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KDWABD I. 



EDWARD II. 



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right and justice. It U probable that in hii persevering contest with 

 the Scot* he belieTed that he was only enforcing the juit claims of 

 Us crown ; and his conduct, therefore, ferocious and vindictive ai in 

 many respect* it wan, may be vindicated from the charge of want of 

 principle, if tried by the current opinion* and sentiments of his age. 

 Putting aside considerations of morality, we perceive iu him an ample 

 endowment of many of the qualities that most conduce to eminence 

 activity, decision, fortnight, inflexibility, perseverance, military skill, 

 personal courage and power of endurance ; and, united with boldness 

 in conceiving and executing his designs, great patience and sagacity 

 in preparing and managing his instruments, and bending circumstance* 

 to hi* will. Engaged a* he was during the greater part of his reign 

 in war, ho was not advantageously placed for the full application of 

 his talents to the businns of civil government ; but hU n>i;n is 

 notwithstanding one of the (moat remarkable in our history, for the 

 progress which was made in it towards the settlement of the laws 

 and the constitution. On this account Edward I. has often been 

 styled the English Justinian (though, as is obvious to any one who 

 knows what Justinian's legislation was, not with any propriety) ; and 

 Sir Matthew Hale (' Hist of the Common Law of England,' chap. 7) 

 lias remarked that more was done in the first thirteen years of his 

 reign to settle and establish the distributive justice of the kingdom 

 than in all the next four centuries. Blackstone has enumerated under 

 fifteen heads the principal alterations and improvements which the 

 law underwent in the reign of Edward I. : we can only here notice 

 the confirmation and final establishment of the two grant charters ; 

 the definition and limitation of the bounds of ecclesiastical jurisdic- 

 tion ; the ascertainment and distribution of the powers and functions 

 both of the supreme and the inferior courts ; the abolition of the 

 practice of issuing royal mandates in private causes ; the establish- 

 ment of a repository for the public records of the* kingdom, "few of 

 which," as Blackstone remarks, " are antienter than the reign of his 

 father, and those were by him collected ; '' the improvement of the 

 law and process for the recovery of debts by the Statutes Merchant 

 and Elegit ; and the check imposed on the encroachments of the 

 church by the passing of several statutes of mortmain. The object 

 of the statute De Donis was to render lands which were the subject 

 of this particular form of grant inalienable, and BO far to put restraints 

 upon the disposal of landed property, which however were soon 

 evaded. " Upon the whole, we may observe," concludes Blackstone 

 after Hale, " that the very scheme and model of the administration 

 of common justice between party and party was entirely settled by 

 this king." The forms of writs by which actions are commenced, it 

 is added, were perfected in this reign. 



While the English laws were fully extended to Ireland and Wales, 

 it was under Edward I., also, that the foundations of the constitution 

 of the kingdom may be considered to have been laid by the new form 

 and the new power* which were then assumed by the parliament. 

 The earliest writs that have been preserved for summoning knights, 

 citizen*, and burgease* to parliament, are, as U well known, those that 

 were issued by Simon de Montfort, earl of Leicester, the leader of the 

 baron*, in 1264, iu the name of king Henry III., who was then a pri- 

 soner in hi* hands. Whether this representation of the commons was 

 then first introduced or not, it was in the course of the succeeding 

 reign that it first became regular and influential. The division of the 

 legislature into two houses, in other words the institution of our 

 present House of Common*, appears to be clearly traceable to the 

 time of Edward I. It was in his time also that the practice began 

 fairly to Uke root of the king refraining from arbitrary exactions and 

 coming to parliament for supplies, and that the earliest effective 

 examples were afforded of the grant of supplies by that assembly 

 bring made dependent upon the redress of grievances. Edward I., 

 with all his military habits and genius, had at length the good sense 

 to perceive that the time was come for abandoning the attempt to 

 govern by the prerogative alone, which bad been clung to by all his 

 predecessors from the Conquest : in his disputes with the barons he 

 never allowed matters to come to a contest of force, as hi* father and 

 grandfather bad done ; and in the latter part of his reign, although 

 more than once compelled to stop short in his most favourite designs 

 by the refusal of the national representatives to furnish him with the 

 necessary means, he seem* to have kept to the system of never resort- 

 ing to any other weapon than policy and management to overcome the 

 opposition with which he was thus thwarted. It was in the hut year 

 but one of this reign that the royal assent was given to the famous 

 enactment commonly called the ' Statute de Tallagio non Concedendo,' 

 by which the right of taxation was first distinctly affirmed to reside in 

 the parliament : " DO Ullage or aid," the first chapter runs (in the old 

 English translation), " shall be levied by us or our heirs in our realm, 

 without the good will and assent of Archbishops, Buhops, Earls, 

 Baron., Knight*. Burgesses, and other Freemen of the land." The 

 sun* principle had been conceded ten year* before (by the 26th 

 Rdward I., c. 0), but not in such explicit terms. 



The trad* and foreign commerce of England appear to have 

 advanced considerably during the reign of Edward I. ; but rather 

 owing to the natural progress of the civilisation of this country and 

 of Europe, than from any enlightened attention which the king showed 

 to these interest*, lie seems to have been principally solicitous to 

 turn the increasing intercourse of the country with foreign parts to his 



own particular profit by the increase of the customs. A few of his 

 laws however were beneficial to the trading community, and were 

 made with this express object, especially the act for the better recovery 

 of debts, commonly called the Statute of Merchant*, passed at Acton- 

 Durnell in 1283 ; the extension of the same by a subsequent act ; and 

 the Elegit above mentioned. On the other hand he lowered, though 

 lightly, the real value of the coin, thereby setting the first example 

 of a most pernicious process, which was afterwards carried much 

 farther. He also cruelly pillaged and oppressed the Jews ; and finally, 

 in 1290, expelled the entire body of that people from England, and 

 seized all their houses and tenements. Before this (iu 1275) a law had 

 been passed prohibiting the Jews from taking interest for money on 

 pain of death. 



The most distinguished names in literature and scienca that belong 

 to the reign of Edward I. are Duns Scotus, his disciple William Occam, 

 and the illustrious Roger Bacon. Among the historical writer* or 

 chroniclers who flourished at thin time may be mentioned Thomas 

 Wike?, Nicolas Trivet, Walter de llemmingford, and, according to one 

 account, the writer known as Matthew of Westminster. The law 

 writers of this reign are the author of the work entitled 'Fleta,' Britton 

 (if that be not a corruption of Bracton), Hengham, and Gilbert de 

 Thornton, chief justice of the King's Bench, the author of an abridgment 

 of Bracton. 



EDWARD II., the eldest surviving son of Edward I., was born at 

 Caernarvon 25th April 1281, and became the heir apparent to the 

 crown by the death of his elder brother, Alphonso, a few months after. 

 In 1289 he was affianced to the young quean of Scotland, who died the 

 following year. On the 1st of August 1297 his father, before setting 

 out for Klanden, assembled a great council at London, and made the 

 nobility swear fealty to the prince, whom ho then appointed regent 

 during his absence. The parliament in which the first statute ' De 

 Tallagio non Concedendo' received the royal assent was held at West- 

 minster by Prince Edward a few months after his father's departure. 

 In the summer of 1300 we find him accompanying his father iu a 

 military expedition to Scotland, and he is particularly mentioned as 

 leading one of the divisions of the army, called the ' .Shining Battalion,' 

 in an encounter with the Scottish forces on the hanks of the river 

 Irvine. As he grew towards manhood however he appears to have 

 begun to form those vicious associations which were the chief source 

 of the calamities of his life. Iu October of this tamo year (1300) the 

 notorious Piers Gaveston was banished by the king from about the 

 person of Prince Edward, who, through his persuasion, had been 

 guilty of several outrages against the Bishop of Lichfield, and the 

 prince himself was ordered to prison for stealing the bi-hop's deer. 

 Gaveston was the son of a knight of Gascony, and is admitted to 

 have been distinguished by his wit and accomplishim-utg as wi-11 as 

 by his personal advantages, but he is affirmed to have, as the prince's 

 minion, carried himself to men of all ranks with unbearable insolence. 

 In 1301 Edward was created Prince of Wales aud Earl of Cheater. 

 He was again in Scotland with his father in the expedition iu the 

 summer of 1303 : while the king proceeded along the east coast, the 

 prince marched westward, and afterwards wintered in Perth, while hU 

 father remained in Dunfermline. When Edward was preparing for 

 his last Scottish expedition after the insurrection under Robert Bruce, 

 he knighted his eldest son at Westminster on the morrow of Whit- 

 suntide 1 306 ; after which the prince bestowed the same honour on 

 300 gentlemen, his intended companions in arms. He was at the 

 same time invested by his father with the duchy of Guienne. The 

 royal banquet that wa given on this occasion is celebrated for what is 

 colled the ' Vow of the Swans,' an oath taken by the king to God and 

 to two swans, which were brought iu and set upon the table, that he 

 would take vengeance on Robert Bruce and punish the treachery of 

 the Scots. The prince also vowed that he would not remain two night* 

 in the same place until he reached Scotland. He set out accordingly 

 before hi* father, and as soon as be had crossed the borders he began 

 to signalise his march by such unsparing devastation that even the old 

 king is said to have reproved him for his cruelty. While King Ed ward 

 was at Laneroost in February 1307, he found it necessary, with the 

 consent of the parliament there assembled, to issue on order banishing 

 Gaveston for ever from the kingdom, as a corrupter of the prince. 

 It is doubtful, notwithstanding the story told by Froissart [EDWARD I.I 

 if the Prince of Wales was with hi* father when he died on the 7th of 

 July following; but he woo at any rate at no great distance, and he 

 was immediately recognised as king. His reign appears to have been 

 reckoned from the day following. 



The now king obeyed his father's injunctions to prosecute the war 

 with Scotland by proceeding on hi* march into that country as far as 

 Cumnock in Ayrshire ; but hero he turned round without having done 

 anything, and made his way back to England. Meanwhile his whole 

 mind seem* to have been occupied only with one object the advance- 

 ment of the favourite. A few dates will best show the violence of his 

 infatuation. His first recorded act of government was to confer upon 

 Gaventon, now recalled to England, the earldom of Cornwall, a dignity 

 which bad hitherto been held only by princes of the blood, and had a 

 few years before reverted to the crown by the di-ath, without issue, of 

 Edmund I'lantagenet, the late king's counin. Tho grant, bestowing 

 all the lands of the earldom as well as the dignity, is dated nt Dum- 

 fries, the 6th of August 1307. About the came time Walter de 



