At the same time we see in his whole conduct abundant signs of a feeling that these documents belonged to the past; and that his office was to open to the realm and people of England views of constitutional liberty, of which no mere observance of Magna Charta, in its largest interpretation, could ever have given them any idea.
IV.
MIDDLE PERIOD OF EDWARD’S LIFE.
A.D. 1279–1290.
The prime or maturity of Edward’s life was spent in works of quiet usefulness. The rebellion and reduction of Wales formed, indeed, an apparent exception; but the period of actual hostility on this occasion was very short. Edward was forced by the sudden outbreak of Llewellyn and David, to draw the sword; but it was returned to its scabbard in a very few weeks. Prejudiced historians have delighted in describing this sovereign as a man who, like the great Corsican of the beginning of the present century, was ever plotting some new acquisition; ever coveting his neighbour’s possessions. But in the actual records of his reign, we see him, from his fortieth to his fifty‐second year, dwelling in peace, and “thinking no evil.” The only instance in which we find him in the battle‐field is just ‘the exception which proves the rule.’ He took arms because he was assailed; because his enemy had left him no option.
His fortieth year, the eighth of his reign, was distinguished in the way in which he best loved to distinguish it—by a great act of wise and useful legislation. Doubtless we owe its authorship mainly to the counsel and the legislative skill of Robert Burnel; but we must not refuse to the king the possession of that sagacious patriotism which we shall continue to discern in his actions long after that valued counsellor had been removed from his side.
The king and his chancellor were doubtless religious men. No Wiclif, no Latimer, had yet appeared; the twilight of the mediæval times was all the light they had to guide them. But we find Edward, without any asceticism, often giving days and weeks to religious exercises. His chancellor was a bishop, but he had been a statesman and a legislator before he became a bishop, and a statesman and a legislator he remained still. Both of these clear‐sighted and sagacious men saw the perilous operation of the mediæval doctrine of Purgatory, and of the assumed power of the priesthood to open and shut the doors of that fearful abode. Month after month, and year after year, estates were constantly passing into the hands of the Church, for the supposed benefit of departed souls. The king himself could not throw off this belief, nor abstain from following in the practice which was universal in his day. When his beloved Eleanor was taken from him, we instantly hear of various manors given to the priests of Westminster for a long succession of masses to be said for the benefit of the poor queen’s soul. And we may be sure that a delusion which ruled over so powerful a mind as the king’s, was universal among his people, and that no man who had really loved his lost wife or parents would be backward in showing his solicitude by such donations of land or money as he could afford, “for their soul’s benefit.“ As the Church was thus constantly receiving and never restoring, it seemed inevitable that in process of time it must become the sole landlord in the realm.
Hume tells us of one period when the clergy held one‐third of the lands of the kingdom; and it is easy to perceive that had no Reformation occurred—had no violent redistribution taken place—that course of continual addition and accumulation must have left, by this time, very few estates in England in lay hands. The king saw this tendency, and he desired to check it. But he would not wrong the Church by any act of tyranny. He himself shared in the ordinary belief, and, as we have just said, when his queen was taken from him, he gave, like other men, large estates “for the good of her soul.” But, while he questioned not the right of men in full possession of their faculties thus to deal with their own property, he saw an evident and a perilous abuse, grafted on this general belief and practice. Men in their latest hours—men, whose minds were clouded or prostrated by disease—bequeathed, they scarce knew what, out of sheer terror, or, in some cases, at the demand or dictation of some priest, who was zealous for “the good of holy Church.” In all probability, Edward had heard the complaints of disinherited wives or children, who found their hereditary possessions suddenly wrested from them, and who knew that the expiring parent who had, they were told, so willed, was, for hours or days before his departure, scarcely conscious of the meaning of his own words or actions. Here, then, without interfering with the main question—the usual and generally admitted theory—was an evident and a very serious abuse.
A parliament was held in Westminster, in November, 1279, at which a great statute was passed—the far‐famed law of Mortmain. It must have been passed in the presence and by the consent—apparent at least—of many prelates, whose desires “for the good of holy Church” it contravened. But the ascendancy of such a mind and will as that of Edward,—the legislative authority of the great chancellor, and the support, doubtless, of the earls and barons by whom the king was surrounded, prevailed; and the Church was compelled to submit to this limitation. Henceforth no man should be allowed “with dying hands“ to will away his possessions “to holy Church.” All such bequests were declared to be illegal and void. No more necessary statute could have been passed; and from that day to this—from 1279 to 1870—all England has honoured the name of the wise sovereign who devised and established the law of Mortmain.