Position and character of Edward—The Crusade—The Accession—The Conquest of Wales—Edward’s legal reforms—Financial system—Growth of Parliament.
Political
education of
Edward I.
If ever king came to his throne with a distinct understanding of the work that lay before him, that king must have been Edward I. The lessons of the last fifteen years of his father’s reign had not been thrown away upon him. He had been trained for the task of reigning, as well by his father’s mistakes and misgovernment as by the means which the nation, under Earl Simon and the barons, had taken to remedy the evils which those mistakes and misgovernment had produced. He must have known that England required sound laws and strong administration, an adequate organization for national defence, and effective methods for preserving internal peace; and the history of the late reign must have taught him not only that without the sympathy and co-operation of the nation at large these ends could not be secured, but that the nation was itself ready, educated sufficiently, and united sufficiently, to give the aid that he required. Earl Simon and his companions had perished, but the great end of their work had been achieved; they had made it impossible for a king again to rule as John had ruled, and as Henry had tried to rule. They had drawn out a plan of reform in the laws which Henry himself had accepted after their death, although he had struggled against it and evaded it whilst they lived; for most of the articles which had been forced upon him at Oxford in 1258, and at Westminster in 1259, he had re-enacted in the great statute of Marlborough, in 1267. He had reformed his expenditure; he had observed the constitutional rule of not taxing without the consent of the national council; he had even on some occasions called together representatives of the towns and counties, as Simon had done, although he had not so far imitated his rival as to make them an integral part of his Parliament. And thus the great contest had immediate effects even under Henry.
Motives determining
Edward’s
Crusade.
Edward had learned the deeper lessons; he had conceived the desire of satisfying the more essential needs of his people. Hence, perhaps, in part, his willingness to go on the Crusade. He knew that he had made enemies in the late war; a few years would heal up the old wounds. He knew that the land was exhausted; a few years’ rest would give it time to recruit. If he were likely to be the cause of unrest, he was better away; and even if he should not return until he returned as king, he might begin his new career less hampered than he would otherwise have been by the policy of his father.
Edward’s
English
policy.
Edward’s
idea of
kingship.
But Edward was qualified to do far more than merely restore the strength and energy of his fainting people; he was fitted to start and guide them on a new path of progress. He seems to have possessed, with his English name, the desire, which he certainly did not inherit, of being an English king; of putting himself at the head of his English people to make England a great power in Christendom. His aim no doubt was to secure that place for his descendants, not, as Henry II. had done it, simply by founding a great family inheritance of states scattered and divided, but as the true king of a people strong in the feeling of national unity, bound together by good laws, but more so by a sense of national identity, an intelligent participation in all national designs. The restoration of law and order, the determination that the English crown should be supreme within the British isles, the assertion and realization of the idea that the king should work as the leader and spokesman of a nation that could enter into his plans and take a share of his responsibilities—these thoughts must have been more or less before Edward’s mind from the beginning of his reign. Very possibly he foresaw little of the exact path in which he was going to walk: the exact points of legal reform, the opportunities for conquest, the exigencies in which he would have to act for the execution of his great designs, no doubt broke gradually on his view as he proceeded. He had still something to unlearn as well as something to learn. If in spirit he was English, he was in education and by association French; if he was to be a great national king, still his idea of kingship had too much of an inherited form, a form which it did not surrender without a struggle. His greatness was not without an element which sets it far above all the greatness that arises from mere success; he had it to learn, and he learned, to rule himself, to cast away his own cherished idea of reigning, and faithfully and honorably abide by the conditions which, although forced upon him, he saw at last were needed for the true realization of his character as a national king. He was not free from faults; it is no small part of his grandeur that, in a nature so strong as his, and with temptations so powerful as those which were presented to him, those faults had so little sway. Of an eminently legal mind, he was too apt to take captious advantage of his legal position, somewhat prone to evade responsibilities to which the letter of the law did not bind him. This weakness was the source of all his mistakes and the cause of all his failures; but this was all. His mistakes were few, and his failures fewer still. Yet, as we shall see, he did not realize all that he hoped. Nor was his actual contribution to national progress exactly what he designed. There are dark lines in his history as well as bright ones. Of his schemes some were too early, some too late for success; and in some points he drew the outline rather than built the fabric that was to last. Still his reign is a great era; he is the great lawgiver, the great politician, the great organizer of the mediæval English polity.
Crusade of
Prince
Edward.
Edward’s
accession to
the English
crown.