Importance
and significance
of the
reign of
Edward II.

So the son of the great king Edward perished; and with a sad omen the first crowned head went down before the offended nation; with a sad omen, for it was not done in calm or righteous judgment. The unfaithful wife, the undutiful son, the vindictive prelate, the cowardly minister were unworthy instruments of a nation’s justice.

Such as it is, however, the reign of Edward II. is chiefly important as a period of transition. It winds up much that was left undone by his father; it is the seed-time of the influences which ripened under his son. The constitutional acts of 1309, 1310 and 1311 are the supplement to those of 1297; the tragedy of Piers Gaveston and Earl Thomas is the primary cause of much of the personal history that follows. So, too, the reign closes the great interest of Scottish warfare, and contains the germ of the long struggle with France. But viewed by itself its tragic interest is the greatest; and it is rich in moral and material lessons. It tells us that the greatest sin for which a king can be brought to account is not personal vice or active tyranny, but the dereliction of kingly duty; the selfish policy which treats the nation as if it were made for him, not he for the nation. It is the greatest sin and the greatest folly, for it at once draws down the penalty and leaves the sinner incapable of avoiding it or resisting it; it leaves the nation to be oppressed by countless tyrants, and is by so much worse than the tyranny of one. It allows the corruption of justice at the fountain’s head.

Constitutional
results
of the
epoch
closing with
his downfall.

So we close a long and varied epoch. The sum of its influences and results must be read in the history of the following age, in which, in many important points, the reign of Richard II. repeats the tragedy of Edward II.; and the struggles of York and Lancaster consummate the series of events which begin at Warwick and at Pomfret; in which the constitution that we have seen organized and consolidated under Henry II. and Edward I. is tested to the utmost, strained and bent and warped, but still survives to remedy the tyranny of the Tudors and overthrow the factitious absolutism of the Stewarts.

INDEX.

“The volumes contain the ripe results of the studies of men who are authorities in their respective fields.”—The Nation.

EPOCHS OF HISTORY