“He closed the great gulf in which all the landed property of the kingdom was in danger of being swallowed, by his reiterated statutes of Mortmain.
“I might continue,” adds Sir William, “this catalogue much further; but, upon the whole, we may observe that the very scheme and model of the administration of common justice, between party and party, was entirely settled by this king.”
Legislation, then, and not military aggrandisement, was the work to which Edward gave himself; and to liken him to Justinian does him much less than justice. The Roman emperor lived at the close of a long period, during which Rome had abounded in laws, and in which the laws had grown too complex and voluminous. His merit is, that he collected and arranged them into a code. Edward’s position was wholly different. He was born at a period when England, then rising into the position of a nation, found itself without written laws and without a legislature; and he set himself to work, with clearness of vision and with largeness of heart, to supply both these wants. In the first of these merits he does not stand alone. Other rulers have seen the need of laws, and have set themselves to supply that need. But too often they have wished that the work should be theirs, the power theirs, and the merit theirs also. Now it is Edward’s peculiar glory that, from the very opening of his public life, he seemed to have seen and adopted the great truth which lies at the foundation of all “constitutions,” that “what concerns all should be by all approved,” and that “common perils should be met by remedies prescribed in common.” These words fell from him in 1295, but the sentiment contained in them is discernible in every step of his whole career.
It is this, then, and not any supposed “attempt to subject the whole island to his sway,” which constitutes the chief feature, the principal merit of Edward’s reign. To be a conqueror, although indeed this kind of conquest—the bringing one island under one government—would be the wisest and the best; to be a conqueror would be but an ordinary and very common sort of merit. The organ of “acquisitiveness” is possessed by a great many of the human race. Edward’s true glory lay, not in his desire to take, but in his willingness to give. When he went forth, “mighty in arms,” it was, in every case, because his foes left him no choice,—because to remain at peace would have been dishonour. But his peaceful conquests, his legislative victories, were entirely his own. Here we see his own mind and will. From his first accession to power, until the latest hour of his reign, two great objects were constantly present to his mind. He saw that the realm required, and ought to have, a parliament, consisting not only of prelates and lords, but of “all the commonalty of the realm, thither summoned;” and next, that a chief function and office of this parliament should be to deliberate upon proposals laid before it, which should become, when assented to, statutes of the realm.
It is the enunciation of these two principles which constitutes the real glory of king Edward’s reign. That enunciation was his own voluntary act, and its sincerity was proved by all the measures of his subsequent career. His life was devoted to the working out of this great theory. His first statute, in its preamble, gives a bold and fearless sketch of a free legislature; and, before he died, he had gathered around him, as elected members of that legislature, the representatives of all the most populous towns of his realm of England.
Justly then does the writer whom we have already cited, a contemporary of Spenser and of Shakespeare, describe this king as one “in whom we see the value of wisdom, kingly powers, and noble industry,” one who “was a fatherly king to his people; employing all his life, care, and labour to benefit and nourish the commonwealth”—one, in fine, “in whom the good government and commonwealth of England had their chief foundation.”[40]
VI.
SCOTTISH AFFAIRS—THE ARBITRATION—THE WAR.
A.D. 1291–1296.
The year 1290, as we have already observed, was the disastrous one which ended Edward’s peaceful career, and involved him, without any purpose or desire of his own, in troubles and strife for the rest of his days. The death of a young princess, at a distance of five hundred miles from Edward’s dominions, involved the northern part of the island in troubles which he alone had power to quell. His interposition, earnestly and loudly called for, became, apparently, inevitable. But, when once engaged in the attempt, there seemed no option left him in any of the after‐proceedings. Step followed step, by absolute necessity, until the annexation of the Scottish realm became the natural and unavoidable close; and in this way, without having any alternative, he became an object of enmity to almost every Scotchman, and drew down on his memory in after times, the bitter and unjust animadversions of a long series of prejudiced historians.