This was the substantial reply given to pope Boniface, and it was a fitting and worthy reply. That it was counselled and framed by the king’s ministers cannot be doubted, and we see in it a fresh proof of that remarkable feature in Edward’s character—his desire at every step to act in concert with his people, to move with them in every important step which required to be taken. But to this, the substantial reply, Edward thought it wise and expedient to add a private and friendly letter of his own. He sent this second communication, as he expressly says, “not in the form or shape of a judicial pleading,” but as an entirely unofficial communication from one equal to another. Its object, both professedly and really, was to obviate any possible ground of complaint or aggrieved feeling. In this letter the king touched upon the chief points in the history of the two countries, showing that a superiority had existed, and that homage had been paid from kings of Scotland to kings of England for centuries past, and he ended thus: “As, from the above‐named consideration, it is plain and notorious that the said kingdom of Scotland belongs to us in full right, and as we have never done anything which could in any way derogate from our rights over the same, we humbly entreat your holiness that you, weighing the arguments above stated, will deign to decide upon them according to the promptings of your own mind, in no way giving credit to the contrary suggestions of those who are jealous of us in this respect, but preserving and approving of our state and our royal rights, if it so please your paternal affection.”
The practical result, then, of the whole was, that Edward, firmly rejecting the papal claim, refused even to send commissioners for the purposes of discussing it. He was a sincerely religious man according to the obscured Christianity of his day, and he probably had never heard the pope’s claim to an universal primacy so much as questioned; but his own powerful and sagacious mind often enabled him to detect the unwarrantable pretensions of the ecclesiastics of all degrees, and when “he felt himself to be in the right,” as he told Winchelsey at Salisbury, he was “ready to go to the death” in defence of his position.
Having thus parried and averted the blow aimed through the papal power, the king that summer mustered his forces and entered Scotland; but the unsettled state of his affairs, and the negotiations still pending with France and with Rome, seem to have distracted his attention and weakened his efforts. He captured one or two strong places, but the Scotch still adhered to their former system of retiring at his approach, and laying waste everything before him. An early winter set in and cut short the campaign, and the king resolved to fix his residence for the winter at Linlithgow, so as to be ready to commence a spring campaign in 1302; but this plan was defeated by an absurd concession made by his agents in France. In prolonging the truce with Philip until November 30, 1302, they foolishly permitted the French ministers to claim the inclusion of the Scotch in this cessation of arms. Thus one whole year more was lost to Edward in his Scottish operations—a loss which, at his time of life, was of great and permanent importance. The final and entire reduction of Scotland was thus once more postponed until 1303–1304, when, as we shall presently see, it was entirely effected.
In the course of the year 1302 we observe the meeting of three parliaments. The first was held in London in March, and of it we have few particulars; another was held in July; and in September and October a third was held in London, at which there attended seventeen prelates and forty‐four abbots, nine earls and eighty‐two barons, two knights from each shire, and two citizens or burgesses from each city or borough, with full power to do “quod tunc de communi consilio ordinabitur.”
XI.
THE DISAFFORESTING QUESTION—THE COMMISSION OF TRAILBASTON, ETC., ETC., A.D. 1299–1305.
We have purposely omitted one topic of dispute which occupied Edward much during the latter years of his life, reserving it for a distinct consideration. We now return to this subject, intending, if possible, to bring the whole of these transactions into one connected view. In speaking of the parliament of Lincoln a few pages back, we noticed the occurrence of this question, but it occupied much time in several other parliaments besides that of Lincoln. It gave rise to a strife which continued during all the years between 1299 and 1305, the subject of which was the proper execution of the Charter of Forests. We have already remarked, more than once or twice, that most of our historians have confused the question by speaking in general terms of Edward’s unwillingness to confirm “the charters;”—a vague way of speaking, which entirely clashes with what we know of Edward’s continued efforts, during more than twenty years, to strengthen and enlarge Magna Charta by turning it into statute‐law; and we have also explained that the points which were really in dispute were these two: first, the king’s right of taking “talliages or prises” without consulting parliament; and, secondly, a reduction of the royal forests, under the name and by the means of what was called “a new perambulation.”