Note 115 — XI. THE DISAFFORESTING QUESTION—THE COMMISSION OF TRAILBASTON, ETC., ETC., A.D. 1299–1305.

In these remarkable words, occurring in a statute of the realm, and dictated, we cannot doubt, by Edward’s own lips, we seem to have a glimpse of his earnest and sincere character. Believing, as all men in his day believed, that there was a Pontiff at Rome who had full power “to bind and to loose,” he had applied to that authority, and had been loosed, so he was assured, from an engagement which was mischievous in itself, and which had been improperly extorted from him. Yet, with this dispensation in his possession, what follows? He himself tells us: “sleepless nights.” What occasioned them? Evidently that first principle of all his conduct of which Mr. Pearson takes notice: “He never broke his word.” No papal bull, no external decision of any kind, could thoroughly reconcile him to an infraction of the Scriptural rule: “He sweareth to his neighbour, and disappointeth him not, though it were to his own hurt.”