Volume 1 — EDWARD I. (continued 2)

Edward marched northwards to Aberdeen and Elgin, without meeting an enemy: no Scotchman approached him but to pay him submission and do him homage: even the turbulent Highlanders, ever refractory to their own princes, and averse to the restraint of laws, endeavored to prevent the devastation of their country, by giving him early proofs of obedience: and Edward, having brought the whole kingdom to a seeming state of tranquillity, returned to the south with his army. There was a stone to which the popular superstition of the Scots paid the highest veneration: all their kings were seated on it when they received the rite of inauguration: an ancient tradition assured them that, wherever this stone was placed, their nation should always govern: and it was carefully preserved at Scone, as the true, palladium of their monarchy, and their ultimate resource amidst all their misfortunes. Edward got possession of it, and carried it with him to England.[*] He gave orders to destroy the records, and all those monuments of antiquity which might preserve the memory of the independence of the kingdom, and refute the English claims of superiority. The Scots pretend that he also destroyed all the annals preserved in their convents: but it is not probable that a nation, so rude and unpolished, should be possessed of any history which deserves much to be regretted. The great seal of Bailol was broken; and that prince himself was carried prisoner to London, and committed to custody in the Tower. Two years after he was restored to liberty, and submitted to a voluntary banishment in France; where, without making any further attempts for the recovery of his royalty, he died in a private station. Earl Warrenne was left governor of Scotland:[**] Englishmen were intrusted with the chief offices: and Edward, flattering himself that he had attained the end of all his wishes, and that the numerous acts of fraud and violence, which he had practised against Scotland, had terminated in the final reduction of that kingdom, returned with his victorious army into England.

An attempt, which he made about the same time, for the recovery of Guienne, was not equally successful. He sent thither an army of seven thousand men, under the command of his brother, the earl of Lancaster. That prince gained at first some advantages over the French at Bordeaux: but he was soon after seized with a distemper, of which he died at Bayonne. The command devolved on the earl of Lincoln, who was not able to perform any thing considerable during the rest of the campaign.[*]

But the active and ambitious spirit of Edward, while his conquests brought such considerable accessions to the English monarchy, could not be satisfied, so long as Guienne, the ancient patrimony of his family, was wrested from him by the dishonest artifices of the French monarch. Finding that the distance of that province rendered all his efforts against it feeble and uncertain, he purposed to attack France in a quarter where she appeared more vulnerable; and with this view he married his daughter Elizabeth to John, earl of Holland, and at the same time contracted an alliance with Guy, earl of Flanders, stipulated to pay him the sum of seventy-five thousand pounds, and projected an invasion with their united forces upon Philip, their common enemy.[**] He hoped that, when he himself, at the head of the English, Flemish, and Dutch armies, reënforced by his German allies, to whom he had promised or remitted considerable sums, should enter die frontiers of France, and threaten the capital itself, Philip would at last be obliged to relinquish his acquisitions, and purchase peace by the restitution of Guienne. But in order to set this great machine in movement, considerable supplies were requisite from the parliament; and Edward, without much difficulty, obtained from the barons and knights a new grant of a twelfth of all their movables, and from the boroughs that of an eighth. The great and almost unlimited power of the king over the latter, enabled him to throw the heavier part of the burden on them; and the prejudices which he seems always to have entertained against the church, on account of the former zeal of the clergy for the Mountfort faction, made him resolve to load them with still more considerable impositions, and he required of them a fifth of their movables. But he here met with an opposition, which for some time disconcerted all his measures, and engaged him in enterprises that were somewhat dangerous to him; and would have proved fatal to any of his predecessors.

Boniface VIII., who had succeeded Celestine in the papal throne, was a man of the most lofty and enterprising spirit; and though not endowed with that severity of manners which commonly accompanies ambition in men of his order, he was determined to carry the authority of the tiara, and his dominion over the temporal power, to as great a height as it had ever attained in any former period. Sensible that his immediate predecessors, by oppressing the church in every province of Christendom, had extremely alienated the affections of the clergy, and had afforded the civil magistrate a pretence for laying like impositions on ecclesiastical revenues, he attempted to resume the former station of the sovereign pontiff, and to establish himself as the common protector of the spiritual order against all invaders. For this purpose he issued very early in his pontificate a general bull, prohibiting all princes from levying without his consent any taxes upon the clergy, and all clergymen from submitting to such impositions; and he threatened both of them with the penalties of excommunication in case of disobedience.[*] This important edict is said to have been procured by the solicitation of Robert de Win chelsey, archbishop of Canterbury, who intended to employ it as a rampart against the violent extortions which the church had felt from Edward, and the still greater, which that prince’s multiplied necessities gave them reason to apprehend. When a demand, therefore, was made on the clergy of a fifth of their movables, a tax which was probably much more grievous than a fifth of their revenue, as their lands were mostly stocked with their cattle, and cultivated by their villains, the clergy took shelter under the bull of Pope Boniface and pleaded conscience in refusing compliance.[**] The king came not immediately to extremities on this repulse; but after locking up all their granaries and barns, and prohibiting all rent to be paid them, he appointed a new synod, to confer with him upon his demand. The primate, not dismayed by these proofs of Edward’s resolution, here plainly told him that the clergy owed obedience to two sovereigns, their spiritual and their temporal; but their duty bound them to a much stricter attachment to the former than to the latter: they could not comply with his commands, (for such, in some measure, the requests of the crown were then deemed,) in contradiction to the express prohibition of the sovereign pontiff.[***]

1297.

The clergy had seen, in many instances, that Edward paid little regard to those numerous privileges on which they set so high a value. He had formerly seized, in an arbitrary manner, all the money and plate belonging to the churches and convents, and had applied them to the public service;[*] and they could not but expect more violent treatment on this sharp refusal, grounded on such dangerous principles. Instead of applying to the pope for a relaxation of his bull, he resolved immediately to employ the power in his hands; and he told the ecclesiastics that, since they refused to support the civil government, they were unworthy to receive any benefit from it; and he would accordingly put them out of the protection of the laws. This vigorous measure was immediately carried into execution.[**] Orders were issued to the judges to receive no cause brought before them by the clergy; to hear and decide all causes in which they were defendants; to do every man justice against them; to do them justice against nobody.[***] The ecclesiastics soon found themselves in the most miserable situation imaginable. They could not remain in their own houses or convents for want of subsistence; if they went abroad in quest of maintenance, they were dismounted, robbed of their horses and clothes, abused by every ruffian, and no redress could be obtained by them for the most violent injury. The primate himself was attacked on the highway, was stripped of his equipage and furniture, and was at last reduced to board himself with a single servant in the house of a country clergyman.[****] The king, meanwhile, remained an indifferent spectator of all these violences: and without employing his officers in committing any immediate injury on the priests, which might have appeared invidious and oppressive, he took ample vengeance on them for their obstinate refusal of his demands. Though the archbishop issued a general sentence of excommunication against all who attacked the persons or property of ecclesiastics, it was not regarded; while Edward enjoyed the satisfaction of seeing the people become the voluntary instruments of his justice against them, and inure themselves to throw off that respect for the sacred order by which they had so long been overawed and governed.

The spirits of the clergy were at last broken by this harsh treatment. Besides that the whole province of York, which lay nearest the danger that still hung over them from the Scots, voluntarily, from the first, voted a fifth of their movables, the bishops of Salisbury, Ely, and some others, made a composition for the secular clergy within their dioceses; and they agreed not to pay the fifth, which would have been an act of disobedience to Boniface’s bull, but to deposit a sum equivalent in some church appointed them, whence it was taken by the king’s officers.[*] Many particular convents and clergymen made payment of a like sum, and received the king’s protection.[**] Those who had not ready money, entered into recognizances for the payment. And there was scarcely found one ecclesiastic in the kingdom who seemed willing to suffer, for the sake of religious privileges, this new species of martyrdom, the most tedious and languishing of any, the most mortifying to spiritual pride, and not rewarded by that crown of glory which the church holds up with such ostentation to her devoted adherents.

But as the money granted by parliament, though considerable, was not sufficient to supply the king’s necessities, and that levied by compositions with the clergy came in slowly, Edward was obliged, for the obtaining of further supply, to exert his arbitrary power, and to lay an oppressive hand on all orders of men in the kingdom. He limited the merchants in the quantity of wool allowed to be exported; and at the same time forced them to pay him a duty of forty shillings a sack, which was computed to be above the third of the value.[***] He seized all the rest of the wool, as well as all the leather of the kingdom, into his hands, and disposed of these commodities for his own benefit;[****] he required the sheriffs of each county to supply him with two thousand quarters of wheat, and as many of oats, which he permitted them to seize wherever they could find them: the cattle and other commodities necessary for supplying his army, were laid hold of without the consent of the owners;[*****] and though he promised to pay afterwards the equivalent of all these goods, men saw but little probability that a prince, who submitted so little to the limitations of law, could ever, amidst his multiplied necessities, be reduced to a strict observance of his engagements.

He showed at the same time an equal disregard to the principles of the feudal law, by which all the lands of his kingdom were held: in order to increase his army, and enable him to support that great effort which he intended to make against France, he required the attendance of every proprietor of land possessed of twenty pounds a year, even though he held not of the crown, and was not obliged by his tenure to perform any such service.[*]

These acts of violence and of arbitrary power, notwithstanding the great personal regard generally borne to the king, bred murmurs in every order of men; and it was not long ere some of the great nobility, jealous of their own privileges, as well as of national liberty, gave countenance and authority to these complaints. Edward assembled on the sea-coast an army which he purposed to send over to Gascony, while he himself should in person make an impression on the side of Flanders; and he intended to put these forces under the command of Humphrey Bohun, earl of Hereford, the constable, and Roger Bigod, earl of Norfolk, the mareschal of England. But these two powerful earls refused to execute his commands, and affirmed that they were only obliged by their office to attend his person in the wars. A violent altercation ensued: and the king, in the height of his passion, addressing himself to the constable, exclaimed, “Sir Earl, by God, you shall either go or hang.” “By God, Sir King,” replied Hereford, “I will neither go nor hang.”[**] And he immediately departed with the mareschal and above thirty other considerable barons.

Upon this opposition, the king laid aside the project of an expedition against Guienne, and assembled the forces which he himself purposed to transport into Flanders. But the two earls, irritated in the contest and elated by impunity, pretending that none of their ancestors had ever served in that country, refused to perform the duty of their office in mustering the army.[***] The king, now finding it advisable to proceed with moderation, instead of attainting the earls, who possessed their dignities by hereditary right, appointed Thomas de Berkeley and Geoffrey de Geyneville to act in that emergence as constable and mareschal.[****]

He endeavored to reconcile himself with the church; took the primate again into favor,[*] made him, in conjunction with Reginald de Grey, tutor to the prince, whom he intended to appoint guardian of the kingdom during his absence; and he even assembled a great number of the nobility in Westminster Hall, to whom he deigned to make an apology for his past conduct. He pleaded the urgent necessities of the crown; his extreme want of money; his engagements from honor as well as interest to support his foreign allies; and he promised, if ever he returned in safety, to redress all their grievances, to restore the execution of the laws, and to make all his subjects compensation for the losses which they had sustained. Meanwhile, he begged them to suspend their animosities; to judge of him by his future conduct, of which, he hoped, he should be more master; to remain faithful to his government, or, if he perished in the present war, to preserve their allegiance to his son and successor.[**]

There were, certainly, from the concurrence of discontents among the great, and grievances of the people, materials sufficient in any other period to have kindled a civil war in England: but the vigor and abilities of Edward kept every one in awe; and his dexterity in stopping on the brink of danger, and retracting the measures to which he had been pushed by his violent temper and arbitrary principles, saved the nation from so great a calamity. The two great earls dared not to break out into open violence: they proceeded no further than framing a remonstrance, which was delivered to the king at Winchelsea, when he was ready to embark for Flanders. They there complained of the violations of the Great Charter, and that of forests; the violent seizure of corn, leather, cattle, and, above all, of wool, a commodity which they affirmed to be equal in value to half the lands of the kingdom; the arbitrary imposition of forty shillings a sack on the small quantity of wool allowed to be exported by the merchants; and they claimed an immediate redress of all these grievances.[***] The king told them that the greater part of his council were now at a distance, and without their advice he could not deliberate on measures of so great importance.[****]

But the constable and mareschal, with the barons of their party resolved to take advantage of Edward’s absence and to obtain an explicit assent to their demands. When summoned to attend the parliament at London, they came with a great body of cavalry and infantry; and before they would enter the city, required that the gates should be put into their custody.[*] The primate, who secretly favored all their pretensions, advised the council to comply; and thus they became masters both of the young prince and of the resolutions of parliament. Their demands, however, were moderate, and such as sufficiently justify the purity of their intentions in all their past measures: they only required that the two charters should receive a solemn confirmation; that a clause should be added to secure the nation forever against all impositions and taxes without consent of parliament; and that they themselves, and their adherents, who had refused to attend the king into Flanders, should be pardoned for the offence, and should be again received into favor.[**] The prince of Wales and his council assented to these terms, and the charters were sent over to the king in Flanders, to be there confirmed by him. Edward felt the utmost reluctance to this measure, which, he apprehended, would for the future impose fetters on his conduct, and set limits to his lawless authority. On various pretences he delayed three days giving any answer to the deputies; and when the pernicious consequences of his refusal were represented to him, he was at last obliged, after many internal struggles, to affix his seal to the charters, as also to the clause that bereaved him of the power which he had hitherto assumed, of imposing arbitrary taxes upon the people.

That we may finish at once this interesting transaction concerning the settlement of the charters, we shall briefly mention the subsequent events which relate to it. The constable and mareschal, informed of the king’s compliance, were satisfied, and not only ceased from disturbing the government, but assisted the regency with their power against the Scots, who had risen in arms, and had thrown off the yoke of England.[***]

But being sensible that the smallest pretence would suffice to make Edward retract these detested laws, which, though they had often received the sanction both of king and parliament, and had been acknowledged during three reigns, were never yet deemed to have sufficient validity, they insisted that he should again confirm them on his return to England, and should thereby renounce all plea which he might derive from his residing in a foreign country when he formerly affixed his seal to them.[*] It appeared that they judged aright of Edward’s character and intentions: he delayed this confirmation as long as possible; and, when the fear of worse consequences obliged him again to comply, he expressly added a salvo for his royal dignity or prerogative, which in effect enervated the whole force of the charters.[**] The two earls and their adherents left the parliament in disgust; and the king was constrained on a future occasion to grant to the people, without any subterfuge, a pure and absolute confirmation of those laws[***] which were so much the object of their passionate affection. Even further securities were then provided for the establishment of national privileges. Three knights were appointed to be chosen in each county, and were invested with the power of punishing, by fine and imprisonment, every transgression or violation of the charters;[****] a precaution which, though it was soon disused, as encroaching too much on royal prerogative, proves the attachment which the English in that age bore to liberty, and their well-grounded jealousy of the arbitrary disposition of Edward.

The work, however, was not yet entirely finished and complete. In order to execute the lesser charter, it was requisite, by new perambulations, to set bounds to the royal forests, and to disafforest all land which former encroachments had comprehended within their limits. Edward discovered the same reluctance to comply with this equitable demand; and it was not till after many delays on his part, and many solicitations and requests, and even menaces of war and violence,[*****] on the part of the barons, that the perambulations were made, and exact boundaries fixed by a jury in each county to the extent of his forests.[******] Had not his ambitious and active temper raised him so many foreign enemies, and obliged him to have recourse so often to the assistance of his subjects, it is not likely that those concessions could ever have been extorted from him.

But while the people, after so many successful struggles, deemed themselves happy in the secure possession of their privileges, they were surprised in 1305 to find that Edward had secretly applied to Rome, and had procured from that mercenary court an absolution from all the oaths and engagements, which he had so often reiterated, to observe both the charters. There are some historians,[*] so credulous as to imagine, that this perilous step was taken by him for no other purpose than to acquire the merit of granting a new confirmation of the charters, as he did soon after; and a confirmation so much the more unquestionable, as it could never after be invalidated by his successors, on pretence of any force or violence which had been imposed upon him. But, besides that this might have been done with a better grace if he had never applied for any such absolution, the whole tenor of his conduct proves him to be little susceptible of such refinements in patriotism; and this very deed itself, in which he anew confirmed the charters, carries on the face of it a very opposite presumption. Though he ratified the charters in general, he still took advantage of the papal bull so far as to invalidate the late perambulations of the forests, which had been made with such care and attention, and to reserve to himself the power, in case of favorable incidents, to extend as much as formerly those arbitrary jurisdictions. If the power was not in fact made use of, we can only conclude that the favorable incidents did not offer.

Thus, after the contests of near a whole century, and these ever accompanied with violent jealousies, often with public convulsions, the Great Charter was finally established; and the English nation have the honor of extorting, by their perseverance, this concession from the ablest, the most warlike, and the most ambitious of all their princes.[**] It is computed that above thirty confirmations of the charter were done at different times.

To return to the period from which this account of the charters has led us: though the king’s impatience to appear at the head of his armies in Flanders made him overlook all considerations, either of domestic discontents or of commotions among the Scots, his embarkation had been so long retarded by the various obstructions thrown in his way, that he lost the proper season for action, and after his arrival made no progress against the enemy. The king of France, taking advantage of his absence, had broken into the Low Countries; had defeated the Flemings in the battle of Furnes; had made himself master of Lisle, St. Omer, Courtrai, and Ypres; and seemed in a situation to take full vengeance on the earl of Flanders, his rebellious vassal. But Edward, seconded by an English army of fifty thousand men, (for this is the number assigned by historians,[*]) was able to stop the career of his victories; and Philip, finding all the weak resources of his kingdom already exhausted, began to dread a reverse of fortune, and to apprehend an invasion on France itself.

The king of England, on the other hand, disappointed of assistance from Adolph, king of the Romans, which he had purchased at a very high price, and finding many urgent calls for his presence in England, was desirous of ending, on any honorable terms, a war which served only to divert his force from the execution of more important projects. This disposition in both monarchs soon produced a cessation of hostilities for two years; and engaged them to submit their differences to the arbitration of Pope Boniface.

1298.

Boniface was among the last of the sovereign pontiffs that exercised an authority over the temporal jurisdiction of princes; and these exorbitant pretensions, which he had been tempted to assume from the successful example of his predecessors, but of which the season was now past, involved him in so many calamities, and were attended with so unfortunate a catastrophe, that they have been secretly abandoned, though never openly relinquished, by his successors in the apostolic chair. Edward and Philip, equally jealous of papal claims, took care to insert in their reference, that Boniface was made judge of the difference by their consent, as a private person, not by any right of his pontificate; and the pope, without seeming to be offended at this mortifying clause, proceeded to give a sentence between them, in which they both acquiesced.[*] He brought them to agree, that their union should be cemented by a double marriage; that of Edward himself, who was now a widower, with Margaret, Philip’s sister, and that of the prince of Wales with Isabella, daughter of that monarch.[**]

Philip was likewise willing to restore Guienne to the English, which he had indeed no good pretence to detain; but he insisted that the Scots, and their king, John Baliol, should, as his allies, be comprehended in the treaty, and should be restored to their liberty. The difference., after several disputes, was compromised, by their making mutual sacrifices to each other. Edward agreed to abandon his ally the earl of Flanders, on condition that Philip should treat in like manner his ally the king of Scots. The prospect of conquering these two countries, whose situation made them so commodious an acquisition to the respective kingdoms, prevailed over all other considerations; and though they were both finally disappointed in their hopes, their conduct was very reconcilable to the principles of an interested policy. This was the first specimen which the Scots had of the French alliance, and which was exactly conformable to what a smaller power must always expect, when it blindly attaches itself to the will and fortunes of a greater. That unhappy people now engaged in a brave though unequal contest for their liberties, were totally abandoned, by the ally in whom they reposed their final confidence, to the will of an imperious conqueror.

Though England, as well as other European countries, was, in its ancient state, very ill qualified for making, and still worse for maintaining conquests, Scotland was so much inferior in its internal force, and was so ill situated for receiving foreign succors, that it is no wonder Edward, an ambitious monarch, should have cast his eye on so tempting an acquisition, which brought both security and greatness to his native country. But the instruments whom he employed to maintain his dominion over the northern kingdom were not happily chosen, and acted not with the requisite prudence and moderation, in reconciling the Scottish nation to a yoke which they bore with such extreme reluctance. Warrenne, retiring into England on account of his bad state of health, left the administration entirely in the hands of Ormesby, who was appointed justiciary of Scotland, and Cressingham, who bore the office of treasurer; and a small military force remained, to secure the precarious authority of those ministers. The latter had no other object than the amassing of money by rapine and injustice: the former distinguished himself by the rigor and severity of his temper: and both of them, treating the Scots as a conquered people, made them sensible, too early, of the grievous servitude into which they had fallen. As Edward required that all the proprietors of land should swear fealty to him, every one who refused or delayed giving this testimony of submission, was outlawed and imprisoned, and punished without mercy; and the bravest and most generous spirits of the nation were thus exasperated to the highest degree against the English government.[*]

There was one William Wallace, of a small fortune, but descended of an ancient family in the west of Scotland, whose courage prompted him to undertake, and enabled him finally to accomplish, the desperate attempt of delivering his native country from the dominion of foreigners. This man, whose valorous exploits are the object of just admiration, but have been much exaggerated by the traditions of his countrymen, had been provoked by the insolence of an English officer to put him to death; and finding himself obnoxious on that account to the severity of the administration, he fled into the woods, and offered himself as a leader to all those whom their crimes, or bad fortune, or avowed hatred of the English, had reduced to a like necessity. He was endowed with gigantic force of body, with heroic courage of mind, with disinterested magnanimity, with incredible patience, and ability to bear hunger, fatigue, and all the severities of the seasons; and he soon acquired, among those desperate fugitives, that authority to which his virtues so justly entitled him. Beginning with small attempts, in which he was always successful, he gradually proceeded to more momentous enterprises; and he discovered equal caution in securing his followers, and valor in annoying the enemy. By his knowledge of the country he was enabled, when pursued, to insure a retreat among the morasses, or forests, or mountains; and again collecting his dispersed associates, he unexpectedly appeared in another quarter, and surprised, and routed, and put to the sword the unwary English. Every day brought accounts of his great actions, which were received with no less favor by his countrymen than terror by the enemy: all those who thirsted after military fame were desirous to partake of his renown: his successful valor seemed to vindicate the nation from the ignominy into which it had fallen, by its tame submission to the English; and though no nobleman of note ventured as yet to join his party, he had gained a general confidence and attachment, which birth and fortune are not alone able to confer.

Wallace, having, by many fortunate enterprises, brought the valor of his followers to correspond to his own, resolved to strike a decisive blow against the English government; and he concerted the plan of attacking Ormesby at Scone; and of taking vengeance on him for all the violence and tyranny of which he had been guilty. The justiciary, apprised of his intentions, fled hastily into England: all the other officers of that nation imitated his example: their terror added alacrity and courage to the Scots, who betook themselves to arms in every quarter; many of the principal barons, and among the rest Sir William Douglas,[*] openly countenanced Wallace’s party: Robert Bruce secretly favored and promoted the same cause: and the Scots, shaking off their fetters, prepared themselves to defend, by a united effort, that liberty which they had so unexpectedly recovered from the hands of their oppressors.

But Warrenne, collecting an army of forty thousand men in the north of England, determined to reëstablish his authority; and he endeavored, by the celerity of his armament and of his march, to compensate for his past negligence, which had enabled the Scots to throw off the English government. He suddenly entered Annandale, and came up with the enemy at Irvine, before their forces were fully collected, and before they had put themselves in a posture of defence. Many of the Scottish nobles, alarmed with their dangerous situation, here submitted to the English, renewed their oaths of fealty, promised to deliver hostages for their good behavior, and received a pardon for past offences.[*] Others, who had not yet declared themselves, such as the steward of Scotland and the earl of Lenox, joined, though with reluctance, the English army, and waited a favorable opportunity for embracing the cause of their distressed countrymen. But Wallace, whose authority over his retainers was more fully confirmed by the absence of the great nobles, persevered obstinately in his purpose; and finding himself unable to give battle to the enemy, he marched northwards, with an intention of prolonging the war, and of turning to his advantage the situation of that mountainous and barren country. When Warrenne advanced to Stirling, he found Wallace encamped at Cambuskenneth, on the opposite banks of the Forth; and being continually urged by the impatient Cressingham, who was actuated both by personal and national animosities against the Scots,[**] he prepared to attack them in that position, which Wallace, no less prudent than courageous, had chosen for his army.[***]

In spite of the remonstrances of Sir Richard Lundy, a Scotchman of birth and family, who sincerely adhered to the English, he ordered his army to pass a bridge which lay over the Forth; but he was soon convinced, by fatal experience, of the error of his conduct. Wallace, allowing such numbers of the English to pass as he thought proper, attacked them before they were fully formed, put them to rout, pushed part of them into the river, destroyed the rest by the edge of the sword, and gained a complete victory over them.[*] Among the slain was Cressingham himself, whose memory was so extremely odious to the Scots, that they flayed his dead body, and made saddles and girths of his skin.[**] Warrenne, finding the remainder of his army much dismayed by this misfortune, was obliged again to evacuate the kingdom, and retire into England. The Castles of Roxburgh and Berwick, ill fortified and feebly defended, fell soon after into the hands of the Scots.

Wallace, universally revered as the deliverer of his country, now received, from the hands of his followers, the dignity of regent or guardian under the captive Baliol; and finding that the disorders of war, as well as the unfavorable seasons, had produced a famine in Scotland, he urged his army to march into England, to subsist at the expense of the enemy, and to revenge all past injuries, by retaliating on that hostile nation. The Scots, who deemed everything possible under such a leader, joyfully attended his call. Wallace, breaking into the northern counties during the winter season, laid every place waste with fire and sword; and after extending on all sides, without opposition, the fury of his ravages as far as the bishopric of Durham, he returned, loaded with spoils and crowned with glory, into his own country.[***] The disorders which at that time prevailed in England, from the refractory behavior of the constable and mareschal, made it impossible to collect an army sufficient to resist the enemy, and exposed the nation to this loss and dishonor.

But Edward, who received in Flanders intelligence of these events, and had already concluded a truce with France, now hastened over to England, in certain hopes, by his activity and valor, not only of wiping off this disgrace, but of recovering the important conquest of Scotland, which he always regarded as the chief glory and advantage of his reign. He appeased the murmurs of his people by concessions and promises: he restored to the citizens of London the election of their own magistrates, of which they had been bereaved in the latter part of his father’s reign: he ordered strict inquiry to be made concerning the corn and other goods which had been violently seized before his departure, as if he intended to pay the value to the owners:[*] and making public professions of confirming and observing the charters he regained the confidence of the discontented nobles. Having by all these popular arts rendered himself entirely master of his people, he collected the whole military force of England, Wales, and Ireland, and marched with an army of near a hundred thousand combatants to the northern frontiers.

Nothing could have enabled the Scots to resist, but for one season, so mighty a power, except an entire union among themselves; but as they were deprived of their king, whose personal qualities, even when he was present, appeared so contemptible, and had left among his subjects no principle of attachment to him or his family, factions, jealousies, and animosities unavoidably arose among the great, and distracted all their councils. The elevation of Wallace, though purchased by so great merit, and such eminent services, was the object of envy to the nobility, who repined to see a private gentleman raised above them by his rank, and still more by his glory and reputation. Wallace himself, sensible of their jealousy and dreading the ruin of his country from those intestine discords, voluntarily resigned his authority, and retained only the command over that body of his followers who, being accustomed to victory under his standard, refused to follow into the field any other leader. The chief power devolved on the steward of Scotland, and Cummin of Badenoch; men of eminent birth, under whom the great chieftains were more willing to serve in defence of their country. The two Scottish commanders, collecting their several forces from every quarter, fixed their station at Falkirk, and purposed there to abide the assault of the English. Wallace was at the head of a third body, which acted under his command. The Scottish army placed their pikemen along their front; lined the intervals between the three bodies with archers; and dreading the great superiority of the English in cavalry, endeavored to secure their front by palisadoes, tied together by ropes.[**] In this disposition they expected the approach of the enemy.

The king, when he arrived in sight of the Scots, was pleased with the prospect of being able, by one decisive stroke, to determine the fortune of the war; and dividing his army also into three bodies, he led them to the attack. The English archers, who began about this time to surpass those of other nations, first chased the Scottish bowmen off the field; then pouring in their arrows among the pikemen, who were cooped up within their intrenchments, threw them into disorder, and rendered the assault of the English pikemen and cavalry more easy and successful. The whole Scottish army was broken, and chased off the field with great slaughter; which the historians, attending more to the exaggerated relations of the populace than to the probability of things, make amount to fifty or sixty thousand men.[*] It is only certain, that the Scots never suffered a greater loss in any action, nor one which seemed to threaten more inevitable ruin to their country.

In this general rout of the army, Wallace’s military skill and presence of mind enabled him to keep his troops entire and retiring behind the Carron, he marched leisurely along the banks of that small river, which protected him from the enemy. Young Bruce, who had already given many proofs of his aspiring genius, but who served hitherto in the English army, appeared on the opposite banks, and distinguishing the Scottish chief, as well by his majestic port as by the intrepid activity of his behavior, called out to him, and desired a short conference. He here represented to Wallace the fruitless and ruinous enterprise in which he was engaged; and endeavored to bend his inflexible spirit to submission under superior power and superior fortune: he insisted on the unequal contest between a weak state, deprived of its head and agitated by intestine discord, and a mighty nation, conducted by the ablest and most martial monarch of the age, and possessed of every resource either for protracting the war, or for pushing it with vigor and activity; if the love of his country were his motive for perseverence, his obstinacy tended only to prolong her misery; if he carried his views to private grandeur and ambition, he might reflect that, even if Edward should withdraw his armies, it appeared from past experience, that so many haughty nobles, proud of the preeminence of their families, would never submit to personal merit, whose superiority they were less inclined to regard as an object of admiration than as a reproach and injury to themselves. To these exhortations Wallace replied that, if he had hitherto acted alone, as the champion of his country, it was solely because no second or competitor, or what he rather wished, no leader, had yet appeared to place himself in that honorable station: that the blame lay entirely on the nobility, and chiefly on Bruce himself, who, uniting personal merit to dignity of family, had deserted the post which both nature and fortune, by such powerful calls, invited him to assume: that the Scots, possessed of such a head, would, by their unanimity and concord, have surmounted the chief difficulty under which they now labored, and might hope, notwithstanding their present losses, to oppose successfully all the power and abilities of Edward: that heaven itself could not set a more glorious prize before the eyes either of virtue or ambition, than to join in one object, the acquisition of royalty with the defence of national independence: and that as the interests of his country, no more than those of a brave man, could never be sincerely cultivated by a sacrifice of liberty, he himself was determined, as far as possible, to prolong, not her misery, but her freedom, and was desirous that his own life, as well as the existence of the nation, might terminate when they could no otherwise be preserved than by receiving the chains of a haughty victor. The gallantry of these sentiments, though delivered by an armed enemy, struck the generous mind of Bruce: the flame was conveyed from the breast of one hero to that of another: he repented of his engagements with Edward; and opening his eyes to the honorable path pointed out to him by Wallace, secretly determined to seize the first opportunity of embracing the cause, however desperate, of his oppressed country.[*]

1299.

The subjection of Scotland, notwithstanding this great victory of Edward, was not yet entirely completed. The English army, after reducing the southern provinces, was obliged to retire for want of provisions; and left the northern counties in the hands of the natives. The Scots, no less enraged at their present defeat than elated by their past victories, still maintained the contest for liberty; but being fully sensible of the great inferiority of their force, they endeavored, by applications to foreign courts, to procure to themselves some assistance. The supplications of the Scottish ministers were rejected by Philip; but were more successful with the court of Rome.

1300.

Boniface, pleased with an occasion of exerting his authority, wrote a letter to Edward, exhorting him to put a stop to his oppressions in Scotland, and displaying all the proofs, such as they had probably been furnished him by the Scots themselves, for the ancient independence of that kingdom.[*] Among other arguments hinted at above, he mentioned the treaty conducted and finished by Edward himself, for the marriage of his son with the heiress of Scotland; a treaty which would have been absurd, had he been superior lord of the kingdom, and had possessed by the feudal law the right of disposing of his ward in marriage. He mentioned several other striking facts, which fell within the compass of Edward’s own knowledge particularly that Alexander, when he did homage to the king, openly and expressly declared in his presence, that he swore fealty not for his crown, but for the lands which he held in England: and the pope’s letter might have passed for a reasonable one, had he not subjoined his own claim to be liege lord of Scotland; a claim which had not once been heard of, but which, with a singular confidence, he asserted to be full, entire, and derived from the most remote antiquity. The affirmative style, which had been so successful with him and his predecessors in spiritual contests, was never before abused after a more egregious manner in any civil controversy.

1301.

The reply which Edward made to Boniface’s letter, contains particulars no less singular and remarkable.[**] He there proves the superiority of England by historical facts, deduced from the period of Brutus, the Trojan, who, he said, founded the British monarchy in the age of Eli and Samuel: he supports his position by all the events which passed in the island before the arrival of the Romans: and after laying great stress on the extensive dominions and heroic victories of King Arthur, he vouchsafes at last to descend to the time of Edward the Elder, with which, in his speech to the states of Scotland, he had chosen to begin his claim of superiority. He asserts it to be a fact, “notorious and confirmed by the records of antiquity,” that the English monarchs had often conferred the kingdom of Scotland on their own subjects, had dethroned these vassal kings when unfaithful to them; and had substituted others in their stead.

He displays with great pomp the full and complete homage which William had done to Henry II.; without mentioning the formal abolition of that extorted deed by King Richard, and the renunciation of all future claims of the same nature. Yet this paper he begins with a solemn appeal to the Almighty, the searcher of hearts for his own firm persuasion of the justice of his claim; and no less than a hundred and four barons, assembled in parliament at Lincoln, concur in maintaining before the pope, under their seals, the validity of these pretensions.[*] At the same time, however, they take care to inform Boniface, that, though they had justified their cause before him, they did not acknowledge him for their judge: the crown of England was free and sovereign: they had sworn to maintain all its royal prerogatives, and would never permit the king himself, were he willing, to relinquish its independency.

1302.

That neglect, almost total, of truth and justice, which sovereign states discover in their transactions with each other, is an evil universal and inveterate; is one great source of the misery to which the human race is continually exposed; and it may be doubted whether, in many instances, it be found in the end to contribute to the interests of those princes themselves, who thus sacrifice their integrity to their politics. As few monarchs have lain under stronger temptations to violate the principles of equity than Edward in his transactions with Scotland, so never were they violated with less scruple and reserve: yet his advantages were hitherto precarious and uncertain, and the Scots, once roused to arms and inured to war, began to appear a formidable enemy, even to this military and ambitious monarch. They chose John Cummin for their regent; and, not content with maintaining their independence in the northern parts, they made incursions into the southern counties, which Edward imagined he had totally subdued. John de Segrave, whom he had left guardian of Scotland, led an army to oppose them; and lying at Roslin, near Edinburgh, sent out his forces in three divisions, to provide themselves with forage and subsistence from the neighborhood.

1303.

One party was suddenly attacked by the regent and Sir Simon Fraser; and being unprepared, was immediately routed and pursued with great slaughter. The few that escaped, flying to the second division, gave warning of the approach of the enemy: the soldiers ran to their arms; and were immediately led on to take revenge for the death of their countrymen. The Scots, elated with the advantage already obtained made a vigorous impression upon them: the English, animated with a thirst of vengeance, maintained a stout resistance: the victory was long undecided between them; but at last declared itself entirely in favor of the former, who broke the English, and chased them to the third division, now advancing with a hasty march to support their distressed companions. Many of the Scots had fallen in the two first actions; most of them were wounded, and all of them extremely fatigued by the long continuance of the combat: yet were they so transported with success and military rage, that, having suddenly recovered their order, and arming the followers of their camp with the spoils of the slaughtered enemy, they drove with fury upon the ranks of the dismayed English. The favorable moment decided the battle; which the Scots, had they met with a steady resistance, were not long able to maintain: the English were chased off the field: three victories were thus gained in one day;[*] and the renown of these great exploits, seconded by the favorable dispositions of the people, soon made the regent master of all the fortresses in the south; and it became necessary for Edward to begin anew the conquest of the kingdom.

The king prepared himself for this enterprise with his usual vigor and abilities. He assembled both a great fleet and a great army; and entering the frontiers of Scotland, appeared with a force which the enemy could not think of resisting in the open field: the English navy, which sailed along the coast, secured the army from any danger of famine: Edward’s vigilance preserved it from surprises: and by this prudent disposition they marched victorious from one extremity of the kingdom to the other, ravaging the open country, reducing all the castles,[**] and receiving the submissions of all the nobility, even those of Cummin, the regent.

The most obstinate resistance was made by the Castle of Brechin, defended by Sir Thomas Maule; and the place opened not its gates, till the death of the governor, by discouraging the garrison, obliged them to submit to the fate which had overwhelmed the rest.

1304.

Edward, having completed his conquest, which employed him during the space of near two years, now undertook the more difficult work of settling the country, of establishing a new form of government, and of making his acquisition durable to the crown of England. He seems to have carried matters to extremity against the natives: he abrogated all the Scottish laws and customs:[*] he endeavored to substitute the English in their place: he entirely razed or destroyed all the monuments of antiquity: such records or histories as had escaped his former search were now burnt or dispersed: and he hastened, by too precipitate steps, to abolish entirely the Scottish name, and to sink it finally in the English.

1305.

Edward, however, still deemed his favorite conquest exposed to some danger so long as Wallace was alive; and being prompted both by revenge and policy, he employed every art to discover his retreat, and become master of his person. At last that hardy warrior, who was determined, amidst the universal slavery of his countrymen, still to maintain his independency, was betrayed into Edward’s hands by Sir John Monteith, his friend, whom he had made acquainted with the place of his concealment. The king, whose natural bravery and magnanimity should have induced him to respect like qualities in an enemy, enraged at some acts of violence committed by Wallace during the fury of war, resolved to overawe the Scots by an example of severity: he ordered Wallace to be carried in chains to London; to be tried as a rebel and traitor, though he had never made submissions or sworn fealty to England; and to be executed on Tower Hill. This was the unworthy fate of a hero, who, through a course of many years, had, with signal conduct, intrepidity, and perseverance, defended, against a public and oppressive enemy, the liberties of his native country.

But the barbarous policy of Edward failed of the purpose to which it was directed. The Scots, already disgusted at the great innovations introduced by the sword of a conqueror into their laws and government, were further enraged at the injustice and cruelty exercised upon Wallace; and all the envy which, during his lifetime, had attended that gallant chief, being now buried in his grave, he was universally regarded as the champion of Scotland and the patron of her expiring independency. The people, inflamed with resentment, were every where disposed to rise against the English government; and it was not long ere a new and more fortunate leader presented himself, who conducted them to liberty, to victory, and to vengeance.

1306.

Robert Bruce, grandson of that Robert who had been one of the competitors for the crown, had succeeded, by his grandfather’s and father’s death, to all their rights; and the demise of John Baliol, together with the captivity of Edward, eldest son of that prince, seemed to open a full career to the genius and ambition of this young nobleman. He saw that the Scots, when the title to their crown had expired in the males of their ancient royal family, had been divided into parties nearly equal between the houses of Bruce and Baliol; and that every incident which had since happened, had tended to wean them from any attachment to the latter. The slender capacity of John had proved unable to defend them against their enemies: he had meanly resigned his crown into the hands of the conqueror: he had, before his deliverance from captivity, reiterated that resignation in a manner seemingly voluntary; and had in that deed thrown out many reflections extremely dishonorable to his ancient subjects, whom he publicly called traitors, ruffians, and rebels, and with whom, he declared, he was determined to maintain no further correspondence;[*] he had, during the time of his exile, adhered strictly to that resolution; and his son, being a prisoner, seemed ill qualified to revive the rights, now fully abandoned, of his family.

Bruce therefore hoped that the Scots, so long exposed, from the want of a leader, to the oppressions of their enemies, would unanimously fly to his standard, and would seat him on the vacant throne, to which he brought such plausible pretensions. His aspiring spirit, inflamed by the fervor of youth, and buoyed up by his natural courage, saw the glory alone of the enterprise, or regarded the prodigious difficulties which attended it as the source only of further glory. The miseries and oppressions which he had beheld his countrymen suffer in their unequal contest, the repeated defeats and misfortunes which they had undergone, proved to him so many incentives to bring them relief, and conduct them to vengeance against the haughty victor. The circumstances which attended Bruce’s first declaration are variously related; but we shall rather follow the account given by the Scottish historians; not that their authority is in general anywise comparable to that of the English, but because they may be supposed sometimes better informed concerning facts which so nearly interested their own nation.

Bruce, who had long harbored in his breast the design of freeing his enslaved country, ventured at last to open his mind to John Cummin, a powerful nobleman, with whom he lived in strict intimacy. He found his friend, as he imagined, fully possessed with the same sentiments; and he needed to employ no arts of persuasion to make him embrace the resolution of throwing off, on the first favorable opportunity, the usurped dominion of the English. But on the departure of Bruce, who attended Edward to London, Cummin, who either had all along dissembled with him, or began to reflect more coolly in his absence on the desperate nature of the undertaking, resolved to atone for his crime in assenting to this rebellion, by the merit of revealing the secret to the king of England. Edward did not immediately commit Bruce to custody; because he intended at the same time to seize his three brothers, who resided in Scotland; and he contented himself with secretly setting spies upon him, and ordering all his motions to be strictly watched. A nobleman of Edward’s court, Bruce’s intimate friend, was apprised of his danger; but not daring, amidst so many jealous eyes, to hold any conversation with him, he fell on an expedient to give him warning, that it was full time he should make his escape. He sent him by his servant a pair of gilt spurs and a purse of gold, which he pretended to have borrowed from him; and left it to the sagacity of his friend to discover the meaning of the present. Bruce immediately contrived the means of his escape; and as the ground was at that time covered with snow, he had the precaution, it is said, to order his horses to be shod with their shoes inverted, that he might deceive those who should track his path over the open fields or cross roads, through which he purposed to travel. He arrived in a few days at Dumfries, in Annandale, the chief seat of his family interest; and he happily found a great number of the Scottish nobility there assembled, and among the rest, John Cummin, his former associate.

The noblemen were astonished at the appearance of Bruce among them; and still more when he discovered to them the object of his journey. He told them that he was come to live or die with them in defence of the liberties of his country, and hoped, with their assistance, to redeem the Scottish name from all the indignities which it had so long suffered from the tyranny of their imperious masters: that the sacrifice of the rights of his family was the first injury which had prepared the way for their ensuing slavery; and by resuming them, which was his firm purpose, he opened to them the joyful prospect of recovering from the fraudulent usurper their ancient and hereditary independence: that all past misfortunes had proceeded from their disunion; and they would soon appear no less formidable than of old to their enemies, if they now deigned to follow into the field their rightful prince, who knew no medium between death and victory, that their mountains and their valor, which had, during so many ages, protected their liberty from all the efforts of the Roman empire, would still be sufficient, were they worthy of their generous ancestors, to defend them against the utmost violence of the English tyrant: that it was unbecoming men, born to the most ancient independence known in Europe, to submit to the will of any masters; but fatal to receive those who, being irritated by such persevering resistance, and inflamed with the highest animosity, would never deem themselves secure in their usurped dominion but by exterminating all the ancient nobility, and even all the ancient inhabitants: and that, being reduced to this desperate extremity, it were better for them at once to perish like brave men, with swords in their hands, than to dread long, and at last undergo, the fate of the unfortunate Wallace, whose merits, in the brave and obstinate defence of his country, were finally rewarded by the hands of an English executioner.

The spirit with which this discourse was delivered, the bold sentiments which it conveyed, the novelty of Bruce’s declaration, assisted by the graces of his youth and manly deportment, made deep impression on the minds of his audience, and roused all those principles of indignation and revenge, with which they had so long been secretly actuated. The Scottish nobles declared their unanimous resolution to use the utmost efforts in delivering their country from bondage, and to second the courage of Bruce, in asserting his and their undoubted rights against their common oppressors. Cummin alone who had secretly taken his measures with the king, opposed this general determination; and by representing the great power of England, governed by a prince of such uncommon vigor and abilities, he endeavored to set before them the certain destruction which they must expect, if they again violated their oaths of fealty, and shook off their allegiance to the victorious Edward.[*] Bruce, already apprised of his treachery, and foreseeing the certain failure of all his own schemes of ambition and glory from the opposition of so potent a leader, took immediately his resolution; and moved partly by resentment, partly by policy, followed Cummin on the dissolution of the assembly, attacked him in the cloisters of the Gray Friars, through which he passed, and running him through the body, left him for dead. Sir Thomas Kirkpatric, one of Bruce’s friends, asking him soon after if the traitor were slain, “I believe so,” replied Bruce. “And is that a matter,” cried Kirkpatric, “to be left to conjecture? I will secure him.” Upon which he drew his dagger, ran to Cummin, and stabbed him to the heart. This deed of Bruce and his associates, which contains circumstances justly condemned by our present manners, was regarded in that age as an effort of manly vigor and just policy. The family of Kirkpatric took for the crest of their arms, which they still wear, a hand with a bloody dagger; and chose for their motto these words, “I will secure him;” the expression employed by their ancestor when he executed that violent action.

The murder of Cummin affixed the seal to the conspiracy of the Scottish nobles: they had now no resource left but to shake off the yoke of England, or to perish in the attempt: the genius of the nation roused itself from its present dejection: and Bruce, flying to different quarters, excited his partisans to arms, attacked with success the dispersed bodies of the English, got possession of many of the castles, and having made his authority be acknowledged in most parts of the kingdom, was solemnly crowned and inaugurated in the abbey of Scone by the bishop of St. Andrews, who had zealously embraced his cause. The English were again chased out of the kingdom, except such as took shelter in the fortresses that still remained in their hands; and Edward found that the Scots, twice conquered in his reign, and often defeated, must yet be anew subdued. Not discouraged with these unexpected difficulties, he sent Aymer de Valence with a considerable force into Scotland, to check the progress of the malecontents; and that nobleman, falling unexpectedly upon Bruce, at Methven, in Perthshire, threw his army into such disorder as ended in a total defeat.[*] Bruce fought with the most heroic courage, was thrice dismounted in the action, and as often recovered himself; but was at last obliged to yield to superior fortune, and take shelter, with a few followers, in the Western Isles. The earl of Athole, Sir Simon Fraser, and Sir Christopher Seton, who had been taken prisoners, were ordered by Edward to be executed as rebels and traitors.[**]

1307.

Many other acts of rigor were exercised by him; and that prince, vowing revenge against the whole Scottish nation, whom he deemed incorrigible in their aversion to his government, assembled a great army, and was preparing to enter the frontiers, secure of success, and determined to make the defenceless Scots the victims of his severity, when he unexpectedly sickened and died near Carlisle; enjoining with his last breath his son and successor to prosecute the enterprise, and never to desist till he had finally subdued the kingdom of Scotland. He expired in the sixty-ninth year of his age, and the thirty-fifth of his reign, hated by his neighbors, but extremely respected and revered by his own subjects.

The enterprises finished by this prince, and the projects which he formed and brought near to a conclusion, were more prudent, more regularly conducted, and more advantageous to the solid interests of his kingdom, than those which were undertaken in any reign, either of his ancestors or his successors. He restored authority to the government, disordered by the weakness of his father; he maintained the laws against all the efforts of his turbulent barons; he fully annexed to his crown the principality of Wales; he took many wise and vigorous measures for reducing Scotland to a like condition; and though the equity of this latter enterprise may reasonably be questioned, the circumstances of the two kingdoms promised such certain success, and the advantage was so visible of uniting the whole island under one head, that those who give great indulgence to reasons of state in the measures of princes, will not be apt to regard this part of his conduct with much severity. But Edward, however exceptionable his character may appear on the head of justice, is the model of a politic and warlike king: he possessed industry, penetration, courage, vigilance, and enterprise: he was frugal in all expenses that were not necessary; he knew how to open the public treasures on a proper occasion; he punished criminals with severity; he was gracious and affable to his servants and courtiers; and being of a majestic figure, expert in all military exercises, and in the main well proportioned in his limbs, notwithstanding the great length and the smallness of his legs, he was as well qualified to captivate the populace by his exterior appearance, as to gain the approbation of men of sense by his more solid virtues.

But the chief advantage which the people of England reaped, and still continue to reap, from the reign of this great prince, was the correction, extension, amendment, and establishment of the laws which Edward maintained in great vigor, and left much improved to posterity; for the acts of a wise legislator commonly remain, while the acquisition of a conqueror often perish with him. This merit has justly gained to Edward the appellation of the English Justinian. Not only the numerous statutes passed in his reign touch the chief points of jurisprudence, and, according to Sir Edward Coke,[*] truly deserve the name of establishments, because they were more constant, standing, and durable laws than any made since; but the regular order maintained in his administration gave an opportunity to the common law to refine itself, and brought the judges to a certainty in their determinations, and the lawyers to a precision in their pleadings. Sir Matthew Hale has remarked the sudden improvement of English law during this reign; and ventures to assert, that till his own time it had never received any considerable increase.[**] Edward settled the jurisdiction of the several courts; first established the office of justice of peace; abstained from the practice, too common before him, of interrupting justice by mandates from the privy-council;[***] repressed robberies and Edward enacted a law to this purpose; but it is doubtful whether he ever observed it. We are sure that scarcely any of his successors did.

The multitude of these disorders[*] encouraged trade, by giving merchants an easy method of recovering their debts;[**] and, in short, introduced a new face of things by the vigor and wisdom of his administration. As law began now to be well established, the abuse of that blessing began also to be remarked. Instead of their former associations for robbery and violence, men entered into formal combinations to support each other in lawsuits, and it was found requisite to check this iniquity by act of parliament.[***]

There happened in this reign a considerable alteration in the execution of the laws: the king abolished the office of chief justiciary, which, he thought, possessed too much power, and was dangerous to the crown;[****] he completed the division of the court of exchequer into four distinct courts, which managed each its several branch, without dependence on any one magistrate; and as the lawyers afterwards invented a method, by means of their fictions, of carrying business from one court to another, the several courts became rivals and checks to each other; a circumstance which tended much to improve the practice of the law in England.

But though Edward appeared thus, throughout his whole reign, a friend to law and justice, it cannot be said that he was an enemy to arbitrary power; and in a government more regular and legal than was that of England in his age, such practices as those which may be remarked in his administration, would have given sufficient ground of complaint, and sometimes were even in his age the object of general displeasure. The violent plunder and banishment of the Jews; the putting of the whole clergy at once, and by an arbitrary edict, out of the protection of law; the seizing of all the wool and leather of the kingdom; the heightening of the impositions on the former valuable commodity; the new and illegal commission of Trailbaston; the taking of all the money and plate of monasteries and churches, even before he had any quarrel with the clergy; the subjecting of every man possessed of twenty pounds a year to military service, though by the statute of Northampton, passed in the second of Edward III.; but it still continued, like many other abuses. There are instances of it so late as the reign of Queen Elizabeth.

The chief obstacle to the execution of justice in those times was the power of the great barons; and Edward was perfectly qualified, by his character and abilities, for keeping these tyrants in awe, and restraining their illegal practices. This salutary purpose was accordingly the great object of his attention; yet was he imprudently led into a measure which tended to increase and confirm their dangerous authority. He passed a statute which, by allowing them to entail their estates, made it impracticable to diminish the property of the great families, and left them every means of increase and acquisition.[*]

Edward observed a contrary policy with regard to the church: he seems to have been the first Christian prince that passed a statute of mortmain; and prevented by law the clergy from making new acquisitions of lands, which by the ecclesiastical canons they were forever prohibited from alienating. The opposition between his maxims with regard to the nobility and to the ecclesiastics, leads us to conjecture, that it was only by chance he passed the beneficial statute of mortmain, and that his sole object was to maintain the number of knights’ fees, and to prevent the superiors from being defrauded of the profits of wardship, marriage, livery, and other emoluments arising from the feudal tenures. This is indeed, the reason assigned in the statute itself, and appears to have been his real object in enacting it. The author of the Annals of Waverley ascribes this act chiefly to the king’s anxiety for maintaining the military force of the kingdom but adds, that he was mistaken in his purpose; for that the Amalekites were overcome more by the prayers of Moses than by the sword of the Israelites.[*] The statute of mortmain was often evaded afterwards by the invention of “uses.”

Edward was active in restraining the usurpations of the church; and excepting his ardor for crusades, which adhered to him during his whole life, seems in other respects to have been little infected with superstition, the vice chiefly of weak minds. But the passion for crusades was really in that age the passion for glory. As the pope now felt himself somewhat more restrained in his former practice of pillaging the several churches in Europe by laying impositions upon them, he permitted the generals of particular orders, who resided at Rome, to levy taxes on the convents subjected to their jurisdiction; and Edward was obliged to enact a law against this new abuse. It was also become a practice of the court of Rome to provide successors to benefices before they became vacant: Edward found it likewise necessary to prevent by law this species of injustice.

The tribute of one thousand marks a year, to which King John, in doing homage to the pope, had subjected the kingdom, had been pretty regularly paid since his time, though the vassalage was constantly denied, and indeed, for fear of giving offence, had been but little insisted on. The payment was called by a new name of “census,” not by that of tribute. King Edward seems to have always paid this money with great reluctance; and he suffered the arrears at one time to run on for six years,[**] at another for eleven:[***] but as princes in that age stood continually in need of the pope’s good offices, for dispensations of marriage and for other concessions, the court of Rome always found means, sooner or later, to catch the money. The levying of first-fruits was also a new device begun in this reign, by which his holiness thrust his fingers very frequently into the purses of the faithful; and the king seems to have unwarily given way to it.

In the former reign, the taxes had been partly scutages, partly such a proportional part of the movables as was granted by parliament; in this, scutages were entirely dropped, and the assessment on movables was the chief method of taxation. Edward, in his fourth year, had a fifteenth granted him; in his fifth year, a twelfth; in his eleventh year, a thirtieth from the laity, a twentieth from the clergy; in his eighteenth year, a fifteenth; in his twenty-second year, a tenth from the laity, a sixth from London and other corporate towns, half of their benefices from the clergy; in his twenty-third year, an eleventh from the barons and others, a tenth from the clergy, a seventh from the burgesses; in his twenty fourth year, a twelfth from the barons and others, an eighth from the burgesses, from the clergy nothing, because of the pope’s inhibition; in his twenty-fifth year, an eighth from the laity, a tenth from the clergy of Canterbury, a fifth from those of York; in his twenty-ninth year, a fifteenth from the laity, on account of his confirming the perambulations of the forests; the clergy granted nothing; in his thirty-third year, first, a thirtieth from the barons and others, and a twentieth from the burgesses, then a fifteenth from all his subjects; in his thirty fourth year, a thirtieth from all his subjects, for knighting his eldest son.

These taxes were moderate; but the king had also duties upon exportation and importation granted him from time to time: the heaviest were commonly upon wool. Poundage, or a shilling a pound, was not regularly granted the kings for life till the reign of Henry V.

In 1296, the famous mercantile society, called the “merchant adventurers,” had its first origin: it was instituted for the improvement of the woollen manufacture, and the vending of the cloth abroad, particularly at Antwerp:[*] for the English at this time scarcely thought of any more distant commerce.

This king granted a charter or declaration of protection and privileges to foreign merchants, and also ascertained the customs or duties which those merchants were in return to pay on merchandise imported and exported. He promised them security; allowed them a jury on trials, consisting half of natives, half of foreigners; and appointed them a justiciary in London for their protection. But notwithstanding this seeming attention to foreign merchants, Edward did not free them from the cruel hardship of making one answerable for the debts, and even for the crimes of another, that came from the same country.[**]

We read of such practices among the present barbarous nations. The king also imposed on them a duty of two shillings on each tun of wine imported, over and above the old duty; and forty pence on each sack of wool exported besides half a mark, the former duty.[*]

In the year 1303, the exchequer was robbed, and of no less a sum than one hundred thousand pounds, as is pretended.[**] The abbot and monks of Westminster were indicted for this robbery, but acquitted. It does not appear that the king ever discovered the criminals with certainty, though his indignation fell on the society of Lombard merchants, particularly the Frescobaldi, very opulent Florentines.

The pope having in 1307 collected much money in England, the king enjoined the nuncio not to export it in specie but in bills of exchange;[***] a proof that commerce was but ill understood at that time.

Edward had by his first wife, Eleanor of Castile, four sons; but Edward, his heir and successor, was the only one that survived him. She also bore him eleven daughters, most of whom died in their infancy: of the surviving, Joan was married first to the earl of Glocester, and after his death to Ralph de Monthermer: Margaret espoused John, duke of Brabant: Elizabeth espoused first John, earl of Holland, and afterwards the earl of Hereford: Mary was a nun at Ambresbury. He had by his second wife, Margaret of France, two sons and a daughter; Thomas, created earl of Norfolk and mareschal of England; and Edmund, who was created earl of Kent by his brother when king. The princess died in her infancy.