Edward I

Edward had been trained in a stern school of experience. He had seen all the disasters of bad government, and with a great man's instinct for compromise knew how to remedy abuses without arousing permanent opposition among his people. He had love of power, and a masterfulness which in his early years gave him a reputation for cruelty; but he became more temperate as he grew older, and while never lacking in bravery, showed a sympathetic, even an affectionate nature. He was chaste, devout, frugal, and dignified, always just, faithful, and persevering, and in his motto, pactum serva (keep troth), he cherished an ideal which, though difficult of attainment, was unusual for the times. He supplemented the work of his ancestor, Henry II, because where the latter displayed a genius for administration, Edward displayed a genius for law, and shaped in a legal mould the growing English constitution. Warrior, lawgiver, financier, Edward was destined to leave an indelible impression upon English history.

Edwards Attack on the Feudal Claims of the Barons

Scarcely had the king been crowned when he began a searching inquiry into the feudal conditions of England. Under Henry III the barons had been getting into their hands many of the royal estates, and exercising powers in matters of revenue, justice, and all sorts of local privileges that were in some quarters reducing the royal rights to little or nothing. Edward determined to restore to the crown these privileges, or "franchises," as they were called, claiming that they were the king's. In 1274 he sent commissioners, much as William had done when he made Domesday Book, to inquire hundred by hundred regarding these franchises, and to write them down in a permanent record. This record still exists, and is called the Hundred Rolls, standing next to Domesday Book as a record of mediaeval life.

Having thus gathered his information, Edward spent three years in considering the evidence that it furnished. Then at Gloucester, in 1278, he held a great council, and there declared his purpose of sending out his justices to inquire by what warrant the barons exercised these privileges. If the barons, he said, could not show that a king had conferred them, then he would take them away. Edward was as good as his word. The justices set out in 1279 and visited all the counties, calling the great men before them and listening to their statements or pleas.' The great men were thoroughly angry. The earl of Warenne, hating the lawyers, drew a rusty sword and replied to their inquiry that his ancestors had won their lands by the sword, and by the sword he proposed to hold them. Edward did not wish to go to extremes ; he desired to teach the barons a lesson, but he still wished to remain on friendly terms with them. So he compromised, leaving to them all franchises that had actually been exercised before the accession of Richard I. Yet even so the result was fatal to feudalism: the king had asserted his power, and in the years that were to follow the great lords lost bit by bit the privileges that in the earlier years they had so imperiously exercised.

In the same year (1278) Edward dealt feudalism another blow by completing the transformation of the knight from a military vassal into an agricultural landholder. He compelled every person possessing land of the value of L20 a year to assume "the degree of a knight, with its costly ceremonies, or to pay a fine."' This broke up the exclusive character of feudal society by creating a new body of knights, not feudal at all, but composed of the middle class landholders, who, doing no military service to an intermediate lord, owed their honor directly to the king, and to him alone their fealty and homage.

The Further Correction of Abuses

It is amazing to see how widely, even at this early date, Edward's reforms extended, and how thoroughly he had learned the lesson that Earl Simon and his own experience had taught him. In 1275, at a parliament held at Westminster, he brought forward a great measure, known as the First Statute of Westminster' This statute, in the first place, dealt with the royal administration, seeking not to change its form, but to remedy its abuses. A mere list of these abuses would fill a page and would throw a glaring light on the way in which the foreigners that had held royal offices under Henry III had been misusing the powers given them. Unjust fines, refusal of bail, illegal claims of debts, demand of debts already paid, interference in courts and in county elections, excessive levying of aids, were all considered in this great statute. Secondly, it forbade the feudal lords to abuse those privileges that were clearly within their rights. Thirdly, it guarded the rights of merchants and of citizens. "The men who drew up the statute of Westminster the First," says Jenks, were no theorists, they knew exactly where the shoe pinched.