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THE LIFE AND REIGN OF EDWARD I.

[Illustration: EDWARD I.

After the Engraving by Vertue, from the Statue at Carnarvon Castle.]




THE LIFE AND REIGN OF EDWARD I.


BY THE AUTHOR OF

“THE GREATEST OF THE PLANTAGENETS.”


Pactum Serva.


SEELEY, JACKSON, & HALLIDAY, FLEET STREET, LONDON. MDCCCLXXII.




  LONDON:
  PRINTED BY SIMMONS & BOTTEN,
  Shoe Lane, E.C.




PREFACE.


The volume entitled “The Greatest of the Plantagenets,” was correctly
described in its title‐page, as “an Historical Sketch.” Nothing more
than this was contemplated by the writer. The compilation was made
among the manuscripts of the British Museum, in the leisure mornings of
one spring and summer; and so soon as a fair copy had been taken, it
was handed to the printer. The work was regarded as little else than
a contribution towards an accurate review of what is both the most
interesting and the most neglected period of our English history.

Its reception exceeded by far the author’s anticipations. Very
naturally—it might be said, quite inevitably—many of those who
admitted the general truth of the narrative, were ready to charge the
writer with “partisanship,” and with taking a “one‐sided vie” of the
question. It is not easy to see how this could have been avoided. A
great literary authority has said, that the first requisite for a
good biography is, that the writer should be possessed with an honest
enthusiasm for his subject. And in the present case his chief object
was to protest against what he deemed to be injustice. It was his
sincere belief, that for about a century past an erroneous estimate of
this great king’s character had been commonly presented to the English
people. He endeavoured to show that this had been the case; to explain
the causes, and to lead men’s minds to what he deemed to be the truth.
Such a task could hardly be performed without giving large opportunity
to an objector to exclaim, “You write in a partisan spirit.”

When a new view of any passage in history is presented, many fair and
honourable men, while they yield to the force of evidence, cannot help
feeling some reluctance—some dislike to the sudden change of belief
which is asked of them. Such men will often be found to object to the
manner in which their old opinion has been assailed, even while they
admit that that opinion was erroneous, and can no longer be maintained.

So, in this case, even those who advanced this charge of partisanship
were generally ready to concede, that an altered view of Edward’s
character had been not only propounded, but in a great measure
established. Thus the Dean of Chichester, Dr. Hook, while he “differs
widely from some of the author’s conclusions,” admits that “his
argument is always worthy of attention,” and describes the volume as
one in which “everything that can be advanced in favour of Edward is
powerfully stated.”[1] So, too, the Oxford Chichelean Professor of
History (Mr. Montagu Burrows), speaks of the book as “a bold, and
on the whole, successful attempt to reclaim for him; who is perhaps
the only sovereign of England since the Conquest who has a right to
the title of ‘Great,’—that position of which he has been deprived
for more than a century.”[2] And Sir Edward Creasy calls it “an
earnest, elaborate, and eloquent defence of Edward I. against all the
imputations that have been made upon him;” and adds, “my frequent
references to this volume will show how much I value it.”[3]

The success, then, of the author’s attempt to rectify a prevalent
error, has been clear and indisputable. All that he proposed to do has
been done—the estimate of this great king’s character which prevailed a
dozen years ago, has been considerably elevated—the justice which the
writer claimed for him is now almost universally conceded.

But a desire is expressed by most of these critics—and it is a natural
and laudable desire—that, as a result of the whole, a history, in the
ordinary sense, of this great sovereign, and of the remarkable period
in which he lived, might be given to the British public. The writer has
entirely sympathized with this desire, and he has waited several years
in earnest expectation of the appearance of some such work. Nothing of
the kind, however, has yet been given to the world; nor is there any
announcement of such a purpose. It seems to him, therefore, that it
is in some sort his duty to review his former work; to consider how
far it is justly chargeable with “partisanship,” and to reduce it, so
far as he is able, to the proper form and proportions of a permanent
history.

He feels the more impelled to attempt this, from an increasing
conviction that not the sovereign only, but the time in which he lived
and reigned, alike present to the mind of the dispassionate student, a
subject meriting and richly repaying a careful examination. The chief
features of the period in which this prince was born, and in which he
lived, are more remarkable than even that union of great qualities by
which he himself was distinguished.

This fact—the unusual concurrence of many symptoms of advance and of
excellence at that period—has already been noticed by more than one
writer. Lord Macaulay said: “It was during the thirteenth century
that the great English people was formed. _Then_ first appeared with
distinctness that Constitution which has ever since preserved its
identity; then it was that the House of Commons, the archetype of all
the representative assemblies which now meet, held its first sittings;
then it was that the Common Law rose to the dignity of a science; then,
that our most ancient colleges and halls were founded; and then was
formed a language, in force, in richness, and in aptitude inferior to
the tongue of Greece alone.” Another writer adds, that “it was _this_
age of all ages, to which every Englishman ought to look back with the
deepest reverence. In this thirteenth century our Constitution, our
laws, and our language, all assumed a form which left nothing for
future ages to do, but to improve the detail.”

This language is strong, and yet it does not fully describe the
fact. The union of solid and real advance with more ornamental
characteristics is very remarkable. It is true, as the writers whom we
have just cited observe, that this thirteenth century—the life‐time of
Edward the First—saw the rise into existence of the English people,
of the English language, and of the English constitution; but there
were also several other appearances which were stranger than these.
The realm had been, for many years, almost destitute of a settled
government; it had suffered from something nearly approaching to
anarchy. The Norman dukes who domineered over it only vouchsafed to
their province of England an occasional visit; often manifesting very
little care for it. Richard I., out of a reign of nine years, spent
only a few months in this island. His successor was the worst king that
England ever saw, and did his utmost to plunge the realm into ruin and
absolute confusion.

It fills us, therefore, with wonder, to observe that so soon as these
two pernicious rulers had departed, and the land was left in the
hands of a weak and incompetent, but well‐meaning youth, symptoms of
revival of all kinds became perceptible. Not only did the English
people and the English language come to light in this realm, but mind,
and intellect, and taste all uprose together. “It is curious,” says
Lord Campbell, “that in this turbulent reign (of Henry III.) there
should have been given to the world the best treatise upon law of which
England could boast, until the appearance of Blackstone’s Commentaries.
For comprehensiveness, for lucid arrangement, for logical precision,
this author, Henry de Bracton, was unrivalled for many ages.”[4] Nor
did this great lawyer stand alone. The same period gave us Roger Bacon,
and, with him, Antony Beck and Chancellor Burnel, two of the greatest
statesmen that England has ever known.

In the fine arts, also, England, though not yet rid of tumult and
civil war, made equal or still greater advances. Henry really valued
the arts; his wife was a cultivator and a patroness of poetry, and
he himself resolved to raise, at Westminster, a new and splendid
shrine for the remains of the last of the Saxon kings; ornamenting it,
also, with pictures of great Saxon achievements. This royal taste for
architecture was in accordance with the popular feeling. It was in the
latter half of this century that Westminster Abbey, the old St. Paul’s,
the Temple church, and the cathedrals of Salisbury and Norwich were
built, while during the same period, the churches of Lincoln, Ely,
Ripon, Exeter, and Wells, all received important enlargement. Nor was
Edward himself, though a soldier and a statesman, at all indifferent
to these matters. He raised in Westminster Abbey two monuments to his
father and his consort, of which an eminent critic of our own day
says: “Few figures can surpass, in simplicity and beauty, the effigy
of queen Eleanor, and those on the crosses erected to her memory are
almost equally fine.”[5]

The last words remind us, naturally, of another comparison. The king
of England, in A.D. 1290, lost his dearly‐loved consort; and he paid
to her memory every tribute of affection and of sorrow that he could
conceive, or that could be suggested to him. Her funeral “presented one
of the most striking spectacles that England ever witnessed.”[6] And he
then strove to perpetuate that memory by monumental works, both within
the Abbey and in twelve other places. In our own day we have witnessed
a similar bereavement. We have been conscious, too, of the existence of
a sorrow as deep and as enduring as that of the Plantagenet king. But
have we, with all the wealth and all the refinement of this nineteenth
century, been able to exceed, or even to equal, those outward and
permanent expressions of sorrow which king Edward conceived and
compassed in the earliest days of the English people and kingdom?

A consummate judge of these matters has truly said that “The reign
of Edward I. is the period of the most perfect and beautiful Gothic
buildings, when English art attained to the highest eminence it has
ever yet reached.”[7] And do we not all know, as a simple matter of
fact, that if we, after a lapse of six hundred years, wish to raise
a building of more than ordinary beauty, we are compelled to have
recourse to the noble works which were achieved in the days of Edward
I.? there being within our reach no purer or loftier models.

The age, then, in which this great monarch lived was a very
extraordinary age. To ascribe its singular fruitfulness in every
department of human excellence to his influence, would be altogether
irrational and absurd. He himself was only one fact or feature among
many. But it crowns the whole edifice with singular grace, to find—in
the days which produced a Bracton and a Roger Bacon, a statesman
like Burnel, a divine like Grosstête—the throne filled by a man like
Edward, whose first thought was of uprightness,[8] whose mind was a
“legislative mind,”[9] and who wrestled and fought his way through a
period of no common difficulty and trouble, with such “cleanness of
hands” as to leave him, at last, one of the noblest examples that it is
possible to adduce, of a ruler “fearing God and working righteousness.”

       *       *       *       *       *

Those who are acquainted with the former publication will recognize
in the present, whole pages, sometimes whole chapters, which merely
reproduce what had been therein said. Perhaps one third of the book
