
 
 220 
 Clement V., pope, 69, 222, 223 
 Clericis laicos, bull, 191 
 Clifford, Roger, 112 
 Clwyd, vale of, 110 
 Cologne, the Archbishop of, 183 
 Colons, the faction of the, 23 
 Common Pleas, Court of, 130 
 Commons, House of, 38, 145, 146 ; 
 
 see also Parliament 
 Comyn, John, 214, 226, 227 
 Conditional gifts, 128 
 Confirmation of the Charters (1297), 
 
 211, 213 
 Constantine, the body of, 117 
 Conway, 68, 69, 109, 110, 112, 
 
 115, 116 
 Treaty of, 110, 111 
 Cornwall, earldom of, 220 ; see 
 
 also Richard and Edmund, 
 
 Earls of Cornwall 
 Councils, ecclesiastical, 143, 146, 
 
 157-159, 191 
 Courtrai, the battle of, 208, 210 
 Cressingham, Hugh, 202 
 Crusades, the, 45-57, 100, 176 
 
 229 
 Customs, the, 141, 142 
 Cyprus, 52 
 
 Dante (quoted), 5 
 Dauphiny, 12 
 
 David ab Llywelyn, Prince of 
 Wales, 19, 109-113 
 
 Earl of Huntingdon, 170 
 
 King of Scots, 217 
 
 De Bonis Conditionalibus Statute 
 
 127-130 
 Deganwy, 21 
 
 Denbigh, lordship of, 115 
 Dictum de Kenilworthy 42, 43 
 Dirleton Castle, 205 
 Disinherited, the, 42, 43 
 Dominican Order, 69 
 Domus Conversorum, the, 161 
 Dover, 49, 90, 187 
 Duffryn Clwyd, 18 
 Dumfries, 226 
 Dunbar, 189, 205 
 
 battle of, 189, 190 
 Dunfermline, 73, 174, 215 
 Dyserth, 21 
 
 Earldoms, the English, 79, 219- 
 
 221 
 Edinburgh, 173, 205 
 Edmund of Abingdon, Archbishop 
 
 of Canterbury, 26 
 Earl of Cornwall, 77, 79, 220 
 Earl of Kent, 78, 79 
 Earl of Lancaster, Leicester, and 
 
 Derby, younger brother of 
 
 Edward I., 27, 49, 53, 76, 
 
 79, 92, 93, 97, 98, 181, 182, 
 
 187, 188 
 Edward the Confessor, 1, 2, 69 
 of Carnarvon, son of Edward I., 
 
 afterwards Edward II., 77, 
 
 118, 119, 168, 169, 220, 225- 
 
 229 
 Egypt, 47 
 Eleanor of Aquitaine, queen of 
 
 Henry IL, 10, 13, 22 
 eldest daughter of Edward L, 
 
 Countess of Bar, 77, 183 
 youngest daughter of Edward 
 
 L, 79 
 Queen of Castile, daughter of 
 
 Henry IL, 9 
 of Castile, queen of Edward I., 
 
 9-11, 13, 69, 71, 76-78, 90, 
 
 91, 162, 176-177 
 Countess of Pembroke, see Mont- 
 fort, Eleanor de. Countess of 
 
 Leicester 
 
234 
 
 EDWARD I 
 
 Eleanor, Princess of Wales, 
 daughter of Simon de Mont- 
 fort, 107, 108, 109, 110 
 of Provence, queen of Henry 
 III., 1, 4, 5, 6, 11, 23, 30, 
 32, 35, 37, 54, 55, 71, 76, 78, 
 93, 97, 103, 153, 177 
 
 Elgin, 190 
 
 Elizabeth, daughter of Edward I., 
 Countess of Holland and Here- 
 ford, 78, 183, 220 
 
 Ely, 42 
 
 Empire, the Holy Roman, 94-96, 
 182, 183, 187, 188 
 
 Eric, King of Norway, 167-169 
 
 Estates in fee simple, 128 
 in tail, 128 
 
 Exchequer, Court of, 130 
 
 Falkirk, 214 
 
 battle of, 65, 74, 206-209 
 Ferdinand the Saint, King of 
 
 Castile, 10 
 Feudalism, elimination of, from 
 
 politics, 123-134 
 Fifteen, the, 27, 31 
 Flanders, 35, 90, 178, 183, 187, 
 
 194, 195, 196, 203, 204, 210 
 Fletching, 36 
 Flintshire, 114 
 
 Forest Charter, 197, 211, 212, 223 
 France, 4, 6, 12, 23, 30, 31, 47- 
 
 48, 86-106, 179-189, 203, 210, 
 
 211 
 Franciscan Order, 69 
 Eraser, Bishop, 172 
 Frederick II., the Emperor, 27, 
 
 123 
 Friars, the, 3, 47, 48, 69, 151 
 Fronsac, 102 
 
 Galloway, 164, 165, 171, 209, 
 
 234, 216 
 Gaol delivery, justices of, 129 
 Gascony, see Aquitaine 
 Gaston, Viscount of B^arn, 23, 90, 
 
 91 
 Ghent, 65, 203 
 Oifford, Hugh, 6 
 
 Glamorgan, lordship of, 18, 186, 
 
 188 
 Gloucester, 34, 35, 52, 125 
 Earls of, see Clare, Richard de, 
 
 Gilbert de, and Monthermer, 
 
 Ralph de 
 Grailly, John de, 80, 97, 98, 103, 
 
 104 
 Grandison, Otho de, 55, 80 
 Grantham, 13, 176 
 Gregory X., pope, 56, 86, 94, 95, 
 
 154 
 Grilly, 103 
 
 Grosseteste, Bishop of Lincoln, 26 
 Guernsey, 13 
 Guienne, see Aquitaine 
 Gurdon, Adam, 42, 73 
 Guy, Count of Flanders, 183, 187, 
 
 204, 210 ; see Flanders 
 Gwynedd, 18, 19, 114 ; see also 
 
 Wales 
 
 Harby, 176 
 
 Harlech, 116 
 
 Hartmaun, son of Rudolf of Haps- 
 
 burg, 77, 95 
 Hastings, John, claimant, 171, 174 
 Hengham, judge, 81, 83 
 Henry II., King, 3, 9, 72, 122, 
 
 129 
 III., King, 1, 2-6, 10, 14, 21, 
 
 23-25, 26-44, 55, 70, 87, 
 
 121, 152, 160, 161, 165-167 
 VIII., King, 17, 115, 119 
 of Almaine, son of Richard, 
 
 King of the Romans, 7, 36, 
 
 37, 49, 50, 77, 93 
 son of Edward I., 77 
 Hereford, 38, 159 
 
 earldom of, 78 ; see also Bohun 
 Highlands of Scotland, the, 164, 
 
 165, 209, 216 
 Holland, 78, 183, 187 
 Howel, Dda (the Good), Welsh 
 
 king, the law of, 21,111,217 
 Huelgas, Las, 11 
 Hull, 140 
 
 Hundred Rolls, the, 125 
 Huntingdon, earldom of, 170-172 
 
INDEX 
 
 286 
 
 Ireland, 13, 15, 187, 203 
 Isabella of Angouleme, queen of 
 
 John, 8 
 of France, afterwards queen of 
 
 Edward IL, 210 
 Isleworth, 32 
 
 Jaffa, the Emir of, 53, 54 
 James of Aragon, King of Sicily, 
 
 99, 100 
 Jersey, 13 
 Jerusalem, kingdom of, 45, 51, 
 
 53, 57 
 Jews, expulsion of the, 160-162 
 Joan of Acre, Countess of Glou- 
 cester, 77, 95, 220 
 of Navarre, queen of Philip IV., 
 
 92, 98, 181 
 of Ponthieu, queen of Castile, 
 
 10, 91 
 Princess of Wales, 19 
 John, King, 2, 13, 19, 92, 166, 183 
 son of Edward L, 55, 77 
 of Brittany, 76, 79, 187, 126, 
 127 
 Justices, itinerant, 129 
 
 of assize, 129 
 Justinian, 122 
 
 Kbnilwoeth, 37, 41, 42 
 Kilwardby, Robert, Archbishop of 
 
 Canterbury, 154, 155 
 King's Bench, Court of, 130 
 Kirkby, John, Bishop of Ely, 81, 
 
 139, 142, 177 
 Kirkliston, 205 
 
 Lacy, Henry, Earl of Lincoln, 76, 
 81, 82, 109, 115, 204 
 
 Lambeth, council of, 158 
 
 Lancaster, earldom of, 76 ; see 
 also Edmund and Thomas, 
 Earls of Lancaster 
 
 Lanercost, 227, 228 
 
 Langley, Geoflfrey de, 21, 201 
 
 Langton, Walter, Bishop of Lich- 
 field and Treasurer, 81, 82, 
 83, 212, 224, 225 
 
 Languedoc, 5, 23 
 
 Largs, battle of, 165 
 
 Leghorn, 101 
 
 Legislation in thirteenth century, 
 
 120, 134 
 Leicester, Earls of, see Montfort, 
 
 Simon de, and Edmund, Earl 
 
 Lewes, battle of, 35-37, 73, 74, 152 
 
 Song of (quoted), 62-64, 152 
 Libourne, 101, 102 
 Limoges, tlft war of, 88, 89 
 Limousin, 88 
 Lincoln, earldom of, 81, 82 ; see 
 
 Lacy, Henry, and Thomas of 
 
 Lancaster 
 Parliament of, 212, 224 
 Linlithgow, 206, 214 
 Llywelyn ab lorwerth, Prince of 
 
 Wales, 19, 33 
 ab Gruflfydd, Prince of Wales, 
 
 19, 21, 22, 32, 33, 34, 43, 
 
 106-113 
 Lochmaben, 172 
 Lombard bankers, 66, 83, 163 
 London, 6, 27, 31, 32, 36, 37, 66, 
 
 139, 140, 191, 196, 226 
 Bridge, 32 
 Lords, House of, 145-147 ; see 
 
 also Parliament 
 Lothian, 165, 209, 216 
 Louis VIII., King of France, 8 
 IX. (Saint Louis), King of 
 
 France, 5, 23, 33, 47, 48, 49, 
 
 87, 103, 123 
 Lowlands of Scotland, 165 
 Ludlow, 39 
 
 Lusignans, the, 7, 28, 80, 125 
 Lyons, council of, 56 
 
 Macon, the league of, 97 
 Madog ab Llywelyn, 118, 186 
 Maelg^vu, 186 
 Magna Carta, 2, 19, 33, 62, 135, 
 
 157, 204, 211, 223 
 Maltoltes, 141 
 Marche, La, 8 
 Marches, the Welsh, 17, 18, 20, 
 
 33, 34, 37, 39, 107-119, 170, 
 
 171, 175 
 
236 
 
 EDWARD I 
 
 Margaret, Queen of Scots, 76, 
 166, 167 
 of France, second wife of Edward 
 
 I., 78, 210, 215 
 of Norway, Queen of Scots, 167- 
 
 169 
 of Provence, queen of Louis IX., 
 
 5, 93-96 
 Duchess of Brabant, daughter of 
 Edward I., 63, 78, 183 
 Marshal, Richard, Earf, 26 
 
 the Earl, see Bigod, Roger, Earl 
 of Norfolk 
 Martin IV, , pope, 99 
 Matilda of Waltham, 65 
 Mendicant Orders, see Friars, 
 Franciscans and Dominicans 
 Merchants, Statute of, see Acton 
 
 Burnell, Statute of 
 Merioneth, 18, 20, 114 
 Merlin, prophecies of, 108 
 Meynam, 69 
 Middle kingdom, the, 93-96, 183, 
 
 188 
 Milan, 86 
 Mise of Amiens, 33 
 
 of Lewes, 37 
 Model Parliament, the, 144-147 
 Montfort, Amaury de, 7, 109 
 Eleanor de. Countess of Leices- 
 ter, 1, 37 
 Eleanor de, Princess of Wales, 
 
 see Eleanor 
 Guy de, 7, 41, 93, 108 
 Henry de, 7, 34, 35, 37, 41 
 Simon de. Earl of Leicester, 1, 
 23, 24, 27-41, 88, 107, 135- 
 137, 145, 152, 153, 159 
 Simon de, the younger, 7, 34, 
 35, 40, 41, 93, 108 
 Monthermer, Ralph de, 77, 227 
 Montpazier, 102 
 Montreuil, 10, 90 
 
 Treaty of, 90 
 Morgan, 186 
 
 Mortimer, House of, 13, 39, 79, 113 
 Mortmain, Statute of, 126, 157, 
 
 158 
 Murray, Andrew, 208 
 
 Navarre, 23, 92, 93, 96, 97 
 
 Nevin, 117 
 Newcastle, 174 
 
 Nicolas III., pope, 95, 96, 154- 
 156 
 
 IV., pope, 100, 176 
 Nisiprius, justices of, 129 
 Norfolk, earldom of, 220 
 Norham, 172, 173 
 Norman Conquest of Wales, the, 
 17 
 
 Scotland, 164, 165 
 Normandy, 30, 87, 92, 179, 180 
 Norse settlements in Scotland, 165 
 Northampton, 35 
 Norway, 167 
 
 the maid of, 167-169 
 
 Oli^ron, isle of, 13 
 
 Oloron, 100 
 
 Ordinance for the government of 
 
 Scotland, 216 
 Orkneys, the, 169 
 Ormesby, 202 
 Orvieto, 86 
 Ottobon, 43 
 Oxford, 27, 35, 68 
 
 Padua, 86 
 
 Papacy, the, 31, 37, 56, 57, 70, 94, 
 
 150, 151, 154. 191, 192 
 Paris, 30, 32, 87 
 the Treaty of (1259), 30, 87, 88, 
 
 92 
 Parliament, 27, 37, 38, 124, 135- 
 
 148, 184, 190, 191, 193, 197, 
 
 211, 212, 216, 228 
 of Paris, 90 
 Peckham, John, Archbishop of 
 
 Canterbury, 112, 113, 116, 
 
 117, 146, 156-160, 162, 163, 
 
 177 
 Pembroke, Palatine earldom of, 18 
 Pf^rigord, 88, 89 
 P^rigueux, 88 
 Perth, 190, 209, 214 
 Perveddwlad, the Four Cantreds of, 
 
 18, 110; su Cantreds, the 
 
 Four 
 
INDEX 
 
 287 
 
 Peter, King of Aragon, 98, 99 
 Philip, Count of Savoy, 86, 94-96, 
 
 97 
 III. , the Hardy, King of France, 
 
 49, 50, 87-99 
 IV., the Fair, King of France, 
 
 69, 98, 99, 100, 123, 147, 
 
 151, 179-189, 203 
 Poitou, 30, 87, 88 
 Ponthieu, 10, 91, 92 
 Pope, the, see Papacy 
 Porto, 155 
 Portsmouth, 10, 185 
 Prince, meaning of the term, 11, 12 
 Principality, the, 18-20; see also 
 
 Wales 
 Provence, 5, 93-96 
 Provisions of Oxford, 27, 28, 31, 
 
 32, 37 
 of Westminster, 29 
 
 QuEECY, 88, 91 
 
 Quia Emptores, Statute of, 127, 
 
 132-134, 143, 210 
 Quo warranto, writ of, 125, 126, 
 
 137 
 
 Raymond Berenger IV., Count 
 
 of Provence, 5 
 Reading, council of, 156, 157 
 Rhos, 18 
 Rhuddlan, 110, 112, 113 
 
 Statute of, 127 
 Rhuvoniog, 18 
 Richard, Earl of Cornwall and King 
 
 of the Romans, 5, 8, 10, 26, 
 
 30, 31, 36, 37, 55, 77 
 Rochester, 35 
 Rosteins, the, 23 
 Round Table tournaments, 117, 
 
 214 
 Roxburgh, 204 
 Rudolf of Hapsburg, King of the 
 
 Romans, 77, 94-96, 183 
 Rustician of Pisa, 71 
 
 Saint Andrews, 174 
 Emilion, 102 
 Mahe, 180 
 
 Saint Paul's, the Dean of, 184 
 
 council of, 191 
 Saint-John, John of, 181, 182, 
 
 187 
 Saintonge, 88 
 Saladin, 45 
 Salerno, Charles, Prince of, see 
 
 Charles II. 
 Salisbury, 168, 193 
 earldom of, 81, 82 
 Treaty of, 168 
 Sanchia, Countess of Cornwall and 
 
 Queen of the Romans, 5 
 Sandwich, Ralph, 139 
 Sauveterre, 101 
 Savoy, 80, 86, 183 
 Scone, 190, 226 
 
 Scotland, 72, 164-178, 185, 186, 
 189-191, 200-210, 214-218, 
 225-229 
 Shrewsbury, 43, 113, 143 
 
 Treaty of, 43 
 Sicilian Vespers, the, 98 
 Sicily, 49-50, 55, 98 
 Snowdon, 18, 109-113, 186 
 
 the justice of, 114 
 Stamford, 13 
 
 States- General of France, the, 147 
 Statute of Acton Burnell, 127 
 de Big amis, 124 
 of Carlisle, 204 
 of Circumspecte agatis, 158 
 of De Bonis, 127-130 
 of Gloucester, 125 
 of Mortmain, 125, 157, 158 
 of Quia Empties, 127, 132- 
 
 134, 143 
 of Rageman, 125 
 of Rhuddlan, 127 
 of Wales, 113-115 
 of Westminster the First, 124, 
 125, 141 
 the Second, 127-130 
 the Third, 127, 132-134 
 of Winchester, 127, 130, 131 
 Stirling, 71, 173, 209, 215 
 
 Bridge, battle of, 202 
 Strathclyde, 164, 165, 217 
 Surrey, Earl of, see Warenne, Earl 
 
EDWARD I 
 
 Tkoeinql, 18 
 
 Theobald of Li^e, 56 ; see also 
 
 Gregory X. 
 Thomas, Earl of Lancaster, 76, 
 
 220, 221 
 of Brotherton, Earl of Norfolk, 
 
 78 
 Thuringia, 188 
 Toulouse, 88 
 
 Tournaments, 7, 31, 44, 48 
 Tower of London, the, 32, 139 
 Trapani, 50, 55 
 Tripoli, 51, 57 
 Tunis, 49, 50 
 TurbervUle, 188, 189 
 
 Vale Royal, abbey of, 69 
 Villefranche-de-Rouergue, 103 
 Viterbo, 50, 108 
 
 Wales, 12, 16-22, 32, 35, 43, 48, 
 68-69, 74, 82, 107-119, 175, 
 186, 200, 205 
 
 Waleys, Henry le, 139 
 
 Wallace. William, 202, 203, 204- 
 210, 215, 216 
 
 Wallingford, 8 
 
 Walsingham, 71, 191 
 
 Warenne, Earl, 125, 126, 189, 190, 
 202, 204 
 
 Wark, 189 
 
 Weald, the, 35 
 
 Westminster, 1, 29, 68, 72, 110, 
 176, 215, 226, 229 
 Statutes of, 124-134, 141 
 
 West Wales, the justice of, 114 
 
 Wigmore, 39 
 
 William the Lion, King of Scots, 
 170 
 
 Winchelsea, 42, 140, 196 
 
 Robert, Archbishop of Canter- 
 bury, 163, 191-193, 212, 213, 
 221-224 
 
 Winchester, 28, 226 
 
 Statute of, 127, 130, 131 
 
 Windsor, 6, 32 
 
 Wine-trade between England and 
 Gascony, 23, 25 
 
 Woodstock, 79 
 
 Yarmouth, 169 
 York; 204-209, 216 
 
 o^^:^ 
 
 THE END 
 
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tCwelve Enolfsb Statesmen, 
 
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 GENERAL GORDON. By Colonel Sir William Butler. 
 
 SPECTATOR. — "This is beyond all question the best of the narratives of the 
 career of General Gordon that have yet been published." 
 HENRY THE FIFTH. By the Rev. A. J. Church. 
 
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 biographical sketch or as a chapter in English military history it is equally attractive." 
 LIVINGSTONE. By Mr. Thomas Hughes. 
 
 SPECTA TOR. — "The volume is an excellent instance of miniature biography." 
 LORD LA"WRENCE. By Sir Richard Temple. 
 
 LEEDS MERCURY. — "A lucid, temperate, and impressive summary." 
 "WELLINGTON. By Mr. George Hooper. 
 
 SCOTSMAN.— ''"Wx^ story of the great Duke's life is admirably told by Mr. 
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 DAMPIER. By Mr. W. Clark Russell. 
 
 ATHEN^UM. — "Mr. Clark Russell's practical knowledge of the sea enables 
 him to discuss the seafaring life of two centuries ago with intelligence and vigour. As 
 a commentary on Dampier's voyages this little book is among the best." 
 MONK. By Mr. Julian Corbett. 
 
 SA TURDA Y REyiElV.—'' Mr. Corbett indeed gives you the real man." 
 STRAFFORD. By Mr. H. D. Traill. 
 
 ATHENAiUM. — "A clear and accurate summary of Str^ord's life, especially 
 as regards his Irish government." 
 WARREN HASTINGS. By Sir Alfred Lvali.. 
 
 DAILY NEWS. — "May be pronounced without hesitation as the final and 
 decisive verdict of history on the conduct and career of Hastings." 
 PETERBOROUGH. By Mr. W. Stebbing. 
 
 SA TURDA Y REVIEW.—" An excellent piece of work." 
 CAPTAIN COOK. By Sir Walter Besant. 
 
 SCOTTISH LEADER.—'' It is simply the best and most readable accc it of 
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 SIR HENRY HAVELOCK. By Mr. Archibald Forbes. 
 
 SPEAKER.— "Th^re is no lack of good writing in this book, and the narrative 
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 CLIVE. By Colonel Sir Charles Wilson. 
 
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 SIR CHARLES NAPIER. By Colonel Sir William Butler. 
 
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 WARWICK, THE KING-MAKER. By Mr. C. W. Oman. 
 
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 of the Wars of the Two Roses to be found in the whole range of English literature." 
 DRAKE. By Mr. Julian Corbett. 
 
 SCOTTISH LEADER.—" Perhaps the most fascinating of all the fifteen that 
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 buoyant style. 
 RODNEY. By Mr. David G. Hannay. 
 
 TIMES.— " \ vivid sketch of one of our great naval heroes." 
 
 SPECTA TOR.—" An admirable contribution to an admirable series." 
 MONTROSE. By Mr. Mowbray Morris. 
 
 TIMES.—" A singularly vivid and careful picture of one of the most romantic 
 figures in Scottish history." 
 DTJNDONALD. By the Hon. John W. Fortescue. 
 
 DAIL Y NEWS.—" There are many excellent volumes in the ' English Men of 
 Action ' Series ; but none better written or more interesting than this." 
 
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