*** See note E, at the end of the volume.

**** See note F, at the end of the volume.

What sufficiently proves that the commencement of the house of

burgesses, who are the true commons, was not an affair of chance, but

arose from the necessities of the present situation, is, that Edward,

at the very same time, summoned deputies from the inferior clergy, the

first that ever met in England,[*] and he required them to impose

taxes on their constituents for the public service. Formerly the

ecclesiastical benefices bore no part of the burdens of the state:

the pope indeed of late had often levied impositions upon them: he had

sometimes granted this power to the sovereign:[**] the king himself had

in the preceding year exacted, by menaces and violence, a very grievous

tax of half the revenues of the clergy: but as this precedent was

dangerous, and could not easily be repeated in a government which

required the consent of the subject to any extraordinary resolution,

Edward found it more prudent to assemble a lower house of convocation,

to lay before them his necessities, and to ask some supply. But on

this occasion he met with difficulties. Whether that the clergy thought

themselves the most independent body in the kingdom, or were disgusted

by the former exorbitant impositions, they absolutely refused their

assent to the king’s demand of a fifth of their movables; and it was not

till a second meeting that, on their persisting in this refusal, he

was willing to accept of a tenth. The barons and knights granted him,

without hesitation, an eleventh; the burgesses, a seventh. But the

clergy still scrupled to meet on the king’s writ, lest by such an

instance of obedience they should seem to acknowledge the authority of

the temporal power: and this compromise was at last fallen upon,

that the king should issue his writ to the archbishop; and that the

archbishop should, in consequence of it, summon the clergy, who, as they

then appeared to obey their spiritual superior, no longer hesitated

to meet in convocation. This expedient, however, was the cause why the

ecclesiastics were separated into two houses of convocation, under their

several archbishops, and formed not one estate, as in other countries of

Europe; which was at first the king’s intention.[***] We now return to

the course of our narration.

* Archbishop Wake’s State of the Church of England, p. 235

Brady of Burroughs, p. 34. Gilbert’s Hist, of the Buch. p

46.

** Ann. Waverl. p. 227, 228. T. Wykes, p. 99, 120.

*** Gilbert’s Hist, of the Buch. p 51, 54.

Edward, conscious of the reasons of disgust which he had given to

the king of Scots, informed of thu dispositions of that people, and

expecting the most violent effects of their resentment, which he knew he

had so well merited, employed the supplies granted him by his people in

making preparations against the hostilities of his northern neighbor.

When in this situation, he received intelligence of the treaty secretly

concluded between John and Philip; and though uneasy at this concurrence

of a French and Scottish war he resolved not to encourage his enemies by

a pusillanimous behavior, or by yielding to their united efforts.

{1296.} He summoned John to perform the duty of a vassal, and to send

him a supply of forces against an invasion from France, with which he

was then threatened: he next required that the fortresses of Berwick,

Jedburgh, and Roxburgh should be put into his hands as a security during

the war; he cited John to appear in an English parliament to be held at

Newcastle; and when none of these successive demands were complied with,

he marched northward with numerous forces, thirty thousand foot and four

thousand horse, to chastise his rebellious vassal. The Scottish nation,

who had little reliance on the vigor and abilities of their prince,

assigned him a council of twelve noblemen, in whose hands the

sovereignty was really lodged, and who put the country in the best

posture of which the present distractions would admit. A great army,

composed of forty thousand infantry, though supported only by five

hundred cavalry advanced to the frontiers; and after a fruitless attempt

upon Carlisle, marched eastwards to defend those provinces which Edward

was preparing to attack. But some of the most considerable of the

Scottish nobles, Robert Bruce, the father and son, the earls of

March and Angus, prognosticating the ruin of their country from the

concurrence of intestine divisions and a foreign invasion, endeavored

here to ingratiate themselves with Edward by an early submission; and

the king, encouraged by this favorable incident, led his army into the

enemy’s country, and crossed the Tweed without opposition at Coldstream.

He then received a message from John, by which that prince, having now

procured for himself and his nation Pope Celestine’s dispensation from

former oaths, renounced the homage which had been done to England,

and set Edward at defiance. This bravado was but ill supported by the

military operations of the Scots.

* Rymer, vol. ii. p. 692. Walsing. p. 64. Heming. vol. i. p.

84 Trivet, p. 286. t Heming. vol i. p. 75.

** Rymer, vol. ii. p. 607. Walsing. p. 66. Heming. vol. i.

p. 92.

Berwick was already taken by assault: Sir William Douglas, the governor,

was made prisoner: above seven thousand of the garrison were put to

the sword: and Edward, elated by this great advantage, despatched Earl

Warrenne with twelve thousand men to lay siege to Dunbar, which was

defended by the flower of the Scottish nobility.

The Scots, sensible of the importance of this place, which, if taken,

laid their whole country open to the enemy, advanced with their main

army, under the command of the earls of Buchan, Lenox, and Marre, in

order to relieve it. Warrenne, not dismayed at the great superiority

of their number, marched out to give them battle. He attacked them with

great vigor; and as undisciplined troops, when numerous, are but

the more exposed to a panic upon any alarm, he soon threw them into

confusion, and chased them off the field with great slaughter. The loss

of the Scots is said to have amounted to twenty thousand men: the Castle

of Dunbar, with all its garrison, surrendered next day to Edward, who,

after the battle, had brought up the main body of the English, and

who now proceeded with an assured confidence of success. The Castle of

Roxburgh was yielded by James, steward of Scotland; and that nobleman,

from whom is descended the royal family of Stuart, was again obliged

to swear fealty to Edward. After a feeble resistance, the Castles of

Edinburgh and Stirling opened their gates to the enemy. All the southern

parts were instantly subdued by the English; and to enable them the

better to reduce the northern, whose inaccessible situation seemed to

give them some more security, Edward sent for a strong reënforcement of

Welsh and Irish, who, being accustomed to a desultory kind of war, were

the best fitted to pursue the fugitive Scots into the recesses of their

lakes and mountains. But the spirit of the nation was already broken by

their misfortunes and the feeble and timid Baliol, discontented with his

own subjects, and overawed by the English, abandoned all those resources

which his people might yet have possessed in this extremity. He hastened

to make his submissions to Edward, he expressed the deepest penitence

for his disloyalty to his liege lord; and he made a solemn and

irrevocable resignation of his crown into the hands of that monarch.[*]

* Rymer, vol. ii. p. 718. Walsing. p. 67. Heming. vo. i p.

99 Trivet, p. 292.

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.

* Walsing. p. 68. Trivet, p. 299.

** Rymer, vol. ii. p. 726. Trivet, p. 295.

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.

* Homing, vol. i. p. 72, 73, 74.

** Rymer, vol. ii. p. 761. Walsing, p. 68.

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.[***]

* Rymer, vol. ii. p. 706. Heming. vol. i. p. 104.

** Heming, vol., i. p. 107. Trivet, p. 296. Chron. Dunst.

vol. ii p. 652

*** Hemming. vol. i. p. 107.

{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.

* Walsing. p. 65. Heming. vol. i. p. 51.

** Walsing. p. 69. Heming. vol. i. p. 107.

*** M. West. p. 429.

**** Heming. vol. i. p. 109.

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.

* Heming. vol. i. p. 108, 109. Chron. Dunst. p. 653.

** Chron. Dunst. vol. ii. p. 654.

*** Walsing. p. 69. Trivet, p. 296.

**** Heming, vol. i. p. 52, 110.

***** Heming. vol. i. p. 111.

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.[****]

* Walsing. p. 69.

** Heming. voL i. p. 112.

*** Rymer, vol. ii. p. 783. Walsing. p. 70.

**** M. West, p. 430.

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.[****]

* Heming. vol. i. p. 113.

** Heming. vol. i. p. 114. M. West. p. 430.

*** Walsing. p. 72. Heming. vol. i. p. 115. Trivet, p. 302.

**** Walsing. p. 72. Heming. vol. i. p. 117. Trivet, p. 304.

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.[***]

* Heming. vol. i. p. 138.

** Walsing, p. 73. Heming. vol. i. p. 138, 139 140, 141.

Trivet, p. 308.

*** Walsing, p. 74. Heming. vol. i. p. 143.

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.

* Heming. vol. i. p. 159.

** Heming. vol. i. p. 167, 168.

*** Heming. vol. i. p. 168.

**** Heming. vol. i. p. 170.

***** Walsing. p. 80. We are told by Tyrrel, (vol. ii. p. 145,)

from the Chronicle of St. Albans, that the barons, not

content with the execution of the charter of forests,

demanded of Edward as high terms as had been imposed on his

father by the earl of Leicester; but no other historian

mentions this particular.

****** Heming. vol. i. p. 171. M. West. p. 431, 433.

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.

* Brady, vol. ii. p. 84. Carte, vol. ii. p. 292.

** It must, however, be remarked, that the king never

forgave the chief actors in this transaction; and he found

means afterwards to oblige both the constable and mareschal

to resign their offices into his hands. The former received

a new grant of it; but the office of mareschal given to

Thomas of Brotherton, the king’s second son times required

of several kings, and granted by them in full parliament; a

precaution which, while it discovers some ignorance of the

true nature of law and government, proves a laudable

jealousy of national privileges in the people, and an

extreme anxiety lest contrary precedents should ever be

pleaded as an authority for infringing them. Accordingly we

find that, though arbitrary practices often prevailed, and

were even able to establish themselves into settled customs,

the validity of the Great Charter was never afterwards

formally disputed; and that grant was still regarded as the

basis of English government, and the sure rule by which the

authority of every custom was to be tried and canvassed. The

jurisdiction of the star-chamber, martial law, imprisonment

by warrants from the privy-council, and other practices of a

like nature, though established for several centuries, were

scarcely ever allowed by the English to be parts of their

constitution: the affection of the nation for liberty still

prevailed over all precedent, and even all political

reasoning; the exercise of these powers, after being long

the source of secret murmurs among the people, was, in

fulness of time, solemnly abolished as illegal, at least as

oppressive, by the whole legislative authority.

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.

* Helming, vol i. p 146.

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.[**]

* Rymer, vol. ii. p. 817. Heining. vol. i. p. 149. Trivet,

p. 310

** Rymer, vol. ii. p. 823

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.[*]

* Walsing. p. 70. Heming, vol. i. p. 118. Trivet, p. 299.

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.

* Walsing. p. 70. vol. i. p. 118.

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.[***]

* Heming. vol. i. p. 121, 22.

** Heming. vol. i. p. 127.

*** On the 11th of September, 1297.

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.

* Walsing. p. 73. Heming. vol. i. p. 127, 128, 129. Trivet,

p. 807.

** Heming. vol. i. p. 130.

*** Heming. vol. i. p. 131, 132, 136.

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.

* Rymer, vol. ii. p. 813.

** Walsing. p. 75. Heming, vol. i. p. 163.

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.

* Walsing. p. 76. T. Wykes, p. 127. Heming vol. i. p. 163,

164, 165. Trivet (p. 313) says only twenty thousand. M.

West. (p. 431) says forty thousand.

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.[*]

* This story is told by all the Scotch writers; though it

must be owned that Trivet and Hemingford, authors of good

credit, both agree that Bruce was not at that time in

Edward’s army.

{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.

* Rymer, vol. ii. p. 844.

** Rymer, vol. ii. p. 863.

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.

* Rymer, vol. ii. p. 873. Walsing. p. 85. Heming. vol. i. p.

186. Trivet, p. 330, M. West, p 443.

{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.

* Heming. vol. i. p. 197.

** Heming. vol. i. p. 205. the kingdom. Wallace, though he

attended the English army in their march, found but few

opportunities of signalizing that valor which had formerly

made him so terrible to his enemies.

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.

* Ryley, p. 506.

{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.

* Brady’s Hist. vol. ii. App. No. 27.

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.

* M. West. p. 453.

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.[**]

* Walsing. p. 91. Heming. vol. i. p. 222, 223. Trivet, p.

344.

** Heming. vol. i. p. 223. M. West. p. 456.

{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.

* Institute, p. 156.

** History of the English Law, p. 158, 163.

*** Articuli super Cart. cap. 6., Letters of protection were

the ground of a complaint by the commons in 3, Edward (See

Ryley, p. 525.) This practice is declared illegal.

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.

* Statute of Winton.

** Statute of Acton Burnel

*** Statute of Conspirators.

**** Spel. Gloss, in verbo Justiciarius.

Gilbert’s History of the Exchequer, p. 8: not bound to it by

his tenure; his visible reluctance to confirm the Great

Charter, as if that concession had no validity from the

deeds of his predecessors; the captious clause which he at

last annexed to his confirmation; his procuring of the

pope’s dispensation from the oaths which he had taken to

observe that charter; and his levying of talliages at

discretion even after the statute, or rather charter, by

which he had renounced that prerogative; these are so many

demonstrations of his arbitrary disposition, and prove with

what exception and reserve we ought to celebrate his love of

justice. He took care that his subjects should do justice to

each other; but he desired always to have his own hands free

in all his transactions, both with them and with his

neighbors.

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.[*]

* Brady of Boroughs, p. 25, from the records

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.

* Page 234. See also M. West. p. 409.

** Rymer, vol. ii p. 77, 107.

*** Rymer, vol. ii p. 862.

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.[**]

* Anderson’s History of Commerce, vol. i. p. 137.

** Anderson’s History of Commerce, vol. i. p. 146.

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.

* Rymer, vol. iv. p. 361. It is the charter of Edward I.

which is there confirmed by Edward III.

** Rymer, vol. ii. p. 930.

*** Rymer, vol. ii. p. 1092.

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.