Cassell's History of England, Vol. 1 (of 8) / From the Roman Invasion to the Wars of the Roses

by Anonymous

Edward, on receiving this news, at once prepared to take signal vengeance on the insurgents, and this time to give the nation such a castigation as should effectually quell its spirit. Not waiting for his own slower movements, he sent on Aylmer de Valence, the Earl of Pembroke, with a small army, to check the spread of the disaffection. He met with Bruce near Methven, in Perthshire, on the 19th of June, and, surprising the Scottish forces, put them utterly to the rout. Bruce was three times unhorsed in the battle, and escaped with the greatest danger. His friends the Earl of Athol, Simon Fraser, and Sir Christopher Seton, were taken prisoners and executed. Amongst the prisoners was also his nephew Randolph. His wife and his daughter Marjory, having left the fortress of Kildrummie, were seized by the Earl of Ross in the sanctuary of St. Duthac at Tain; the knights who attended them were put to death, and they themselves were sent to England, where they remained prisoners eight years. His brother Nigel, much beloved by the people, was compelled to surrender Kildrummie, and was also hanged and afterwards beheaded at Berwick, with many other knights and gentlemen. He himself with great difficulty made his escape into the mountains of Athol, with about five hundred followers, the sole remnant of the army with which he had hoped to redeem Scotland. For many months he and this little band wandered amongst the hills in the utmost wretchedness, destitute of shelter, and often of food. A price was set upon their heads; their enemies, the Comyns, infuriated by the slaughter of their chief, and now in the ascendant as allies of England, pursued them with vindictive rage, driving them farther and farther into the labyrinth of the hills. On reaching the borders of Argyll, they encountered the Lord of Lorn, who had married an aunt of the Comyn, at the head of 1,000 men who occupied a narrow defile. A desperate conflict took place, and Bruce and his followers narrowly escaped extermination. Finally, Bruce found means to pass over to Carrick.

Whatever was the momentary despondency and misery of Bruce, he issued forth early in the spring of 1307, in order to make one more effort for the expulsion of the English. His followers amounted only to 300; and he was nearly betrayed by the unexplained lighting of a fire upon a hill, the very signal which he had agreed upon if it were safe to approach. As he drew near the landing-place, he was met by the information that the English were in full possession of Carrick, and Lord Percy, with a strong garrison, held Turnberry Castle. Bruce was thunderstruck at the intelligence; but making a sudden attack on a party of English that lay close at hand, he created a momentary panic, and, under advantage of that, made good his retreat into the mountains. The war became desultory and undecided; and two of Bruce's brothers, Thomas and Alexander, as they were bringing over a band of Irish adventurers to his assistance, were taken prisoners by Duncan M'Dowal, a chief of Galloway, and being conducted to King Edward, were instantly ordered for execution.

Fortune still continued to pursue Bruce. He could only preserve himself by hiding in the hills and wastes of Galloway, till, on the 10th of May, he succeeded at Loudon Hill in completely defeating the Earl of Pembroke. Three days after, he again defeated the English under the Earl of Gloucester, and pursuing them to the castle of Ayr there besieged them.

Meantime, Edward had been advancing by slow marches northward. Though it is not distinctly stated by the historians, there is little doubt that his health was giving way when he first received at Winchester the news of the Scottish rising. He had immediately sent off the Earl of Pembroke, and prepared to follow himself. He knighted his son, the Prince of Wales, with great ceremony, preparatory to his taking part in the expedition, who, in turn, knighted, on the 22nd of May, 270 young men of noble family. At the feast given on this occasion, in the Palace of Westminster, Edward made a solemn vow to God to avenge the death of Comyn, and punish the insurgent Scots; and at this time he conjured his son, and the whole company, in the event of his death, to keep his body unburied until this vow was accomplished. Thus he had the probability of death in his thoughts at the outset of this expedition, and he advanced in it with the tardiness of a sick man. It was the commencement of July when he arrived at Carlisle, where the news of Bruce's fresh successes, and the defeat and close besiegement of his generals, had the effect of rousing his irritable temperament to a desperate effort. He threw aside the litter in which he had hitherto travelled, mounted his horse, and having reached, on the 7th of July, the village of Burgh-by-Sands, he sank completely exhausted, with his latest breath, and with a tenacity of purpose characteristic of the man, enjoining his successor, through the ministers who surrounded him, never to cease his efforts till he had thoroughly subjugated Scotland.

Thus terminated the remarkable career of this truly great man, in the sixty-ninth year of his age, and the thirty-fifth of his reign. Since the days of Richard I. there had been no martial monarch of equal bravery and ability; since those of Henry II. none who had the same genius for civil administration and the framing of laws and institutions which gave not only a character to his own times, but to the ages which came after him. Hume does not hesitate to assert that "the enterprises of 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 successors." However we may be disposed to modify this praise in regard to what Edward actually carried out, there can be no question that his perception of the vast advantages which would result to every part of the island from its consolidation into one kingdom was evidence of a great and comprehensive genius; and the ardour, based on an indomitable spirit of perseverance, with which he pursued that great end, is equal evidence of a mind, not only of the clearest acumen, but of the loftiest qualities of human nature. He succeeded in winning to the English nation, and amalgamating with it for ever, the principality of Wales; and if he failed in effecting the annexation of Scotland, it was only through being actuated more by the military spirit of the times than by those moral and political influences which later generations have discovered to be the most effectual. It was beyond the intellectual horizon of the age to aim at the union of the kingdoms by the careful demonstration of the greater mutual advantages, and of the infinitely expanded capabilities of glory and power to Britain as a whole, which were applied successfully four centuries afterwards.

By seeking to accomplish the union of England and Scotland by the forces most familiar to the spirit of that era—that is, by the power of arms and numerical ascendency—his scheme, grand and beneficent in itself, necessarily failed. The plan was premature; it existed in the nature of things, but it lacked that philosophical regard to national character and feeling, and that tone of mutual forbearance, which it required centuries yet to ripen. The rude idea of bearing down a brave and high-spirited people by armed power and arbitrary will could not but irritate those on whom the attempt was made; and it then became a question of moral forces, and of the natural defences of the country, whether it should succeed. It succeeded in Wales, though after a brave resistance, because there was no proportion between the extent and the physical resources of the two countries. It failed in Scotland, because the areas of the two contending kingdoms, though greatly unequal, were yet more approximate; and because the martial qualities and spirit of proud independence had been long fostered in Scotland by the arduous contests of different clans and parties. The Scots were a hardy and an heroically brave people, with their magnificent mountains at their back; and, in their struggles with the ponderous power of England, discovered an invincible vigour, not only of resistance, but of resilience. Though hurled violently to the earth time after time, they rose, Antæus-like, as if with augmented strength and freshness. While the two nations, therefore, heated by contest and the savage warfare of that age, learned to hate one another with a vigorous and long-continuing hatred, they learned also to know each other's strength, and inwardly to respect it. Therefore, after the battle of Bannockburn, English dreams of the subjugation of Scotland began to wane, and though there still were many bloody wars between the two nations, there ceased to exist on each side the hope of conquest by mere force of arms.

In these conflicts, good as well as evil was elicited, and the bravery and spirit of dominion which distinguish united Great Britain no doubt draw a large amount of their life from the mutual struggles and rivalries of the two peoples. In the very attempts, therefore, of Edward to add Scotland to the kingdom by force, as he did Wales, he may be said to have laid the foundation of much of the common greatness of the nation; but from incidental causes arising out of his military attempts, both in Scotland and France, and still more from his directly constructive talent and wisdom, we owe to him much which we are apt to lose sight of in the blaze of his wars and expeditions. He was as remarkable for his sturdy maintenance of the laws as for his military ambition. Simple and frugal himself, he was ever ready to support useful enterprises. He was liberal of his treasures on such occasions. Easy and affable to his courtiers and dependents, he was yet severe in restraining licence and punishing offenders. His fine person and skill in military exercises made him popular with the people, when he did not press too heavily on them by his expensive wars; and thus, relying on his sense of justice, they were not backward in expressing their opinions, as we have seen. Though he was extremely cruel to the Jews—a feature of his character springing from the prejudices of his age—and often forgot the magnanimity of a great monarch in his resentment against those who successfully thwarted his plans, as in the case of Sir William Wallace and others, his sense of justice in his calmer moments and in his peaceful pursuits was so great, that he not only encouraged an honourable administration of the laws, but corrected and amended them, and added so many new ones, in accordance with the progress of society, that he has been termed the English Justinian. Sir Edward Coke, in his "Institutes," says that the statutes passed in his reign were so numerous and excellent that they actually deserved the name of establishments, being more constant, standing, and durable than any made from his reign to the time of that great lawyer; and Sir Matthew Hale pays him the like compliment, declaring that down to his own day they had scarcely received any addition.

Edward I. was the greatest of our mediæval lawgivers, and has been well called by Bishop Stubbs "the definer of the English constitution." Following in the steps of Henry II., he aimed at giving equal security to all, to humble the great nobles and the great churchmen, and to elevate the third estate of the realm—the commons—as a counterpoise to the other two. The spirit of his legislation can best be seen in the provisions of the most important statutes of the reign. That known as the First Statute of Westminster, passed by his first Parliament in 1275, revived and re-established the former laws and customs of the land. It is, says Bishop Stubbs, "almost a code in itself." Common right was to be done to all, without respect of persons; elections were to be free; and the provisions of the Great Charter concerning excessive fines, abuses of wardship, excessive demands for feudal aids, and so forth, were re-enacted. The Statute of Winchester, passed in 1285, was a complement to the Assize of Arms of Henry II., and, besides ordering and defining what kind of arms each class of the people should bear for the defence of the land, made admirable arrangements for the indictment and pursuit of felons and robbers, the policing of the walled towns, and the clearing of the edges of public roads to prevent them from becoming the lurking-places of highwaymen. The Statute, known, from its opening words, as that of Quia Emptores, passed in 1290, enacted that in all future transfers of land the tenant should hold, not from the alienor, but from his superior lord. It thus played into the hands of the king, who was the landlord par excellence, and established a numerous class of independent gentry, holding their estates directly from the crown. The second Statute of Westminster, called that De donis conditionalibus, established the power of entail, and stopped the life-tenant from alienating an estate at his will. Another important statute of the reign was that of mortmain, or De Religiosis, passed in 1279. This was a distinct blow at the Church, which had gained great wealth by the custom which prevailed of giving property to the Church, and receiving it back again as a tenant of the Church. It was then said to pass into a dead hand—"in mortuam manum"—and the lay over-lord was deprived of his feudal dues. This practice was now forbidden under penalty of forfeiture to the next superior lord, and if he failed to insist upon his right within a year, the right passed to his over-lord, and so on to the king.

Edward's chief title, however, to the admiration and affection of posterity is that of the creator of the House of Commons. He has a formidable rival in Simon de Montfort; but it has been cogently pointed out that Simon's important Parliament of 1265, though perfect in its elements, was in reality a packed assembly, only the supporters of the existing government being summoned to attend it. It is unnecessary to say that neither Edward nor De Montfort created their assemblies at a stroke; they merely added the finishing touches to institutions which had been gradually growing to maturity, and which had their roots far back in the past. Of the machinery of the Anglo-Saxon polity, by far the most complete, and the only part that could be said to be in any sense of the word representative, was that which existed locally—the courts of the hundred and the shire. The witena-gemot was, in its latter days, at all events, a council of magnates and royal officers, and to trace any analogy or direct continuity between it and the House of Commons is misleading in the extreme. It played, however, an important part in the history of the House of Lords. William I., true to the policy of representing himself as the legitimate successor of the Confessor, made no very violent changes in the institutions of his new dominions. The witena-gemot was continued, under the name of the Great Council. Sometimes these assemblies were really national, as, for instance, in 1086 and 1116, when all landowners were summoned of whomsoever they held land; but as a rule they were composed of the great territorial nobles, both laymen and ecclesiastics. The power of these bodies, however, in the presence of such despotic monarchs as William and his sons, was little more than formal, and the convocation of such unwieldy gatherings as fully attended councils must have been, gradually became an expedient to which recourse was had on special occasions only.