officials and the nation. It was nearly two years after his
father’s death that he reached England, yet absolutely no trouble
had occurred during his absence. He had taken advantage of his
leisurely journey home to pacify the turbulent Gascony, and to
visit Paris and make a treaty with King Philip III. by which
the frontiers of his duchy of Aquitaine were rectified, to some
slight extent, in his favour. He, of course, did homage for the
holding, as his father had done before him.
The reign which began with this unwonted quietness was perhaps the most important epoch of all English medieval history in the way of the definition and settlement of the constitution. Edward I. was a remarkable figure, by far the ablest of all the kings of the house of Plantagenet. Edward I. He understood the problem that was before him, the construction of a working constitution from the old ancestral customs of the English monarchy plus the newer ideas that had been embodied in the Great Charter, the Provisions of Oxford, and the scanty legislation of Simon de Montfort. Edward loved royal power, but he was wise in his generation, and saw that he could best secure the loyalty of his subjects by assenting to so many of the new constitutional restraints as were compatible with his own practical control of the policy of the realm. He was prepared to refer all important matters to his parliament, and (as we shall see) he improved the shape of that body by reintroducing into it the borough members who had appeared for the first time in Montfort’s assembly of 1265. He would have liked to make parliament, no doubt, a mere meeting for the voting of taxation with the smallest possible friction. But he fully realized that this dream was impossible, and was wise enough to give way, whenever opposition grew too strong and bitter. He had not fought through the civil wars of 1263–66 without learning his lesson. There was a point beyond which it was unwise to provoke the baronage or the commons, and, unlike his flighty and thriftless father, he knew where that point came. The constitutional quarrels of his reign were conducted with decency and order, because the king knew his own limitations, and because his subjects trusted to his wisdom and moderation in times of crisis. Edward indeed was a man worthy of respect, if not of affection. His private life was grave and seemly, his court did not sin by luxury or extravagance. His chosen ministers were wise and experienced officials, whom no man could call favourites or accuse of maladministration. He was sincerely religious, self-restrained and courteous, though occasionally, under provocation, he could burst out into a royal rage. He was a good master and a firm friend. Moreover, he had a genuine regard for the sanctity of a promise, the one thing in which his father had been most wanting. It is true that sometimes he kept his oaths or carried out his pledges with the literal punctuality of a lawyer, rather than with the chivalrous generosity of a knight. But at any rate he always endeavoured to discharge an obligation, even if he sometimes interpreted it by the strict letter of the law and not with liberality. A conscientious man according to his lights, he took as his device the motto Pactum serva, “keep troth,” which was afterwards inscribed on his tomb, and did his best to live up to it. Naturally he expected the same accuracy from other men, and when he did not meet it he could be harsh and unrelenting in the punishment that he inflicted. To sum up his character it must be added that he was a very great soldier. The headlong courage which he showed at Lewes, his first battle, was soon tempered by caution, and already in 1265 he had shown that he could plan a campaign with skill. In his later military career he was the first general who showed on a large scale how the national English weapon, the bow, could win fights when properly combined with the charge of the mailed cavalry. He inaugurated the tactics by which his grandson and great-grandson were to win epoch-making victories abroad.
Edward’s reign lasted for thirty-five years, and was equally important in constitutional development and in imperial policy. The first period of it, 1272–1290, may be defined as mainly notable for his great series of legislative enactments and his conquest of Wales. The second, 1290–1307, contains his long and ultimately unsuccessful attempt to incorporate Scotland into his realm, and his quarrels with his parliament.
The changes made by Edward in constitutional law by his great series of statutes commenced very soon after his return to his kingdom in 1274. We may trace in all of them the same purpose of strengthening the power of the crown by judicious and orderly definition of its privileges. Constitutional changes. Statutes of Westminster and Gloucester. The great enactments start with the First Statute of Westminster (1275), a measure directed to the improvement of administrative details, which was accompanied by a grant to the king of a permanent customs-revenue on imports and exports, which soon became more valuable to the royal exchequer than the old feudal taxes on land. In 1278 followed the Statute of Gloucester, an act empowering the king to make inquiry as to the right by which old royal estates, or exceptional franchises which infringed on the royal prerogative of justice or taxation, had passed into the hands of their present owners. This inquest was made by the writ Quo Warranto, by which each landholder was invited to show the charter or warrant in which his claims rested. The baronage were angry and suspicious, for many of their customary rights rested on immemorial and unchartered antiquity, while others were usurpations from the weakness of John or Henry III. They showed signs of an intention to make open resistance; but to their surprise the king contented himself with making complete lists of all franchises then existing, and did no more; this being his method of preventing the growth of any further trespasses on his prerogative.
Edward’s next move was against clerical encroachments. In 1279 he compelled Archbishop Peckham to withdraw some legislation made in a synod called without the royal permission—a breach of one of the three great canons of William the Conqueror. Then he took the offensive Statute of Mortmain. himself, by persuading his parliament to pass the Statute of Mortmain (de religiosis). This was an act to prevent the further accumulation of landed property in the “dead hand” of religious persons and communities. The more land the church acquired, the less feudal taxation came into the royal exchequer. For undying corporations paid the king neither “reliefs” (death duties) nor fees on wardship and marriage, and their property would never escheat to the crown for want of an heir. The Statute of Mortmain forbade any man to alienate land to the church without royal licence. It was very acceptable to the baronage, who had suffered, on a smaller scale, the same grievance as the king, for when their subtenants transferred estates to the church, they (like their masters) suffered a permanent loss of feudal revenue. A distinct check in the hitherto steady growth of clerical endowments began from this time, though licences in mortmain were by no means impossible to obtain.
The great group of statutes that date from Edward’s earlier years ends with the legislative enactments of 1285, the Second Statute of Westminster and the Statute of Winchester. The former contains the clause De Donis Conditionalibus, a notable landmark in the history of English Second Statute of Westminster. law, since it favoured the system of entailing estates. Hitherto life-owners of land, holding as subtenants, had possessed large powers of alienating it, to the detriment of their superior lords, who would otherwise have recovered it, when their vassals died heirless, as an “escheat.” This custom was primarily harmful to the king—the greatest territorial magnate and the one most prone to distribute rewards in land to his servants. But it was also prejudicial to all tenants-in-chief. By De Donis the tenant for life was prevented from selling his estate, which could only pass to his lawful heir; if he had none, it fell back to his feudal superior. Five years later this legislation was supplemented by the statute Quia Emptores, equally beneficial to king and barons, which provided that subtenants should not be allowed to make over land to other persons, retaining the nominal possession and feudal rights over it, but should be compelled to sell it out and out, so that their successor in title stood to the overlord exactly as the seller had done. Hitherto
