One of the judges, accused of corrupt practices, came to court to defend himself, attended by armed friends, one of whom offered wager of battle. The king, exceedingly enraged, publicly declared, that “if any one would kill Henry of Bath, (the judge,) he should have pardon for the crime!” When even the bench of justice was thus occupied by violent and corrupt men, it is no wonder that we hear that “the whole county of Hampshire swarmed with felons and murderers,” or to find that “the king himself was obliged to hold a court of justice at Winchester, trying and sentencing the offenders, many of whom were wealthy, and some of them his own servants.”
Several years after this, we find one of the greatest nobles in the land setting an example of disorder. Matthew Paris narrates how, “in consequence of some hasty words which passed between them, John de Warenne, earl of Surrey, slew with his own hand, in Westminster Hall, Alan de la Zouch, the king’s justiciary.” Probably, had Henry been at that time without assistance, this outrage, committed by so potent a nobleman, would have escaped retribution; but the prince was now at his right hand. Collecting a sufficient force, Edward pursued the earl to Reigate, besieged his castle, brought him to London a prisoner, tried him, and only spared his life, after much deliberation, in consideration of an enormous fine, equal to £100,000 of our present money.
Nor was violence, even of the extremest kind, a privilege of the nobles only. In July, 1263, during the excitement of “the Barons’ war,” queen Eleanor desired to leave her residence in the Tower of London, and to remove to Windsor Castle; but as her barge approached London Bridge, she found that it was occupied by a crowd of earl Simon’s adherents, who assailed her with cries of the grossest abuse, among which, “Drown the witch!” was one of the mildest. Huge stones, as well as all kinds of filth, were hurled at the barge, and the queen was glad to accept of the protection of the mayor, who conveyed her to the house of the bishop of London. Not many months after, when a body of these Londoners took part in the battle of Lewes, prince Edward rejoiced to avenge these insults, and to drive them in confusion at the spear’s point off the field.
But more than ten years had passed since these calamitous times, and most of those years had been spent in peace. No voices but those of acclamation now greeted Edward and his queen in their progress through the metropolis; and we may easily believe, without any violent stretch of the imagination, that among the London citizens who partook of the coronation‐banquet in 1274, there were many who, in the rawness of their youth, had crowded London Bridge to cast stones at Edward’s mother, and had fled before his vehement charge on the downs at Lewes in 1264.
Such was the realm of England, and such was its state and condition, over which Edward was now called to rule. It needed such a regulator, such an organizer; and he, perhaps, could hardly have found anywhere a better raw material out of which to build up a nation.
To him, in some measure, we owe the production and the formation of the men who fought and conquered at Crécy, Poictiers, and Agincourt; but we should be lothe to indicate this as his chief glory. We deem the work performed in his reign in establishing law, and in giving England a free legislature, to have been far more noble, far more glorious, than the achievement of brilliant but barren victories on distant battle‐fields.
England needed, most of all, at that peculiar conjuncture, precisely what, in Edward, God gave to her, “a legislative mind.” The king seems to have entirely appreciated the necessities and the difficulties of his position; and to have applied himself to the great task, of bringing everything into order, and of establishing the dominion of wise and equitable laws.
At the same time we must not forget, that such a work, and one embracing such a variety of details, could not have been performed by any single mind or single hand. Edward must have been aided by one or more of the most sound and competent of advisers. We cannot doubt that in Robert Burnel he had found such an assistant. And it is, perhaps, the best proof of the perfect unity and harmony which always existed between the king and his wise and able chancellor, that we find it difficult to separate the one from the other. We cannot tell when the king himself speaks, and when we are listening to his chancellor. We find, indeed, sometimes, language so evidently personal, as to make us feel that it must have been the king’s own; but at other times we seem to hear the great lawyer, the jurist, who is fitly interpreting his master’s will. Take, for instance, that noble opening of Edward’s reign, which we find in the preamble of the first statute of his first parliament:—
“Because our lord the king hath great desire to redress the state of the realm in such things as require amendment, for the common profit of the holy church and of the realm; and because the state of the holy church hath been evil kept, and the people otherwise entreated than they ought to be; and the peace less kept, and the laws less used, and offenders less punished than they ought to be—the king hath ordained by his council, and by the assent of archbishops, bishops, earls, barons, and all the commonalty of the realm, these acts under written, which he intendeth to be necessary and profitable to the whole realm.”
We cannot doubt that this high and kingly purpose was truly Edward’s; but we may with equal reason believe, that this right royal declaration came immediately from the pen of Robert Burnel.