CHAPTER V
THE THREE EDWARDS, 1272–1377
Edward I, II and III (notice the grand old Saxon name; we are all one people now) may be called Edward the Lawgiver, Edward the Poltroon, Edward the Knight. The greatest of these was Edward I.
Edward I, 1272–1307.He ranks with the half-dozen greatest ‘makers of England’, with Alfred, William the Conqueror, Henry II, Henry VIII, Elizabeth and Victoria the Great. I should, indeed, say ‘makers of Britain’, for it was Edward who planned, and almost carried out, the union of the whole island under one crown. It was he who gave the abiding shape to our Parliament, who dealt the first successful blow to the pretensions of the Pope, and who first armed his soldiers with the all-conquering long-bow. His care for our coast defences was an example to his descendants. His legal reforms were hardiy less than those of Henry Il, and, at the end of his reign, the law of England and the law courts of England had taken the shape that they bore down to the nineteenth century.
His character,Edward I was a brave, truthful, honourable man, of rather narrow sympathies, and could be very cruel to his foes. He had learned much from his father's muddled reign; he would engage in no rash foreign adventures to please the Pope or any one else. and his task.Of course, he must defend his one foreign possession, Gascony; and he fortified it very strongly. Occasionally he was obliged to fight King Philip IV of France, but that was because that cunning gentleman was trying to swallow not only Gascony but also little Flanders, which