EDWARD lit 



EDWARD I. 



man before tho accession of this king by the marriage of Kthelred ; 

 bat it became very intimate after the accession of Edward, who had 

 pent in Normandy all his life (inoe his childhood, whose late and 

 habiU had been formed in that country, and all whoea oldest personal 

 friends were necessarily Norman*. In fact Kdward hiraiclf, when he 

 came to the throne, wai muoh more a Norman than an Englishman; 

 and he not unnaturally lurrounded bin-self with person* belonging 

 to the nation whoae language and manners and mode of life were 

 those with which he bad been so long familiar, rather than with his 

 leas polished fellow-countrymen. Many Normans came over to England 

 as soon as he became king, and some of the highest preferments in the 

 kingdom were bestowed upon these foreigners. But while the incli- 

 nations of Edward were probably from the first with the Normans, he 

 was to a great extent in the bands of the opposite, or English party, 

 from his connection with Earl Godwin, its head. Besides the influence 

 which he derived from having his daughter on the throne, this power- 

 ful nobleman held in his own bauds, and in those of his sons, the 

 government of more than the half of all England. The eldest of 

 these ions, Sweyn, very early in the reign of I'M ward, had been obliged 

 to fly from the vengeance of the law for the daring crime of violating 

 the person of an abbess ; but after some time Edward consented, or 

 found himself obliged, to pardon him, and to restore him to all his 

 estates and honours. It was not till the year 1051 that the strength 

 of the English and Norman parties was tried in any direct encounter ; 

 but that year, on occasion of a broil which arose out of the visit to 

 England of Edward's brother-in-law, Eustace, count of Boulogne, their 

 long-accumulated enmity broke forth into a violent collision. The 

 first effect was the banishment of all the Godwin family, and the degra- 

 dation and imprisonment of the queen. At this crisis William, the 

 young duke of Normandy, afterwards king of England, camo over 

 with a powerful fleet, and prepared to render KdWkrd what assistance 

 he might have needed. The following summer however witnessed the 

 complete overthrow of all that had been thus accomplished. Godwin 

 and his eon Harold forced their way back to the country at the head 

 of armament* which they had prepared the former in Flanders, the 

 latter in Ireland : a negotiation was entered into with the king, and 

 the issue was, that the earl and his party were restored to greater 

 power than ever ; the queen was re-established in her possessions and 

 her place, and the Normans were all expelled from the kingdom. 



Karl Godwin only survived this counter-revolution a few months ; 

 ho died suddenly as he sat at the royal table, on the 15th April 1053. 

 His son Harold however inherited his possessions and his power, and 

 the ascendancy of the family under it* new head continued as great 

 as ever during the remainder of the Confessor's reign. In 1055 a 

 dispute arose between Harold and the rival family of Lcofric, earl of 

 Leicester, which disturbed the kingdom for nearly two years. Leofric 

 died in 1057; but the feud was continued by his son Alfgar, who 

 called in to his assistance Griffith, or Griffin, king of the Welsh. 

 This drew down the vengeance of Harold upon that prince and his 

 subject* ; and the iasue was, that, after some fighting, Griffin consented 

 to swear fealty to Edward. This event is assigned by the Saxon 

 chronicle to the year 1056. The war with the Welsh was renewed in 

 1043 : Harold had again the command, and prosecuted hostilities with 

 so much success, that king Griffin's bead was cut off by his own sub- 

 jects, and sent by them to the English king in token of their submis- 

 sion. In 1 065 the public tranquillity was for a short time disturbed 

 by an insurrection of the Northumbrians ; but this was quelled with- 

 out bloodshed. Edward died on tho 5th of January 1006, and was 

 burled the following day in the new Abbey of Westminster, which 

 had just been finished and consecrated with great pomp about a week 

 before. On the same day Earl Harold was solemnly crowned King of 



!!!. [KixiAB ATUELIXO; HAROLD II.] 



England undoubtedly made a considerable advance in civilisation 

 daring tho reign of the Confessor. For this it was indebted partly 

 to the intercourse which Edward's accession opened with Normandy 

 and France, but perhaps in a still greater degree to the freedom which 

 the kingdom enjoyed from those foreign invasions and internal wars 

 which had distracted it, with the exception of some short interval* 

 of tranquillity, for the greater part of a century preceding. The only 

 event*, as we have seen, which disturbed tho public peace during tho 

 reign of Edward, were one or two border wars and local insurrections, 

 BOM of which occasioned any general disquiet, or lasted for any 

 considerable time. This period accordingly waa long traditionally 

 remembered a* the happiest that England had known. It formed in 

 the national imagination the bright spot between the time of the 

 Danish nil* on the one band, end that of the Norman on the other ; 

 the age of English freedom and independence which succeeded the 

 deliverance of the country from the one foreign conquest, and pre- 

 ceded it* subjection to the other. For many generation* after the 

 establishment of the Norman power in the island, the constant demand 

 of the great body of the people to their rulers waa for the restoration 

 of the laws and customs of the Confessor. But we have no reason 

 to snppu*e that tlii. king was the author of any entirely new code of 

 laws, or even that he made any material addition* to the laws that 

 bad been in force before hi* time. On coming to the throne he was 

 required by the Witenagemote to promise to observe the laws of 

 King Canute, which seem to have been then universally held to be 

 the fairest and the best the nation had known. Edward took an oath 



iu conformity with this demand at hi* coronation. There ha* been 

 preserved, both in Latin and in Komance, or Koinanio French, a body 

 of law* and constitutions which the Conqueror is said to have granted 

 at an assembly of the most distinguished of his English subjects, held 

 about four years afU-r hU seizure of the crown, and they are described 

 in the title a* the lame which hi* predecessor and cousin, King Kdward, 

 haxl before observed. The French text, preserved iu Inu'ulphus, ha* 

 generally been held to bo the original ; but Sir Francia 1'algrave ha* 

 stated reasons which throw considerable doubt upon this supposition. 

 Both versions are given in the most correct form, and accompanied 

 with a learned and valuable commentary, in the Proofs and Illustra- 

 tions appended to Sir Francis Palgrave'i ' liise and Progress of tho 

 English Commonwealth,' pp. Ixxx viii oil (See also Kemblc's ' Saxon* 

 In England.') 



Edward the Confessor ha* the credit of being the first of our kings 

 who touched for the king's evil He was canonised by Pope Alex- 

 ander III. about a oentury after his death, and tho title of the Confessor 

 was first bestowed upon him in the bull of canonisation. It may also 

 be mentioned, that the use of the Great Seal was first introduced in 

 this reign. 



EDWARD I., King of England, surnamed Long-Shanks, from the 

 excessive length of his legs, was the eldeat son of King Henry 111., 

 by his wife Eleanor, second daughter of Raymond, count of Provence. 

 He was born at Westminster, June 16, 1239. In 1252 he was invested 

 by his father with the duchy of Guienne ; but a claim being set up 

 to this territory by Alphonso X., king of Castile, who protended that 

 it had been made over to hi* ancestor Alphonso VIII. by his father- 

 in-law, Henry II., it was arranged the following year that the dispute 

 should be settled by the marriage of Prince Edward with Eleanor, 

 the sister of Alphonso, who thereupon resigned whatever right ho 

 had to the duohy to his brother-in-law. After this, by letters patent, 

 dated February 14, 1254, we find the lordship of Ireland, and by 

 others dated February 18, in tho same year, all the provinces which 

 had been seized from his father, John, by the King of France, granted 

 by Henry III. to his son Prince Edward, (liymer L) 



Edward early manifested a character very unlike that of hi* weak 

 and imprudent father. While yet only entering upon manhood, wo 

 find him taking part in important affairs of state. Thus the agree- 

 ment which Henry made in 1256 with Pope Alexander IV. in relation 

 to the kingdom of Sicily, which the pope granted to Henry's second 

 sou Edmund, was ratified by Prince Edward in a letter to his Holmes*, 

 still preserved. In 1258 he signed, along with his father, the agree- 

 ment called the Provisions or Statutes of Oxford, by which it was 

 arranged that the government of tho country should be put into the 

 hands of twenty-four commissioners, appointed by the barons ; and 

 two years after, when Henry violently broke through this engage- 

 ment, Edward came over from Guienne, where he was resident, and 

 publicly expressed his disapprobation of the king's conduct. For the 

 next two or three years Edward may be regarded as placed in oppo- 

 sition to his father's government. In 1262 however Henry, in a visit 

 which he paid him iu Guienne, succeeded in gaining him over to his 

 side, and from this timo the prince became the king's most efficient 

 supporter. In the summer of 1263, the quarrel between Henry and 

 hi* barons camo to a contest of arms, which lasted, with some brief 

 intermissions, for four years. During this period tho military opera- 

 tions on the king** side were principally conducted by Prince Edward. 

 In the beginning he was unfortunate, having been driven first from 

 Bristol and then from Windsor, and having been finally defeated and 

 taken prisoner with his father at the battle of Lewes, fought May 14, 

 1264. After being detained however about a twelvemonth, he made 

 his escape out of the bands of the Earl of Leicester; and on the 4th 

 of August, 1265, his forces having encountered those of that noble- 

 man at Eveaham, the result waa that Leicester waa defeated and lost 

 his life, and the king waa restored to liberty. From this time Edward 

 and his father carried everything before them till the war waa con- 

 cluded, in July 1267, by the surrender of the last of tho insurgents, 

 who had taken up their position in the Isle of Kly. 



Soon after this, at a parliament held at Northampton, I 

 Edward, together with several noblemen and a great number of 

 knight*, pledged themselves to proceed to join the crusnders in the; 

 Holy Laud. The prince, accordingly, having first, in a visit to Paris, 

 in August, 1269, made his arrangements with St. Louis, set sail from 

 England to join that king in May, the year following. St. Louis died 

 on his way to Palestine ; and Edward, baring spent tho winter in 

 Sicily waiting for him, did not arrive at the scene of action till the 

 end of May, 1271. Here he performed several valorous exploits, 

 which however were attended with no important result His most 

 memorable adventure was an encounter with a Saracen, who attempted 

 to assassinate him, and whom he slew on the spot, but not before ho 

 had received n wound in the arm from a poinoued dagger, from tho 

 effects of which be U (aid to have been delivered by tho princess, hi* 

 wife, who sucked the poison from the wound. At last, having con- 

 cluded n ten years' truce with the Saracens, he left Palestine in 

 August 1272, and set out on his return to England. He ws* at 

 Messina, on bis way home, in January 1273, when he heard of the 

 death of hi* father on the 16th of November preceding. He pro- 

 ceeded on hi* journey, and landed with hi* quoen in England 25th 

 July 1274. They were both solemnly crowned at Westminster on 



