XXVIII. REIGN OF EDWARD I. (concluded)…

XXVIII. REIGN OF EDWARD I. (concluded)

Banishment of the Jews--Edward's Restorative Measures--Edward's Continental Policy--Quarrel with France--Undeclared War--Edward Outwitted by Philip--Re-conquest of Wales--The War with France--Position of Balliol--He is placed under Restraint--Edward Marches Northwards--Fall of Berwick--Battle of Dunbar--Submission of Balliol and Scotland--Settlement of Scotland--Sir William Wallace--He heads the National Rising--Robert Bruce joins him--Submission of the Insurgents--Battle of Stirling Bridge--Invasion of England--Edward Defeats Wallace at Selkirk--Regency in Scotland--Oppression of the Clergy--The Barons refuse to help Edward--The Expedition to Flanders--A Constitutional Struggle--Peace with France--The Pope claims Scotland--Defeat of the English--Edward's Vengeance--Capture and Death of Wallace--Bruce takes his place--Death of Comyn--Defeats of the Scots--Death of Edward--His Character and Legislation--Sketch of the growth of the English Parliament.

The persecutions of the Jews, which had taken place at the beginning of the reign of Edward, had little power to check the increase or destroy the prosperity of that extraordinary people. Having no country; living among strangers and enemies; deprived of all political standing, of all legitimate objects of ambition, even of reasonable security for his life, the Jew devoted those intellectual qualities, in which he was seldom deficient, to the pursuit of the one agent of power within his reach. Wealth alone could raise him from a condition of utter misery and contempt, give him a certain standing and importance among his fellow-men, and offer employment for his energies. If the favour of the law was to be bought, the wealthy Jew might hope to buy it, while for the poor there was no mercy. If he was derided and persecuted by the haughty sons of a happier race, he returned scorn for scorn, and revenged himself where he could by trading upon their necessities. If he became grovelling and avaricious, absorbed in a mean and unworthy passion, perhaps the fault should be ascribed less to him than to those whose unconquerable prejudices isolated him in the midst of his kind, and condemned him to the fate of Ishmael.

Thirteen years had passed since 300 men and women of the despised race had been hanged in the streets of London, when Edward found himself again in want of money; and this time he put in force a measure even more arbitrary, and more in defiance of all law and justice, than before. He ordered that every Jew in England, young or old, male or female, should be seized on an appointed day, and cast into the dungeons of his castles. Here they were confined until they had paid collectively a sum of £12,000 to the royal treasury. Not long afterwards further measures were taken against them and this time, as it appeared, rather from a spirit of fanatical cruelty than for the sake of gain. In the year 1290 the king issued a proclamation, commanding all the Jews to quit the country within two months, under the penalty of death. In spite of the cruelties they had suffered, their numbers had rather increased than diminished, and more than 16,000 persons were thus banished from the kingdom. They were permitted to carry with them only so much money as would pay the cost of their voyage, the rest of their goods and property being seized in the king's name. There is no doubt that large sums of money were obtained by the Crown in this barbarous fashion, and it may at first appear that such was the object of the king in directing this wholesale banishment. If so, it was certainly a short-sighted policy, inasmuch as the supplies which repeated exactions had continued to force from the Jews would now be permanently cut off.

The mariners of the king's fleet proved ready agents of his tyrannous commands, and perceiving how little apparent prospect the Jews could have of redress for any injuries inflicted on them, the sailors in many cases stole the little money which the proscribed people possessed, and even drowned a number of them during the passage. The murderers, however, did not entirely escape punishment, for the king was by no means desirous that the royal example of plundering and slaying should be followed by his subjects. Some of the sailors were arraigned, and suffered death as the punishment of their misdeeds.

It is remarkable that, at the very time of these shameful proceedings against the Jews, the king was engaged in enacting various admirable laws for the protection of his Christian subjects, and the reforms thus instituted were immediately put in force. Perversion of justice again prevailed throughout the kingdom, insomuch that a few years later, when all the judges were indicted for bribery, only two of the whole number were pronounced innocent. The judges were compelled to pay heavy fines as the result of their condemnation. Other measures taken by the king for increasing his revenues proved less successful. Proceedings were instituted for the recovery of portions of the royal domains of which some of the barons had become possessed, and these nobles were required to show the titles by which they held their lands; but the demand excited such a determined resistance and such strong feelings of indignation, that the king was compelled to desist. It is related that when the royal commissioners presented themselves to Earl Warrenne, and required to see the titles of his estates, the earl unsheathed his sword, and stretched it out before them. "This," said he, "is the instrument by which I hold my lands, and by it I mean to defend them! Our ancestors, who came to this realm with William the Bastard, obtained their possessions by their good swords. The conquest was not made by him alone, nor for himself solely; our fathers bore their part, and were participants with him." Such language was not to be mistaken, and Edward found it prudent to leave the great barons alone.

The recent successes of the English king necessarily excited attention and considerable alarm on the Continent. For a long time past the power of England had been increasing year by year, and the conquest of Wales and Scotland, which seemed to involve the union of the whole island under one ruler, made that power still further to be dreaded. Everything might be feared from a man of the character of Edward--ambitious, daring, and unscrupulous, and with the whole force of Britain at his command.

The animosity between the French and English kings seldom slept long, and on former occasions, when the Welsh or the Scots had been in arms against the King of England, they had received secretly either aid or encouragement from France. Now, however, Philip IV., surnamed the Fair, the reigning monarch of that country, adopted a different policy; and, without attempting to revive the waning patriotism of the Scottish nobles, he determined to avail himself of the moment when Edward was engaged in the north to attack the English territories on the Continent. Edward, however, was not unprepared for these hostile demonstrations; and, while directing his arms in other quarters, he had not neglected, by all those arts familiar to the state policy of the time, to protect himself against the probable designs of the French monarch. The Count of Savoy, one of the most powerful vassals of France, had been won to the side of Edward by gifts and promises, and similar means had secured the goodwill of the Emperor of Germany. Edward also allied himself with the Count of Bar by giving him his daughter Margaret in marriage. Other measures are said to have been employed by him; and the disaffection of a number of the subjects of Philip is referred by French writers to the influence of the King of England.

Such was the position of affairs when a matter, apparently of the least possible importance, led to an outbreak of hostilities between the two countries. Some English and Norman sailors met together at a watering-place near to Bayonne, and a quarrel took place as to which party should fill their casks first. One of the English sailors struck a Norman with his fist; the Norman drew a knife, and attempted to stab his assailant, who immediately closed with him, and in the scuffle the Norman was killed. The Englishman was carried out of danger by his shipmates; and when the Normans demanded satisfaction for the injury, the authorities of Bayonne, which city was in possession of the English, are said to have refused the request. The Normans, baffled in their vengeance, put to sea; and having met with a small vessel belonging to the English, they captured it. There was on board a merchant of Bayonne, whom they hung up to the yard-arm with a dog tied to his feet.

Such a proceeding was necessarily followed by retaliation on the part of the English, and the Normans were made to pay dearly for the savage act they had committed. The mariners of the Cinque Ports attacked them continually in the Channel, and every Norman who fell into their hands was butchered. Before long the sailors of other nations began to take part in this irregular warfare, the French and the Genoese taking the side of the Normans, and the mariners of Ireland and Holland ranking themselves on the side of the English. Many bloody encounters took place between the opposite parties, without any interference from their governments, the latter remaining passive spectators of these proceedings. The Normans, having collected a fleet of about 200 vessels, of different sizes, made a descent upon the coast of Gascony, hanged a number of sailors whom they took prisoners, and carried off large quantities of stores, with which they returned to St. Malo, in Brittany. No sooner were they safely at anchor than an English fleet appeared at the mouth of the harbour. The sailors of the Cinque Ports, with only about eighty ships, had set out to meet the enemy. The Normans accepted the challenge to decide the matter by a pitched battle, which was fought, by mutual agreement, at a spot on the coast. The result of the battle was decisive in favour of the English, who took the Norman ships and massacred all on board, no quarter being given in any case. The two nations might thus be said to have been at war for some time before their rulers took any part in the matter. The effect of this battle was to excite to the utmost the vindictive feelings of the French and their desire for vengeance. Philip, who was himself enraged at the result of the engagement, perceived that the time was come when the people would hail with delight the declaration of war with England, and when such a war might be undertaken with the best chance of success.

Philip assumed the right to punish the English king, who, as Duke of Aquitaine, might be said to be a vassal of the French Crown. Officers sent by Philip attempted to seize some of the English lands, but they were driven back by the troops in possession. He then summoned the "Duke of Aquitaine" to appear before his suzerain after the feast of Christmas. Edward considered it prudent not wholly to disregard this summons, and he sent his brother Edmund to arrange terms with Philip. On this occasion it would appear that Edward, influenced by the ties of blood, made choice of a bad instrument. The negotiation terminated by an agreement on the part of Edmund to surrender Gascony to the French king for a period of forty days, as a satisfaction for his wounded honour, receiving the promise of Philip that it should be faithfully given up at the expiration of that time.

The French king now declared himself satisfied; but when the forty days were over, and Edward demanded restitution of Gascony, he received the refusal which was to be anticipated. Philip now assumed a bolder front, declared that Edward had not fulfilled the duties of a vassal, and summoned him once more, as Duke of Aquitaine, to appear before his peers. The summons being disregarded, he declared him contumacious, and condemned him to the loss of all his estates in France. This declaration was immediately followed by active measures, while Edward, on his part, prepared for war with all his customary energy. He formally renounced his vassalage to the French Crown, and assembled a powerful fleet at Portsmouth. For several weeks the winds were contrary, and during that time the impatient monarch was compelled to remain in a condition of inactivity.

Meanwhile the Welsh, who probably were incited by Philip, broke out into insurrection, took possession of many castles and towns on their borders, and slaughtered great numbers of the English. Edward immediately led the larger part of his army into Wales, having first sent a body of troops into Gascony, and commanded his powerful fleet to attack and plunder the French coast. A number of sanguinary sea-fights took place between the French and English, and in nearly every instance the French were defeated with heavy loss.

The campaign of Edward in Wales was by no means brief or unattended with danger. The mountaineers once more distinguished themselves by an obstinate resistance, and the rigours of winter approached to add to the privations and difficulties of the royal troops. Several months passed away before the Welsh were again reduced to submission. Madoc, their leader, the foremost and best man in this new struggle for liberty, was at length compelled to surrender, and he, and some of the most dangerous chiefs, were cast into dungeons for life. Thus, after the country had been again ravaged, and the homes of great numbers of the people laid in ashes, the rebellion was quelled. The story which has long been current respecting the hanging of the Welsh bards by Edward, rests on no contemporary authority, and therefore must be rejected as devoid of truth. There is no question that the king was capable of that, or any other savage act by which vengeance for the past or advantage for the future could be obtained; but it is the business of history to illustrate a man's character by his actions, and not to deduce from that character a confirmation of doubtful statements.

No sooner was the submission of the Welsh complete than the position of affairs in Scotland again demanded Edward's presence, and compelled him to relinquish his intention of crossing the Channel in person. The nobles of Guienne had lately declared themselves in his favour, and thither the king despatched a small body of troops under the command of his brother Edmund. Soon after landing Edmund died, and the command fell upon the Earl of Lincoln, who attacked the French towns and fortresses with success, driving out the whole of the French garrisons. This state of things, however, was soon afterwards reversed. The towns were retaken by the forces of Philip, and his uncle, the Count of Artois, at the head of a well-appointed and numerous army, defeated the English in several engagements, and ultimately drove them out of the country, with the exception of a few towns on the coast. Reprisals took place, and the whole seaboard of Brittany was plundered by the English fleet, which inflicted great damage upon the inhabitants, and punished them with an indiscriminating cruelty. The French, with their allies, made similar attempts on this side of the Channel; and on one occasion they landed at Dover, and sacked the town while the male inhabitants were absent. The men of Dover returned to find many of their wives and children murdered, and they overtook the marauders before they could reach their ships, and slew several hundreds of them.

The policy of Edward towards Scotland had been insulting and imperious to a degree which can hardly be considered judicious. The king whom he had raised to the throne was thwarted in every assumption of independent sovereignty, and was made to feel that his oath of vassalage was no form, but a galling and bitter reality. Complaints against the government of Balliol were never wanting from his disaffected subjects, and these readily obtained the ear of Edward, who lost no opportunity of summoning the Scottish king to appear before him, and answer the charge of maladministration. It appears that when Balliol submitted to these demands, and presented himself in the English courts, Edward treated him with consideration; but when the Scottish monarch attempted to assert his independence, he was checked by measures of the utmost rigour. The submission of Balliol to his imperious master was complete, and although he at length was goaded to offer some resistance, this tardy show of spirit tends little to redeem his character from the unfavourable light in which it is viewed by history. Apologists for this degraded king have not been wanting, and have attempted to paint him as a man possessed of lofty qualities, who erred rather from overestimating his strength than from weakness or pusillanimity. His contemporaries among his own countrymen thought otherwise, and gave him a nickname, attributing to him an utter want of energy and ability. Posterity has generally concurred in this opinion, and the name of John Balliol has been inscribed on the least honourable page of Scottish history.

While proceedings were pending against Balliol for the resistance which he had at length displayed, Philip of France seized upon the province of Guienne, and war was declared between France and England. Edward now summoned Balliol and the chiefs of the Scottish nobility to render him assistance against his enemies, and to attend him with their armed vassals. But the insolent and overbearing policy which he had lately exhibited had roused the national pride of the Scots. They paid no regard to his summons, and, instead of arming their vassals in his service, they assembled a Parliament at Scone. The Parliament commenced its proceedings by dismissing all Englishmen from the Scottish court; and being thus relieved from the presence of spies on their measures, they determined to declare war against Edward, and to enter into negotiations with the French king, which resulted in a treaty of alliance. The English barons who held estates in Scotland were banished from their lands, and the few Scottish nobles who still remained faithful to Edward were proceeded against in the same manner. Among these was Robert Bruce, Lord of Annandale, whose broad lands were thus temporarily lost to him, and were given to John Comyn, Earl of Buchan.

Such proceedings as these excited the indignation of Edward, who sought for the instrument through whom he might counteract their tendencies. Such an instrument appeared in the younger Bruce, son of the competitor for the crown, to whom Edward now showed great favour, regretting his decision in favour of Balliol, and expressing his determination to place Bruce on the throne. In consequence of these promises, Bruce and his son, with other nobles of their party, renewed the oath of homage to the English king. The weak and vacillating character of Balliol was clearly displayed at this critical moment. He made little or no attempt to quell the rising storm; and the dominant party in the Scottish Parliament, fearing a submission on his part, excluded him from the functions of government, and placed the management of affairs in the hands of twelve of the leading nobles. The council began the exercise of authority with bold and patriotic measures. They formally threw off their allegiance to Edward, concluded a treaty of marriage between the eldest son of Balliol and the niece of Philip of France, and finally assembled an army, with which they marched against Carlisle, and ravaged Cumberland with great cruelty. The attack upon that city proved unsuccessful, and the Scottish army was split up into factions, whom the bond of a common love for liberty with difficulty held together.

Edward had now prepared himself for the signal vengeance which he meditated. He collected an army of 30,000 foot and 4,000 horse, and was presently joined by 1,000 foot and 500 horse under the command of Anthony Beck, Bishop of Durham. This warlike prelate rode beside the king at the head of the troops, and with the sacred standards of St. John of Beverley and St. Cuthbert of Durham elevated above them, they marched towards Scotland. Balliol had been already summoned to attend at Newcastle as vassal of the English crown. Edward waited a few days for his appearance, and then crossed the Tweed, and led his army along the Scottish side to the town of Berwick, which was then in the hands of the Scots.

Berwick was at that time a place of great importance, celebrated for its wealth and the power of its merchants, and thus its capture offered to Edward other temptations than the prospect of revenge. He, however, made some show of clemency by proposing terms of accommodation. These being refused, a simultaneous attack was made upon the town by the English fleet and the troops of the king. The attack by sea was repulsed, with the loss of three ships, which were burnt by the townspeople; but the onslaught of the land forces bore down all opposition. Berwick possessed a castle of great strength, but the town itself was defended only by a dike. Over this outwork Edward led his troops in person, and, mounted on his war-horse, was the first to enter the town. The example stimulated the courage of his soldiery, and within a short time the town was in their hands.

The scene that ensued was characterised by deeds of horror which are a deep reproach to the manhood of the age, and an indelible stain upon the manhood of him who directed them. Seventeen thousand persons were put to the sword, without distinction of age or sex. The young and the innocent, the aged and the helpless, were mingled in the same slaughter with the strong man who resisted to the death. For two days the carnage was continued, until the dead were piled up before the doors of the houses, and the streets ran with blood. From the cruelty of man the wretched inhabitants sought the protection of God, and, flocking to the churches, they flung themselves in terror before the altars. But the sanctuary was speedily violated by their enemies; the shelter of the sacred walls availed them nothing, and they were cut down by hundreds where they knelt. It is related that a party of Flemish merchants defended themselves in their factory--a building of great strength--against the whole English army, until the assailants, exasperated by the opposition they encountered, set fire to the factory, and burnt it, with its brave defenders, to the ground.

Such was the terrible lesson which Edward was capable of giving to those who opposed him. The massacre of Berwick took place on Good Friday, the 30th of March, 1296, and on the 5th of April the Abbot of Arbroath arrived at the town, attended by three monks. Undismayed by the ruthless character of the king, the abbot appeared before him, and delivered to him Balliol's formal renunciation of his homage. "What! is the traitor capable of such madness?" the king exclaimed. "If, then, he will not come to us, we will go to him."

The castle of Dunbar was one of the strongest and most important fortresses of Scotland. Patrick, Earl of Dunbar, was at this time fighting against his countrymen in the English army; but his countess, who held the castle, and whose hatred of the English was intense, entered into a treaty with the Scottish leaders to deliver it up to them. The offer was speedily taken advantage of, and the Earls of Ross, Atholl, and Monteith, with other powerful chiefs, and a body of thirty-one knights, and a number of foot, took possession of the castle. Having driven out the few soldiers who refused to join their standard, they prepared to maintain, at all hazards, the strong position which they had obtained.

Aware of the importance of this movement, Edward dispatched Earl Warrenne with 10,000 foot and 1,000 horse, to recover the castle. When the earl summoned the garrison to surrender, they agreed to do so, provided they were not relieved within three days. Meanwhile, the whole Scottish army was advancing upon the English, and having reached the high ground above Dunbar, took up a strong position there. Forty thousand foot and 1,500 horse were ranged in formidable array upon the hills, and the garrison of the castle jeered and insulted the English from the walls, as though they were already beaten. The relative positions and numbers of the two armies were such that nothing but the headlong precipitancy of the Scots could have lost them the victory. Undismayed by the number of the enemy, Earl Warrenne advanced to meet them, and while passing through a narrow valley his troops fell for a short time into confusion. The Scots perceived this, and believing that the English were taking to flight, they abandoned their position, and rushed down upon their foes with shouts of triumph. Meanwhile the English leader had restored order among his troops, and the Scots found themselves, not among masses of fugitives, but face to face with a compact body of tried and well-appointed soldiers. They were driven back in the utmost disorder, and the earl gained a complete victory, which for a time decided the fate of Scotland. Ten thousand men were left dead on the field, and the greater number of the leaders were taken prisoners. This battle was fought on the 28th of April, and on the following day King Edward appeared on the scene in person, and the castle then surrendered.

Edward proceeded with his customary energy to complete the subjugation of the kingdom. He passed through the country, and took possession of the castles of Roxburgh, Dumbarton, and Jedburgh. Having received reinforcements, he advanced to Edinburgh, which fortress surrendered to him after a siege of eight days. At Stirling he was joined by the Earl of Ulster, with 30,000 men, and passed on to Perth, where for a few days he sheathed the sword and occupied himself with the ceremonies of religion. While the English army were keeping the feast of John the Baptist, new messengers arrived from Balliol, who now sued for peace. Edward would not condescend to treat with the fallen monarch in person, but sent to him the Bishop of Durham, who communicated to him the pleasure of the English king. The terms offered were such as never ought to have been accepted. Balliol was required to submit himself absolutely to the mercy of the conqueror, and to renounce his kingly state under circumstances of the utmost humiliation. In the presence of an assembly of bishops and nobles the King of Scotland was stripped of crown and sceptre, and was compelled, with a white rod in his hand, to perform a feudal penance. The date of this disgraceful transaction was the 7th of July, 1296. Balliol placed his son Edward in the king's hands as a hostage, and the youth, with his father, was sent to England, where both remained for three years imprisoned in the Tower.

Edward continued his victorious course through Scotland, encountering no opposition. From Perth he proceeded by way of Aberdeen to Elgin. On his return to Berwick he visited the ancient abbey of Scone, and removed from it the "famous and fatal stone" upon which for ages past the Scottish kings had been crowned. This stone with the regalia of Scotland, was placed by Edward in Westminster Abbey, as a memorial of the conquest of Scotland. Within a year that conquest had been entirely wrested from him; but the stone still remains at Westminster, little worn by the lapse of six centuries.

After the battle of Dunbar, the elder Bruce reminded Edward of his promise to place him on the Scottish throne. The king--who fulfilled his promises only when it suited him--replied angrily, "Have I nothing to do but to conquer kingdoms for thee?" Instead of placing Bruce on the throne, Edward directed him, with his son, the younger Bruce, to receive to the king's peace the inhabitants of his own estate of Carrick and Annandale. Such was the degrading office in which the young Robert Bruce, the future restorer of his country's freedom, was at this time employed.

Edward now occupied himself in a settlement of the affairs of the kingdom; and the measures which he took for that purpose were in themselves politic and just. The forfeited estates of the clergy were restored, many of the civil functionaries of Balliol were retained in office, and the governors of districts in most cases were permitted to exercise authority as before. Some Englishmen were, however, placed in command of castles and districts to the south, and the supreme authority was vested in three persons--John of Warrenne, Earl of Surrey, governor; Hugh de Cressingham, treasurer; and William Ormsby, justiciary.

The independence of Scotland now appeared to be completely destroyed, the great nobles were reduced to a state of submission, if not of servility, and the power of the King of England was firmly rooted throughout the country. But a change was at hand, and the slumbering fires of patriotism were soon to be kindled into a blaze. The man who was destined to rouse his countrymen from their apathy, and work out the freedom of his native land, was at this time engaged in roaming the hills of Renfrewshire at the head of a petty band of marauders. He was that Sir William Wallace, famed through succeeding ages in song and story but of whom history can offer few details worthy of reliance. The family of Wallace was ancient, and might be termed gentle, but was neither rich nor noble. He was the son of Sir Malcolm Wallace, of Elderslie, in Renfrewshire. In those stormy times bodily strength and valour in the field were the first qualities necessary to success. The strength of Wallace is described as having been prodigious. His size was gigantic, and as he grew towards manhood there were few men who could meet him in single combat. He was a man of violent passions, and a strong hatred of the English, which was evinced by him in early life, was fostered by those with whom he came in contact.

So the Scots took up arms once more. The great chiefs, indeed, hung back from the movement, and maintained their condition of supineness and inactivity, but the inferior nobility and the people no longer suffered themselves to be restrained. Incited by their hatred of the English, the peasants formed themselves into armed bands, which infested the highways, and attacked any of their enemies whom they could surprise in detached parties. Edward devoted large sums of money to repressing these disorders, but without success; and now there appeared on the scene the extraordinary individual whose energies, first excited by personal injuries, were afterwards devoted to his country, with efforts not less than heroic.

We first read of Wallace as engaged in a quarrel in the town of Lanark with some English officers who had insulted him. Bloodshed ensued, and he would probably have lost his life in the streets but for the interference of his mistress, to whose house he fled, and with whose assistance he escaped. It is stated that Hislop, the English sheriff, attacked the house, and, in a spirit of brutal and unmanly vengeance, seized the unhappy lady, and put her to death. Wallace, having heard the news, threw himself upon the sheriff, and slew him. For this deed he was proclaimed a traitor, and he left his home to seek a retreat among the mountain fastnesses. Here he was soon joined by a few desperate men, who naturally acknowledged the strongest as their chief, and then, under his guidance, made successful attacks upon straggling parties of English. His name soon became famous, and numbers of men of different classes flocked to his standard. The halo of romance with which this hero was speedily invested by the people, the continued and galling acts of tyranny on the part of the English, and the desire of revenge, all tended to recruit the ranks of the mountain chieftain. Among the first men of note who joined him was Sir William Douglas, the former commander of the garrison of Berwick, who, at the sack of that town, had been permitted to march out with military honours. He now brought a force consisting of the whole of his vassals to the army of Wallace. At this time Ormsby, the justiciary, was holding court at Scone. Thither Wallace led his troops, and surprised the justiciary, who escaped with difficulty, leaving a rich booty behind him.

The Scots now openly ravaged the country, plundering and slaying all the English who fell into their power. Wallace was cruel and merciless in war, and through the records of that time we look in vain for any of those acts of humanity which were inculcated by the laws of chivalry, and occasionally practised by men who sought the reputation of accomplished knights. The same ruthless barbarity characterised the mode of warfare on both sides, and Scots or English, in passing through the country, marked their course by a trail of blood.

The conduct of the younger Bruce, who afterwards displayed, as Robert I., such distinguished abilities, was at this time uncertain, and the reverse of energetic. Edward, however, dreaded the rebellion of a chief who possessed such great estates and influence, and, having summoned him to Carlisle, compelled him to make oath, on the sword of Thomas Becket, that he would continue faithful. As a proof of his fidelity, he was required to ravage the lands of Sir William Douglas, whose wife and children he seized and carried into Annandale. Having thus quelled suspicion, the young chief, who was then twenty-two years old, called together his father's vassals, spoke of his recent oath as having been extorted by force, and as being therefore of no weight, and urged them to follow him against the oppressors of their country. They refused to do so in the absence of his father, and Bruce then collected his own retainers, and proceeded to join Wallace.

The news of the rising of the Scots was brought to Edward as he was about to embark for Flanders. He immediately issued orders for the collecting of an army, which was placed under the command of Sir Henry Percy and Sir Robert Clifford. These distinguished commanders advanced, at the head of 40,000 men, to meet the forces of the patriots, which were already in a condition of disorganisation. The Scots were without any acknowledged leader, and although Wallace, as the prime mover of the revolt, as well as by his superior qualities, was the most worthy to assume that position, the higher nobility who were with him refused to act under the orders of a man whom they regarded as their inferior. Under such circumstances as these, combined movements were impossible, and all the advantages of discipline, which, equally with prudence, may be said to be the better part of valour, were on the side of the enemy. The English leaders proposed to negotiate, and after a short deliberation, the chief associates of Wallace laid down their arms, and once more gave in their submission to Edward. Among those who did so were Bruce, Sir William Douglas the Steward of Scotland, the Bishop of Glasgow, Sir Alexander Lindsay, and Sir Richard Lundin. The document signed by them is dated at Irvine, on the 9th of July. One man alone, of all the higher Scottish nobility, remained to uphold the honour of his order, and preserved his duty to his country. This was Sir Andrew Moray of Bothwell. Undaunted by the disaffection of his powerful companions, Wallace still held together a strong band of men, who, poorer and more patriotic, disapproved of the pusillanimity of their chiefs; and with these he retreated for a time into the mountains.

Several months elapsed, during which Edward appears to have made no attempt to molest the Scottish insurgents. Meanwhile the fame of Wallace was extended throughout the country, and vast numbers of the people flocked to his standard. Knighton, an old English historian, asserts that the whole of the lower orders already regarded Wallace as the future deliverer of their country, and that amidst the surrounding dangers they gathered new hope and courage from his undaunted brow. It is stated also that many of the nobility repented of oaths weakly or unwillingly taken, and that their hearts were with the cause of the man whom they had refused to obey. Wallace renewed offensive operations with largely increased forces, and drove the English from the castles of Brechin, Forfar, Montrose, and other fortresses to the north of the Forth. He was engaged in a siege of the castle of Dundee when he received news of the advance of the English. Raising the siege, he marched his forces, consisting of 40,000 men, in haste to Stirling, where he arrived before the English army. Wallace took up a favourable position on the banks of the Forth, a portion of his troops being concealed by the hills. The Earl of Surrey, in command of 50,000 foot and 1,000 horse, soon afterwards appeared on the other side of the river. On observing the strong position of Wallace, the earl thought it prudent to negotiate with him, and to this end sent messengers to him proposing to treat. The reply of Wallace was bold and decided. "Return," he said, "to those who sent you, and say that we are not here to waste words, but to maintain our rights, and give freedom to Scotland: let them advance, and we will meet them beard to beard."

The English were exasperated by this bold defiance, and importuned their leader to accept the challenge offered to him. Cressingham, the treasurer, a weak and hot-tempered man, joined his expostulations with the others, protesting against a delay which would increase the expenditure of the public money. The earl, though an able general, who must have perceived the danger of an attack against the position before him, was prevailed upon by such representations as these to yield his own better judgment, and lead his impatient troops to the destruction which awaited them.

Early on the morning of the 11th of September the English began their passage across the narrow wooden bridge which was the only means of communication with the opposite bank of the river. It is evident that a large force would occupy many hours in crossing the river by this means, and during that time they must lie in a great measure at the mercy of a determined enemy. Wallace did not neglect the opportunity thus afforded him. He suffered the English to transport about one-half of their forces, and then took possession of one end of the bridge, thus effectually cutting off their further advance. He then surrounded the body of the enemy who were thus separated, threw them into confusion, and gained a bloody victory. Many thousands of the English fell by the sword or perished in the water, and among the dead was the treasurer, Cressingham. This man, during his administration had made himself peculiarly obnoxious to the Scottish people, and they now revenged themselves after a barbarous fashion, by stripping the skin from the dead body of their enemy, and cutting it into small pieces to be worn as the North American Indian of a later day carried the scalp of his fallen foe.

The Earl of Surrey had not crossed the river, and as soon as he perceived that the destruction of his troops was inevitable, he caused as many of them as could be collected to occupy the castle of Stirling, and then took horse and rode at full speed to Berwick. Among the Scots the loss was comparatively small, and the only man of note who fell was the patriotic Sir Andrew Moray of Bothwell. The result of this victory was no less than the restoration of the country to freedom. Wallace pushed his success without delay, and wherever he went his progress was almost without opposition. The castles of Edinburgh, Berwick, Dundee, and Roxburgh at once surrendered, and within a short time the rest of the Scottish strongholds submitted to the victor, so that there was not a fortress in the country remaining in the possession of the English king.

A few months later a famine arose in Scotland and, driven in some measure by the want of supplies, Wallace invaded England. He remained for awhile in Cumberland, and on his return an assembly of the nobility was held at the Forest Kirk, in Selkirkshire. It is generally understood to have been at this time that Wallace was invested with the title of guardian or governor of the kingdom of Scotland and commander of its army.

It is worthy of remark that the name of Balliol was retained in this instrument, and the appointment of Wallace was declared to be made with the authority of King John, whose legitimate right to the crown appears to have been universally recognised.

At this time Edward was still in Flanders, engaged in a war with Philip of France, which had followed the seizure of Guienne. A treaty of peace having been at length agreed to, Philip endeavoured to influence Edward in favour of the Scots, and to include them also in the amnesty. But the English king would listen to no such proposals. His conquest had been suddenly wrested from him, and he was intent on vengeance. He issued letters to the barons of the kingdom, commanding that the whole military force of the realm should be assembled at York on the 14th of January, 1298.

The immense army thus collected together, and numbering 100,000 foot and 4,000 horse, was placed under the Earl of Surrey, who led it as far as Berwick. On his arrival there, the earl received the king's direction not to proceed until he himself should be there to take the command.

Edward landed in England in March, and again summoned the barons, with all the forces at their command, to meet him at York at the approaching feast of Pentecost. A still more numerous army than before was thus organised, and the king placed himself at its head, and marched triumphantly towards the north. Having reached Roxburgh, he proceeded thence along the coast, attended by a fleet which had been dispatched to furnish the army with supplies. During this part of his course he encountered no opposition, saw no enemy, and the few habitations which were to be found along the route had been deserted by their inhabitants.

The Scottish patriots were gathered together among the mountains, and the great and noble of the land once more ranged themselves beneath the standard of Wallace. Among them was Robert Bruce, who now finally declared himself on the side of freedom. With a cool judgment, which merited a more fortunate issue, Wallace for a time avoided coming into collision with the enemy, whose overwhelming numbers threatened to crush him in an open conflict. He hung upon the flank of the English army unseen, but close at hand, ready to take advantage of any opportunity of inflicting damage upon it. The march of Edward was not unattended with difficulties. The scanty resources of the country were wholly insufficient to afford sustenance for his troops, and the store-ships were detained and driven about by contrary winds. A quarrel also took place between the English and Welsh soldiers under his command; and the latter, to the number of 40,000, showed a disposition to desert, and go over to the Scots. "Let my enemies," said Edward, "go and join my enemies. One day I will chastise them all." Meanwhile, the ships still failed to arrive, and the scarcity of provisions seemed likely to approach a famine. Edward was about to retreat to Edinburgh, when he learned that the Scottish army was encamped not far off in the wood of Falkirk. The news is said to have been brought to the king privately by two of the Scottish nobles, the Earls of Dunbar and Angus. He immediately determined to go forth to meet the insurgents, and on that night the royal army lay in the fields. Edward himself, sleeping beside his horse, received a kick from the animal, which broke two of his ribs. The news soon spread through the camp that the king had been killed, and a state of confusion ensued which threatened the complete demoralisation of the troops. Edward, however, restored discipline among them by mounting his horse, and riding at their head, regardless of the pain he endured.

The English army began its march at dawn on the 22nd of July, 1298. Within a short time the enemy were observed to have taken up a position in a field which lay at the side of some rising ground in the neighbourhood of Falkirk. The force under the command of Wallace was greatly inferior to that opposed to him; but he had posted his troops with great judgment, and for a long time the Scottish infantry repelled the furious attacks directed against them. Not so the cavalry, of whom Wallace possessed no more than 1,000. These did not even attempt to resist the superior numbers of the enemy, but, without striking a blow, they turned and fled from the field. Cowardice is certainly not the characteristic of the race to which these men belonged, and therefore their flight can only be attributed to treason on the part of their leaders. Be the cause what it might, the loss of this division speedily decided the fate of the day, and the heroic resistance of the infantry was rendered totally unavailing. The Scots at length gave way before the repeated charges of heavy cavalry, and the victory of the king was complete. Little or no quarter seems to have been asked or given, for we are told that 15,000 Scots were left dead upon the field.

Wallace effected his escape with a remnant of his army, and fell back on Stirling. The English followed fast on his steps; but when they arrived at that place he was gone, and the town was a heap of smouldering ruins. St. Andrews and Perth were afterwards also burnt to the ground; the first by the English, and the latter by the inhabitants themselves. As the king passed through the country, he laid waste the villages and the cultivated fields with fire and sword. But the land was poor, and not all the activity of the marauding forces could procure the necessaries of life for so large a body of men. Edward was compelled to retreat, and in the month of September he quitted Scotland, having regained possession only of the southern part of the country.

For several years after the signal defeat he sustained at Falkirk we hear no more of Wallace. He resigned the office of guardian of the kingdom, and, in an assembly of the barons, William Lamberton, Bishop of St. Andrews, John Comyn the younger, John de Soulis, and Robert Bruce, Earl of Carrick, were appointed guardians in his stead. The new appointments were made, like the old, in the name of Balliol, although that dethroned monarch was then a prisoner in London. It would appear that bitter feuds of long standing were buried in the arrangement by which Bruce and Comyn consented to act together in the name of the man who had successfully rivalled both of them in the contest for the crown. The events of the after life of John Balliol may be told in a few words. In the year 1299 the Pope Boniface VIII. interceded in his behalf, and the fallen king was liberated from his confinement, and conveyed to the estate of Bailleul, in Normandy, from which his ancestors took their name. There he passed the rest of his days in retirement, scarcely remembering his former high position, and little heeding the important events which were deciding the destinies of his country. He died in the year 1314.

Meanwhile, events of some importance had been going on in England. Allusion has already been made to the heavy burdens entailed upon the English people by the repeated wars of their king. In addition to these causes of complaint, the clergy were oppressed by the officers of the crown, who seized their stores and ransacked their granaries for supplies for the king's troops. At length they applied for aid to the Pope; but the only result of the application was to make their condition still more miserable. The Pope granted them a bull, known as "Clericis laicos," directing that the Church revenues should not be devoted to secular purposes without the permission of the Holy See. Such defiance Edward could not be expected to endure. But at this time Boniface was himself in a position of difficulty, and the bull being opposed in France, he was compelled within a year to issue another, which virtually restored matters to their former position, and removed the papal protection from the goods of the Church. Acting upon the authority of the first bull, some of the English clergy refused to satisfy the demands of the king, who then took the extraordinary course of outlawing the whole body. The whole of the property of bishops, abbots, and inferior clergy was seized, insomuch that in many cases they were left without bread to eat or a bed to lie upon.

Meanwhile, the preparations for the French expedition were being pushed on. In February, 1297, Edward was engaged in collecting two armies to proceed, the one into Flanders, and the other to Guienne, when the Earl of Hereford, the constable of England, and the Earl of Norfolk, the marshal, who had been required to quit the country with their armed vassals, directly refused to obey. The king addressed the marshal, and swore by the everlasting God that he should either go or hang; and the earl repeated the oath, and swore that he would neither go nor hang. With these words the two barons quitted the royal presence together, and 1,500 knights immediately followed them. The king thus found himself deserted by his court, and he knew that at such a moment his crown, or even his life, was in imminent danger. With that ability for which he was distinguished, he occupied himself in quelling the storm. He employed all his art to conciliate the clergy, and having in some degree succeeded, he nobly threw himself upon the goodwill of the people. He mounted a platform in front of Westminster Hall, attended only by his son, the Prince of Wales, the Earl of Warwick, and the Archbishop of Canterbury, and addressed the people assembled below him. After a pathetic allusion to the dangers he was about to encounter for his subjects, and expressing a hope that, in the event of his death, they would preserve the succession to his son, the stern warrior-king shed tears before his audience; the archbishop also wept; and the people, overcome by these extraordinary demonstrations, rent the air with shouts of loyalty. The earls still refusing to obey the king, he appointed other officers in their place, and induced the nobles who were with him to make him a money grant.

Edward now appointed the Archbishop of Canterbury to the head of the council of regency, and proceeded to embark on his expedition to Flanders. At Winchester he was met by a deputation, who, in the name of the lords spiritual and temporal of England, tendered him a formal remonstrance. The nobles denied their liability to accompany the king to Flanders, in which country their fathers had never borne arms for the kings of England; and said, moreover, that their means were so reduced by the royal exactions, they could not, if they would, obey his command. They also designated the expedition as unnecessary and impolitic while affairs in Scotland remained in such a critical position. The king made no direct reply to the address, and feeling himself secure in the loyalty of the people, he left the nobles to their discontent, and set sail for Flanders.

It is necessary here to relate the circumstances which led to the expedition in question. The chief was naturally the occupation of Gascony; but there were subsidiary causes. In the year 1294 Edward had concluded a treaty of marriage between his son Edward and Philippa, the daughter of Guy, Count of Flanders. This union was opposed to the interests of the King of France, who exerted every means in his power to prevent it. Having in vain attempted to do so by a course of intrigues, Philip sent to invite the count to meet him at Corbeil, for the purpose of consulting on matters of importance. The old man, whose character was honest and unsuspicious, presented himself at the time appointed, when his person, with that of his wife, was seized by the orders of Philip, who conveyed them prisoners to Paris. This unknightly act of treachery excited general indignation throughout Europe, and the Pope having remonstrated with the king, he was obliged to set the count at liberty. Before doing so, however, he compelled him to make oath that he would abandon the alliance with England, and, in pledge of the fulfilment of the vow, Philippa was required to be sent to Paris as a hostage. These demands having been reluctantly complied with, the old Count took a tender farewell of his child, who was then only twelve years old, and returned to his own dominions. An appeal which he addressed to the Pope for the recovery of his daughter was answered by a threat of excommunication against Philip; but that unscrupulous monarch retained possession of his hostage, in defiance of the thunders of the Church. It was at this time that the Count entered into a coalition which had been recently formed by Edward, and included the Emperor of Germany, the Archduke of Austria, the Duke of Brabant, and the Count of Bar.

Such were the circumstances under which Edward entered on the expedition which terminated with so little success to the English arms. He landed at Sluys in the month of August, and immediately on his arrival quarrels broke out among the sailors of the fleet, who came from different seaports, and between whom there had been long-standing feuds. Such was the extent to which these animosities were carried, that a regular engagement took place between the mariners of Yarmouth and those of the Cinque Ports, and twenty-five ships belonging to the former were burnt. It is related that, during the conflict, three of their largest ships, one of which carried the royal treasure, were taken possession of and conveyed out to sea.

While such was the condition of the British navy at this period, the land troops were occupied with similar quarrels and disorders. Among the allies of Edward there was little more unity. The cities of Flanders, rivals in wealth and power, regarded each other with a jealousy which threatened the most serious dissensions. Among the various factions were some who adhered to Philip of France, and their numbers were greatly increased when that king marched into the country at the head of an imposing force of 60,000 men. The French gained a victory over the Flemings at Furnes, and obtained possession of a number of their chief towns.

Damme had been occupied by Philip, who was compelled to retire before the English forces, and Edward then advanced into the country, making an unsuccessful attack on Bruges, and going into winter quarters at Ghent. Here the most deadly quarrels broke out between the English troops and the townspeople; and in a riot which took place in the town 700 of the English were killed. Every effort was made by the king and Count Guy to repress these tumults; but the feud continued without abatement, and effectually prevented any combined movements against the enemy.

Such was the position of affairs in the winter of 1297, when proposals for a truce having been made by Philip, they were readily accepted, and the English king returned to his own country. Edward had spent large sums of money in this expedition, which had ended in a manner wholly unworthy of his fame and his resources. But the humiliation of the king had not been confined to the non-success of his arms; he was compelled to give his assent to various reforms introduced by his barons, and to add confirmations of those charters which checked the abuse of arbitrary power. Early in the preceding year the constable of the kingdom, with the earl marshal and many other of the nobles, interposed in defence of the privileges of Parliament, and forbade the officers of the exchequer, in the names of the barons of the kingdom, to collect certain taxes which had been laid on by the king without the consent of the national representatives. The citizens of London were allied with the barons in this measure, and Edward found himself at length compelled to submit. From the city of Ghent, where he was then staying, he sent instructions to this effect to the council of regency, some of whom were known to favour the demands of Parliament; and at the same place he granted a new confirmation of the two charters, and also of an important enactment, by which it was declared that no impost should be levied without the consent of the peers spiritual and temporal, the knights burgesses, and other freemen of the realm.

Such concessions as these were not made by Edward without great reluctance, and his annoyance at the restrictions thus placed upon him was clearly shown soon after his return to England. His barons, however, were determined that the statutes should not be evaded, and a Parliament having been summoned at York, the king was called upon to give a solemn ratification of the charters he had granted. Edward excused himself at that time under the plea that he was on his way to chastise the Scots; but he gave his promise to do what was desired of him on his return, and the Bishop of Durham and three barons made oath in his name to that effect.

On his return from Scotland, Edward met his parliament, which was assembled in March, 1299, at Westminster. He now endeavoured by every means in his power to gain time, and when closely pressed, he quitted London, as it were by stealth. The barons, however, were not to be thus defeated, and having followed him, and urged the fulfilment of his solemn obligations Edward found himself compelled to assent. By an extraordinary act of craft, however, he took measures to evade the provisions of the document by adding a clause at the end, "saving the rights of the crown," which destroyed the value of the concession, and subverted the meaning of what had gone before. The cunning of the king had, in this instance, overreached itself. With few exceptions, the barons rose up in indignation, and quitted the assembly and the city, with their retainers. Edward now proposed, as he had done before, to secure the goodwill of the people; and to this end he directed the sheriffs of London to call a meeting of the citizens, and to read to them the new confirmation of the charters. The people assembled in large numbers in St. Paul's Churchyard, and listened attentively. It appears that they possessed more intelligence than the king gave them credit for, since, after having applauded the earlier clauses, they no sooner heard the last, than they gave every demonstration of indignation, and proved that they fully comprehended its unworthy purport. The king now perceived that the country was unanimously against him; and having called his Parliament once more together, he threw out the obnoxious clause, and granted all the concessions that had been demanded. There was, in fact, no alternative, if Edward desired to maintain his position and authority. Four years later, the king sent to the reigning Pope, Clement V., to request a dispensation absolving him from the oaths he had taken, and to which he said he had been driven by a traitorous conspiracy. The Pope, however, evaded the request; and when the further solicitations of Edward failed to produce a more decided effect, he found himself compelled to respect those grants which he had made law.

Philip the Fair, who was inferior to Edward in warlike accomplishments, was his equal in craft and cruelty. After the English king quitted Flanders, in 1297, he had no opportunity of conducting further measures of importance in that country, which during the succeeding years was overrun by the French troops. In the year 1302 the Flemings rose against their oppressors, and gained a complete victory over them at Courtrai. That the "rabble of Flemings," as the French called them, should thus overcome the chivalry of France, was a disgrace not to be endured; but while the nobles were panting for a knightly vengeance, their king was planning a safer and bloodier retaliation. For some time previously Edward had determined to abandon his ally, the Count of Flanders, and to regain possession of Guienne from the King of France by treaty. The Pope was now appealed to, and he proposed an alliance of marriage between the two kings. Edward, who was now a widower, was to marry Margaret, the sister of Philip, and the Prince of Wales was to marry Isabella, the daughter of the French king. Such an alliance had already been contemplated with satisfaction by the negotiators. It is true that there were difficulties in the way. Edward had sworn solemnly to marry his son to Philippa, daughter of the Count of Flanders; he had also pledged his honour that he would never make truce with the French king without the entire concurrence of his ally. But these obstacles served only to delay the progress of the negotiations for a few months. Edward broke off his solemn engagements abroad as readily as he threw aside his oaths at home; and in September, 1299, the double marriage took place, the son being contracted to Isabella by proxy at the same time that his father was married to Margaret.

A peace between France and England necessarily attended the conclusion of this alliance; and it was agreed that injuries remaining unredressed on either side should be compensated for, and that the possession of Guienne should be settled by negotiation; pending which, Philip gave several towns in Gascony to be held as security by the Pope. In these arrangements the French king entirely disregarded his alliance with the Scots; and neither in this treaty, nor at its subsequent ratification, were they in any way mentioned. On the 20th of May, 1301, the treaty was formally concluded. Edward regained possession of the province of Guienne, and, in return, he gave up the Flemings into the hands of their enraged enemies. A few months later, the French barbarously revenged themselves for their former defeat at Courtrai, by attacking the Flemish peasants of the district of Lille, and putting them to death in what was a massacre rather than a battle. A year previously, Count Guy of Flanders had fallen into the hands of Philip, by whom the noble old man was subjected to cruelty, which soon resulted in his death. He died in his prison at Compiègne at the age of eighty-one.

Having concluded peace with France, Edward immediately turned his attention to Scotland. Notwithstanding the decisive victory of Falkirk, and the apparent surrender of the cause by Wallace, the subjugation of that country was far from being effected. There still existed in every quarter a determined spirit of hostility to the English, kept alive by the memory of the recent defeats, and not less so of the preceding triumphs. In 1300 the king made an incursion into Annandale, which he laid waste, and received the speedy submission of Galloway. The Scots, who were making zealous efforts to secure assistance from foreign courts, thought it prudent to make a truce, which was ratified in November at Dumfries, and was to continue in force till the summer of the following year. Their applications, however, to the Continental courts received but little encouragement. Philip of France, as was to be expected after so recent a pacification with the English monarch, rejected their suit. The only person who seems to have responded to their appeal was Pope Boniface VIII. He wrote a letter to Edward, entreating him to put an end to his ravages and oppressions in Scotland, and adducing a great number of historical proofs of the ancient and unquestionable independence of that kingdom--proofs with which, no doubt, the Scottish envoys had taken care to supply him. With a singular inconsistency, however, the Pope concluded his letter by asserting that Scotland was, in reality, a fief of the Holy See. This claim, never before heard of, and in utter contradiction to the whole tenor of the Papal brief, called forth the most earnest reply from Edward, who set about and constructed a catalogue of sovereign claims on Scotland, from the fabled age of Brutus, the Trojan, who, he asserted, founded the British monarchy in the days of Eli and Samuel, down to those of King Arthur, the hero of romance rather than of history; concluding with the full and absolute homage done by William of Scotland to Henry II. of England; taking care to omit all mention of the formal abolition of that deed by Richard Cœur-de-Lion, who had frankly pronounced it an extorted one, and therefore invalid. This royal epistle was seconded by a very spirited remonstrance from 104 barons, assembled by the king's command at Lincoln, who proudly maintained the temporal independence of both the kingdoms of Scotland and England of the see of Rome; declaring that they had sworn to defend the king's prerogatives, and that at no time would they permit them to be questioned.

These, or other arguments which do not appear on the face of history, produced a very sudden revulsion in the Papal mind. Boniface soon after wrote to the Scots, exhorting them to cease their opposition to "his dearly beloved one in Christ," King Edward, and to seek forgiveness from God for their resistance to his claims. Edward, thus sanctioned, again advanced into Scotland in the summer of 1301, when he found the country laid waste before him by the politic Scots, and was obliged to take up his quarters, on the approach of winter, in Linlithgow, where he built a castle and kept his Christmas. Another truce was entered into the following spring, and the king then left John Segrave as his lieutenant in Scotland, at the head of an army of 20,000 men. Early in the year 1303, the Scots having appointed John Comyn regent of the kingdom, he, with Sir Simon Fraser, not contented with maintaining the independence of the northern parts, descended into the southern counties, which Edward imagined were wholly in his power. His general, John Segrave, marched out to repulse them; and on the morning of the 24th of February, near Roslin, he came up with them. He had divided his army into three sections: the first division, being suddenly attacked by Comyn and Sir Simon Fraser, was speedily routed and, in its flight, coming in contact with the second division, threw that also into confusion. This division however, made a stout resistance, but was eventually beaten, whereupon it fell back on the third division and communicated its disorder to it; so that the whole force was completely put to flight, and pursued with heavy loss. The English commander himself was taken prisoner, being dangerously wounded in the very first encounter. Sixteen knights and thirty esquires were found amongst the captives, including the brother and the son of the general. It is reported that the Scots were compelled to slaughter a great number of their prisoners, in order to engage with safety the successive bands that they came up with. They boasted of thus achieving three victories in one day. The éclat of this brilliant action turned the popular tide at once in their favour. The people everywhere came forward to assist them. The regent very soon made himself master of all the fortresses in the south, and once more the country was lost to the English.

This sudden and complete prostration of all his ambitious hopes, and reversal of his victories, effectually aroused the martial king. He assembled a great army, supported by a formidable fleet; and by rapid marches, at the head of his hosts, he appeared before Roxburgh on the 21st of May, and reached Edinburgh on the 4th of June. His progress was marked by the most terrible devastation. He came upon the devoted country like a lion exasperated by wounds of the hunters. No foe could be found able to resist him, and he ravaged the open country, and laid in ruins the towns and villages, his fleet supplying his destroying forces with abundant provisions.

Having made a short pause in Edinburgh, to leave all secure there, he again advanced, with desolating speed and vengeance, through Linlithgow and Clackmannan to Perth, and thence to Aberdeen, and so on to Moray. He posted himself in the strong fortress of Lochendorb, situated on an island in the midst of a Morayshire loch; and there he remained till the autumn, employed in subduing and receiving the homage of the great Highland chiefs. "Tradition," says Tytler, "still connects the ruins of Lochendorb, after the lapse of more than five hundred years, with the name of the great English king."

On his return southward Edward met with a stout resistance from the strong castle of Brechin, defended by Sir Thomas Maule, which was only compelled to open its gates to the conqueror after the death of its valiant commander. The king took up his quarters for the winter at Dunfermline. He was careful this time not to withdraw to England, even during the inactivity of the winter, nor to trust the important charge of the kingdom's safety to any deputy. His soldiers are said to have amused themselves during this time in destroying the magnificent abbey of the Benedictines; "a building," says Matthew of Westminster, "so spacious, that three kings, with all their retinues, might have been conveniently lodged there." The remains of this noble abbey, including the parish church, still attest its original splendour; and the Scots regarded it with high veneration as the resting-place of no less than eight of their ancient kings, and five of their queens.

The last remains of the army of Scotland assembled to defend the castle of Stirling, that being the only stronghold which now remained in Scottish hands; but they were speedily dispersed by the English cavalry. Soon after this, Comyn, the regent and chief commander of the forces, came in and made his submission to the royal commissioners at Strathorde in Fifeshire; and his example was followed by all the nobility. These, with a few exceptions, as Wishart, Bishop of Glasgow, Sir John Foulis the Steward, and a few others, were allowed to retain their lives and lands subject only to such penalties and terms of banishment as the king might choose to impose. During Lent a Parliament was held at St. Andrews when Sir William Wallace, Sir Simon Fraser, and the governor of Stirling, were summoned to surrender themselves on penalty of outlawry, if failing to appear. All these persons, not even excepting Fraser, accepted the terms offered to them. The brave Sir William only refused to put himself into the power of the English king, except on a written guarantee of life and estate, signed and sealed by the monarch himself; and his caution was at once justified by the event, for the king, on hearing this, cursed Wallace and all who supported him, and set a reward of 300 marks upon his head. The great patriot had for a time escaped from the snare, and once more retreated to his hiding-places in the forest of Dunfermline.

Edward now turned his whole attention to the reduction of the castle of Stirling. This royal fortress, placed like an eagle's eyrie on its precipitous rock, was defended by one of the most stout-hearted men of Scotland, Sir William Oliphant, with the insignificant garrison of 140 men; yet, for about three months, that is, from the 22nd of April to the 20th of July, did they withstand the whole force of the English king. Edward directed all the operations against it in person, and brought a number of engines which threw immense stones and darts upon it. He sent to England to collect all kinds of missiles, which were discharged against the place; but it was not yielded till the garrison was reduced to the extremity of famine, and the building to a mass of ruins. The brave defenders were then compelled to surrender at discretion, for the ruthless conqueror would grant no other terms, and were obliged to solicit pardon and their lives on their knees--all circumstances of deep humiliation. Their lives were given them, but they were sent to the Tower of London and other dungeons. On marching out, it was found that thirteen ladies, wives and sisters of the gallant officers, had shared the perils and hardships of the siege.

Stirling reduced, there wanted only one other surrender to complete the triumph of Edward--that of Wallace, the man who has made his name and the noblest patriotism synonymous to all time. Edward made every exertion, and offered high rewards for his apprehension. One Haliburton, a soldier of the late garrison of Stirling, so far showed his unworthiness to share in the glory of the late siege as to lend himself to this base purpose. Sir William was surprised and conveyed to the castle of Dumbarton, and thence carried to London in chains as a traitor, though he had never acknowledged Edward as his sovereign, and owed him no fealty. In Stowe, the London annalist, we can still perceive the sensation which the arrival of this famous warrior as a captive created in the metropolis. Crowds were assembled to gaze on him. He was conducted on horseback to Westminster by Sir John Segrave, late governor of Scotland, by the mayor, sheriffs, and aldermen of London, accompanied by other gentlemen; and in Westminster Hall he was insulted by being crowned with laurel when placed at the bar, because he had been reported to have said that he ought to be crowned there. He was condemned as a traitor, and executed, with every circumstance of ignominy, at the Elms in West Smithfield, on the 23rd of August, 1305. To this place he was drawn at the tails of horses; and, after being hanged on the gallows, while he yet breathed his bowels were taken out and burnt before his face. His head was then struck off and his body divided into quarters, one of which was sent to be exposed at Newcastle, another at Berwick, a third at Perth, and the fourth at Aberdeen; his head being stuck on a pole on London Bridge. So much did they in that day fail to realise the everlasting infamy attendant on the unworthy treatment of the noble ones of our race--the intrepid defenders of the liberties of their country. The barbarous policy of the English king produced the very results which he sought to prevent. The whole Scottish nation resented with inexpressible indignation the inhuman outrage perpetrated on their hero. Everywhere the people burned with fury against England, and were ready to rise at the call of another patriot.

Such a man was not long in presenting himself. Robert Bruce had not forgotten the words of fire which Wallace had addressed to him across the Carron, as he was in slow and reluctant retreat from the battle of Falkirk. He remembered how he had called upon him to come forth from crouching to the tyrant; to come forth from servile submission to a glorious independence; to remember the royalty of his birth, the dignity of his family, the genius and the energies which God and Nature had conferred upon him, and the profound responsibility which these had laid him under to his country. He recalled the majestic figure of that illustrious man as he bade him behold the glorious prize which Heaven itself had set before him, the most glorious which could possibly be awarded to man--that of ending the sufferings of his country; that of converting its groans, its tears of blood and shame, into cries of exultation, and of placing his native land on the firm basis of perfect independence.

The last spur was now given to the spirit of Bruce. The words of Wallace to him were become so many sacred commands. Wallace had declared that he himself lived only to defend the liberties of his people; and he prayed that his life might terminate when he was reduced to wear the chains of the tyrant. He had been compelled to wear them by treason, and he had perished in his greatness. No indignities, no humiliations, could pluck from him the immortality of the martyr--the beautiful halo of a nation's homage. The die was cast for Robert Bruce. The spirit of Wallace had fallen upon him; henceforth he must spurn the blandishments of the English king, and tread the same path to death or victory.

And, indeed, Bruce had much to risk as well as to aspire to. His father had remained to the last attached to the English interests. On his death, in 1304, Edward had fully invested him with all his hereditary rights, titles, and estates, both in England and Scotland. He had all that the most ambitious nobleman could desire, short of the crown itself. The host of conflicting and, for the most part, unworthy competitors for the Scottish sceptre had afforded him at least plausible ground for standing aloof and leaning towards the English power which held them in check. He had accordingly been honoured when other of the greatest men of the realm had been fined, mulcted, and punished. He had been entrusted with considerable commands; amongst others, with the important fortress of Kildrummie, in Aberdeenshire. But now things were come to such a pitch between the English king and his country that there could be no longer any wavering in the bosom of a true man. Edward appeared resolved to reduce Scotland to the condition of a conquered province. If he set up a nominal king in place of Balliol, it would be Comyn, whom he regarded as a traitor. It was time to reveal himself as his country's champion.

Edward having once more finished his work of subjugation, and all Scotland lying prostrate at his feet, he now set to work about the serious task of so modelling the government and administration of the country that it should most completely remain in his grasp as a permanent portion of the realm. For this purpose he appointed a council, so-called, of the Scottish nation. This was to consist of two bishops, two abbots, two earls, two barons, and two representatives of the boroughs, who were to assemble in London, and to sit in conjunction with twenty commissioners of the English Parliament, to frame a constitution for the conquered territory. But this council, as was intended, carried things with a high hand against the people of Scotland. It cleared away all the Scottish laws and customs at a sweep, and substituted English ones in their stead. It destroyed all ancient monuments which perpetuated the spirit of nationality. Whatever histories or records had escaped the former search of the king were now ruthlessly destroyed; and the work of utterly rooting out the Scottish name and institutions was going on, when the whole was suddenly brought to a stand by a fresh and more determined insurrection.

The resolve of Bruce to throw off all disguise and declare himself openly for his country had been accelerated by the treason of Comyn, and six months had scarcely passed over the bloody relics of Wallace when the Scots were up in arms again, round the champion he had himself invoked to assume that post. In June, 1305--two months before the execution of Wallace--it appears that Bruce had made a secret compact with William de Lamberton, the Bishop of St. Andrews, of mutual aid and support. This contract, still preserved in the "Annals" of Lord Hailes, had for its ultimate object the claims of Bruce on the crown. Comyn had come by some means to the knowledge of this league; had pretended to join in it; but had betrayed it to the king. Bruce was marked for due vengeance by Edward, who only waited for an opportunity also to seize his three brothers, resident in Scotland. But through the friendship of the Earl of Gloucester, the son-in-law of the king, Bruce was apprised of his danger, the earl sending him a pair of gilt spurs, and twelve silver pennies, under pretence that he had borrowed them of him. Bruce caught the meaning of the device, and resolved to escape at once. To this purpose, tradition says, he had his horse shod backwards so as to deceive those who might attempt to trace his route, for the ground was then covered with snow. Bruce arrived safely in a few days at his castle of Lochmaben, in Annandale, the chief seat of his family; and here he found, fortunately, a great number of the Scottish nobility assembled, and in the midst of them no other than John Comyn, his professed friend, but treacherous, secret foe. If he had wanted any evidences of the perfidy of this man, he had them now in his pocket; for on the way from town he had met a courier bearing letters from Comyn to King Edward, urging the absolute necessity of Bruce's instant death or imprisonment. This man he slew, on the principle "that dead men tell no tales, and carry no messages"; and the fatal secret now in his possession presents us with a certain clue to the motive of a much more startling act which he perpetrated soon after.

These legends were probably invented to clear the fair fame of Bruce. All that is certainly known is that the two men met at Dumfries, that Bruce demanded a conference, and that he followed Comyn, after the party had gone, into the cloisters of the Minorites, and ran him through the body. Hurrying from the convent, he cried "To horse!" and Sir Roger Kirkpatrick, one of his attendants, seeing him greatly agitated, demanded whether the traitor was slain. "I doubt so," replied Bruce. "You doubt!" exclaimed Kirkpatrick; "I will make sure;" and so saying, he rushed into the monastery, stabbed the Comyn to the heart, and killed also his kinsman, Sir Robert Comyn, who strove to defend him. From this circumstance the Kirkpatrick family adopted the crest of a bloody hand holding a dagger, and the motto, "I mak sicker" ("I make sure").

The die was now cast. There was no retreat, no reconciliation after that terrible deed. Bruce called his staunchest friends hastily around him; they were few, but devoted spirits. The Bishops of St. Andrews and Glasgow, the Abbot of Scone, the four brothers of Bruce, his nephew, Thomas Randolph, his brother-in-law Christopher Seton, and some ten or twelve young men, gathered at the call. Bruce flew in various directions, exciting his countrymen to arms. He attacked and defeated the English, took some of their forts, and drove them from the open country.

Edward, on receiving this news, at once prepared to take signal vengeance on the insurgents, and this time to give the nation such a castigation as should effectually quell its spirit. Not waiting for his own slower movements, he sent on Aylmer de Valence, the Earl of Pembroke, with a small army, to check the spread of the disaffection. He met with Bruce near Methven, in Perthshire, on the 19th of June, and, surprising the Scottish forces, put them utterly to the rout. Bruce was three times unhorsed in the battle, and escaped with the greatest danger. His friends the Earl of Athol, Simon Fraser, and Sir Christopher Seton, were taken prisoners and executed. Amongst the prisoners was also his nephew Randolph. His wife and his daughter Marjory, having left the fortress of Kildrummie, were seized by the Earl of Ross in the sanctuary of St. Duthac at Tain; the knights who attended them were put to death, and they themselves were sent to England, where they remained prisoners eight years. His brother Nigel, much beloved by the people, was compelled to surrender Kildrummie, and was also hanged and afterwards beheaded at Berwick, with many other knights and gentlemen. He himself with great difficulty made his escape into the mountains of Athol, with about five hundred followers, the sole remnant of the army with which he had hoped to redeem Scotland. For many months he and this little band wandered amongst the hills in the utmost wretchedness, destitute of shelter, and often of food. A price was set upon their heads; their enemies, the Comyns, infuriated by the slaughter of their chief, and now in the ascendant as allies of England, pursued them with vindictive rage, driving them farther and farther into the labyrinth of the hills. On reaching the borders of Argyll, they encountered the Lord of Lorn, who had married an aunt of the Comyn, at the head of 1,000 men who occupied a narrow defile. A desperate conflict took place, and Bruce and his followers narrowly escaped extermination. Finally, Bruce found means to pass over to Carrick.

Whatever was the momentary despondency and misery of Bruce, he issued forth early in the spring of 1307, in order to make one more effort for the expulsion of the English. His followers amounted only to 300; and he was nearly betrayed by the unexplained lighting of a fire upon a hill, the very signal which he had agreed upon if it were safe to approach. As he drew near the landing-place, he was met by the information that the English were in full possession of Carrick, and Lord Percy, with a strong garrison, held Turnberry Castle. Bruce was thunderstruck at the intelligence; but making a sudden attack on a party of English that lay close at hand, he created a momentary panic, and, under advantage of that, made good his retreat into the mountains. The war became desultory and undecided; and two of Bruce's brothers, Thomas and Alexander, as they were bringing over a band of Irish adventurers to his assistance, were taken prisoners by Duncan M'Dowal, a chief of Galloway, and being conducted to King Edward, were instantly ordered for execution.

Fortune still continued to pursue Bruce. He could only preserve himself by hiding in the hills and wastes of Galloway, till, on the 10th of May, he succeeded at Loudon Hill in completely defeating the Earl of Pembroke. Three days after, he again defeated the English under the Earl of Gloucester, and pursuing them to the castle of Ayr there besieged them.

Meantime, Edward had been advancing by slow marches northward. Though it is not distinctly stated by the historians, there is little doubt that his health was giving way when he first received at Winchester the news of the Scottish rising. He had immediately sent off the Earl of Pembroke, and prepared to follow himself. He knighted his son, the Prince of Wales, with great ceremony, preparatory to his taking part in the expedition, who, in turn, knighted, on the 22nd of May, 270 young men of noble family. At the feast given on this occasion, in the Palace of Westminster, Edward made a solemn vow to God to avenge the death of Comyn, and punish the insurgent Scots; and at this time he conjured his son, and the whole company, in the event of his death, to keep his body unburied until this vow was accomplished. Thus he had the probability of death in his thoughts at the outset of this expedition, and he advanced in it with the tardiness of a sick man. It was the commencement of July when he arrived at Carlisle, where the news of Bruce's fresh successes, and the defeat and close besiegement of his generals, had the effect of rousing his irritable temperament to a desperate effort. He threw aside the litter in which he had hitherto travelled, mounted his horse, and having reached, on the 7th of July, the village of Burgh-by-Sands, he sank completely exhausted, with his latest breath, and with a tenacity of purpose characteristic of the man, enjoining his successor, through the ministers who surrounded him, never to cease his efforts till he had thoroughly subjugated Scotland.

Thus terminated the remarkable career of this truly great man, in the sixty-ninth year of his age, and the thirty-fifth of his reign. Since the days of Richard I. there had been no martial monarch of equal bravery and ability; since those of Henry II. none who had the same genius for civil administration and the framing of laws and institutions which gave not only a character to his own times, but to the ages which came after him. Hume does not hesitate to assert that "the enterprises of this prince, and the projects which he formed and brought near to a conclusion, were more prudent, more regularly conducted, and more advantageous to the solid interests of his kingdom, than those which were undertaken in any reign, either of his ancestors or successors." However we may be disposed to modify this praise in regard to what Edward actually carried out, there can be no question that his perception of the vast advantages which would result to every part of the island from its consolidation into one kingdom was evidence of a great and comprehensive genius; and the ardour, based on an indomitable spirit of perseverance, with which he pursued that great end, is equal evidence of a mind, not only of the clearest acumen, but of the loftiest qualities of human nature. He succeeded in winning to the English nation, and amalgamating with it for ever, the principality of Wales; and if he failed in effecting the annexation of Scotland, it was only through being actuated more by the military spirit of the times than by those moral and political influences which later generations have discovered to be the most effectual. It was beyond the intellectual horizon of the age to aim at the union of the kingdoms by the careful demonstration of the greater mutual advantages, and of the infinitely expanded capabilities of glory and power to Britain as a whole, which were applied successfully four centuries afterwards.

By seeking to accomplish the union of England and Scotland by the forces most familiar to the spirit of that era--that is, by the power of arms and numerical ascendency--his scheme, grand and beneficent in itself, necessarily failed. The plan was premature; it existed in the nature of things, but it lacked that philosophical regard to national character and feeling, and that tone of mutual forbearance, which it required centuries yet to ripen. The rude idea of bearing down a brave and high-spirited people by armed power and arbitrary will could not but irritate those on whom the attempt was made; and it then became a question of moral forces, and of the natural defences of the country, whether it should succeed. It succeeded in Wales, though after a brave resistance, because there was no proportion between the extent and the physical resources of the two countries. It failed in Scotland, because the areas of the two contending kingdoms, though greatly unequal, were yet more approximate; and because the martial qualities and spirit of proud independence had been long fostered in Scotland by the arduous contests of different clans and parties. The Scots were a hardy and an heroically brave people, with their magnificent mountains at their back; and, in their struggles with the ponderous power of England, discovered an invincible vigour, not only of resistance, but of resilience. Though hurled violently to the earth time after time, they rose, Antæus-like, as if with augmented strength and freshness. While the two nations, therefore, heated by contest and the savage warfare of that age, learned to hate one another with a vigorous and long-continuing hatred, they learned also to know each other's strength, and inwardly to respect it. Therefore, after the battle of Bannockburn, English dreams of the subjugation of Scotland began to wane, and though there still were many bloody wars between the two nations, there ceased to exist on each side the hope of conquest by mere force of arms.

In these conflicts, good as well as evil was elicited, and the bravery and spirit of dominion which distinguish united Great Britain no doubt draw a large amount of their life from the mutual struggles and rivalries of the two peoples. In the very attempts, therefore, of Edward to add Scotland to the kingdom by force, as he did Wales, he may be said to have laid the foundation of much of the common greatness of the nation; but from incidental causes arising out of his military attempts, both in Scotland and France, and still more from his directly constructive talent and wisdom, we owe to him much which we are apt to lose sight of in the blaze of his wars and expeditions. He was as remarkable for his sturdy maintenance of the laws as for his military ambition. Simple and frugal himself, he was ever ready to support useful enterprises. He was liberal of his treasures on such occasions. Easy and affable to his courtiers and dependents, he was yet severe in restraining licence and punishing offenders. His fine person and skill in military exercises made him popular with the people, when he did not press too heavily on them by his expensive wars; and thus, relying on his sense of justice, they were not backward in expressing their opinions, as we have seen. Though he was extremely cruel to the Jews--a feature of his character springing from the prejudices of his age--and often forgot the magnanimity of a great monarch in his resentment against those who successfully thwarted his plans, as in the case of Sir William Wallace and others, his sense of justice in his calmer moments and in his peaceful pursuits was so great, that he not only encouraged an honourable administration of the laws, but corrected and amended them, and added so many new ones, in accordance with the progress of society, that he has been termed the English Justinian. Sir Edward Coke, in his "Institutes," says that the statutes passed in his reign were so numerous and excellent that they actually deserved the name of establishments, being more constant, standing, and durable than any made from his reign to the time of that great lawyer; and Sir Matthew Hale pays him the like compliment, declaring that down to his own day they had scarcely received any addition.

Edward I. was the greatest of our mediæval lawgivers, and has been well called by Bishop Stubbs "the definer of the English constitution." Following in the steps of Henry II., he aimed at giving equal security to all, to humble the great nobles and the great churchmen, and to elevate the third estate of the realm--the commons--as a counterpoise to the other two. The spirit of his legislation can best be seen in the provisions of the most important statutes of the reign. That known as the First Statute of Westminster, passed by his first Parliament in 1275, revived and re-established the former laws and customs of the land. It is, says Bishop Stubbs, "almost a code in itself." Common right was to be done to all, without respect of persons; elections were to be free; and the provisions of the Great Charter concerning excessive fines, abuses of wardship, excessive demands for feudal aids, and so forth, were re-enacted. The Statute of Winchester, passed in 1285, was a complement to the Assize of Arms of Henry II., and, besides ordering and defining what kind of arms each class of the people should bear for the defence of the land, made admirable arrangements for the indictment and pursuit of felons and robbers, the policing of the walled towns, and the clearing of the edges of public roads to prevent them from becoming the lurking-places of highwaymen. The Statute, known, from its opening words, as that of Quia Emptores, passed in 1290, enacted that in all future transfers of land the tenant should hold, not from the alienor, but from his superior lord. It thus played into the hands of the king, who was the landlord par excellence, and established a numerous class of independent gentry, holding their estates directly from the crown. The second Statute of Westminster, called that De donis conditionalibus, established the power of entail, and stopped the life-tenant from alienating an estate at his will. Another important statute of the reign was that of mortmain, or De Religiosis, passed in 1279. This was a distinct blow at the Church, which had gained great wealth by the custom which prevailed of giving property to the Church, and receiving it back again as a tenant of the Church. It was then said to pass into a dead hand--"in mortuam manum"--and the lay over-lord was deprived of his feudal dues. This practice was now forbidden under penalty of forfeiture to the next superior lord, and if he failed to insist upon his right within a year, the right passed to his over-lord, and so on to the king.

Edward's chief title, however, to the admiration and affection of posterity is that of the creator of the House of Commons. He has a formidable rival in Simon de Montfort; but it has been cogently pointed out that Simon's important Parliament of 1265, though perfect in its elements, was in reality a packed assembly, only the supporters of the existing government being summoned to attend it. It is unnecessary to say that neither Edward nor De Montfort created their assemblies at a stroke; they merely added the finishing touches to institutions which had been gradually growing to maturity, and which had their roots far back in the past. Of the machinery of the Anglo-Saxon polity, by far the most complete, and the only part that could be said to be in any sense of the word representative, was that which existed locally--the courts of the hundred and the shire. The witena-gemot was, in its latter days, at all events, a council of magnates and royal officers, and to trace any analogy or direct continuity between it and the House of Commons is misleading in the extreme. It played, however, an important part in the history of the House of Lords. William I., true to the policy of representing himself as the legitimate successor of the Confessor, made no very violent changes in the institutions of his new dominions. The witena-gemot was continued, under the name of the Great Council. Sometimes these assemblies were really national, as, for instance, in 1086 and 1116, when all landowners were summoned of whomsoever they held land; but as a rule they were composed of the great territorial nobles, both laymen and ecclesiastics. The power of these bodies, however, in the presence of such despotic monarchs as William and his sons, was little more than formal, and the convocation of such unwieldy gatherings as fully attended councils must have been, gradually became an expedient to which recourse was had on special occasions only.

By the time of Henry II. the elements of the Council had grown to be completely modified. The accepted usage of his reign was to summon the whole body of tenants holding directly from the crown (the tenants-in-chief); but except on special occasions, none but the magnates, the bishops, earls, and royal officers--"the greater barons"--were likely to attend. The Council gradually acquired organisation. We learn from Magna Charta that the "greater barons" received special summonses, addressed to them individually, while the "lesser barons" were summoned by a general writ, addressed to the sheriffs of each county. As a rule, the latter probably found that the trouble and expense of attendance were greater than their legislative zeal. This was the assembly that gave us the Great Charter, and in which during the reign of Henry III. the opposition to the royal will gained consistency and purpose under Simon de Montfort. The offshoots of the Great Council are important. The Curia Regis, or king's court, originally a committee of the Great Council, became first a small circle of confidential advisers, and then developed, under Henry I., into a high court of justice, with its two courts of the Exchequer and the King's Bench. The necessity of a more intimate body of ministers to advise the king upon knotty points continued, and by a process, which is exceedingly obscure, the Royal Council, known also as the "Perpetual" or "Ordinary" Council, was brought into being. Its chief feature was its permanence, and its importance dates from the minority of Henry III. It was in this body that the unpopular foreign advisers exercised their influence, and against which the majority of the Great Council fought. It continued to grow in importance until it developed into that powerful body, the Privy Council, of the era of the sovereigns of the House of Lancaster.

While the Great Council and the Royal Council were acquiring strength and authority, the idea of popular representation by means of organised estates was gradually assuming shape. The election of a few to represent the wants and aspirations of the many was by no means unknown in Anglo-Saxon times. It was, for instance, the custom of the reeve and four best men of each township to attend the county court; but there was no such body as a representative national deliberative body in existence. Parliament, in the words of Bishop Stubbs, is "the concentration of all the constituents of the shiremote in a central assembly." The Great Council contained the higher clergy and the baronage; the work was obviously to be completed by the addition of the lower clergy and the commons. Taxation was the spur which roused the nation to political life. It was felt, as the old legal maxim had it, that "what touched all should be allowed of all." The royal wants rapidly necessitated new sources of revenue, and so money was raised from personal property, or "movables." The first of these taxes was the Saladin tithe, imposed in 1188, and it soon became evident that the methods in vogue to obtain the consent of the taxed--such as the selection of a body of twelve men bound by oath, from the community of each shire to treat with the king or his representative--were slow and uncertain. Accordingly an important step was taken in 1213 when the Great Councils are found to contain other than their usual elements, one summoned to St. Albans being attended by men chosen from the towns, that to Oxford by men chosen from the shires. Again, in 1254, the sheriffs were directed to see that their several shires returned two knights, to settle what aid they were willing to give to the king; and similar instances occur during the intervening years, both sides being anxious to strengthen their case by an appeal to popular sympathy. The first instance of a combination of the representatives of the towns with those of the counties is Simon de Montfort's famous Parliament of 1265, which was attended by one hundred and seventeen dignified clergymen, twenty-three lay nobles, two men summoned from each shire through the sheriff, and two men summoned from each city and borough. It cannot, however, as we have seen, be regarded as a perfect Parliament. During the next thirty years there are many recorded instances of these immature assemblies. For instance, in 1282, there were two provincial Parliaments--one at York, and one at Northampton--in which the lower clergy and the commons were represented, but from which the lay nobility were absent. Again the gathering at Acton Burnell, held to see that David of Wales was tried, contained no clergy, and representatives only of twenty-one cities and boroughs. At last, in 1295, Edward I., surrounded by difficulties and vexations, resolved to throw himself upon the united nation. In October he issued writs for an assembly, which was a complete image of the nation, and in November it met. It was composed of ninety-seven of the greater clergy, the bishops, abbots, and priors; sixty-five earls and barons; thirty-nine judges and proctors, representing the lower clergy; and representatives of the counties, cities, and boroughs, summoned through the sheriff. It is most probable that the representatives of the shire were elected in the full county court, while the proceedings in the case of borough members seem to have been extremely various. No details exist of the earlier elections, except in the case of the city of London, and when we come to later times freedom of election had become seriously impaired through royal and aristocratic influence and the political lethargy of the citizens.

It was some time before the new deliberative body exercised all the powers which had belonged to its predecessor, the Grand Council. One of them, indeed--the judicial--it has taken care never to assume, and it was some time before the commons had any share in legislation. Summoned primarily for purposes of taxation, they at first confined themselves to that important function. In other respects the magnates were summoned, ad tractandum, to treat; the commons, ad consulendum et consentiendum, for their counsel and consent--that is, they were regarded as having inferior privileges. Nor were the elements of the Parliament at first by any means fixed. It seemed possible in the reign of Edward I. that there would be sub-estates of merchants and lawyers, as well as the three great estates of clergy, nobles, and commons; but these abnormal bodies soon ceased to have a separate existence. Nor was it clear how the line of cleavage would lie. The knights of the shire showed a disposition to coalesce with the barons, the representatives of the towns forming a second body, and the clergy a third. Eventually, however, the knights of the shire threw in their lot with the town members; the upper clergy formed a joint estate with the barons, of lords spiritual and temporal; while the lower clergy, following an unwise policy of isolation, preferred to tax themselves in convocation, and withdrew altogether from Parliament. The House of Lords, originally consisting simply of lay magnates, who received special writs of summons when their services were required, was rapidly converted into an assembly of the hereditary counsellors of the crown, whose title, created by royal patent, remained secure to them and their heirs for ever. This process took less than fifty years; and Parliaments, being summoned with regularity, became an essential feature in the constitution, and acquired a formidable defence of privilege.

All these circumstances marked the reign of Edward I. as one of the most important in our history. The organic principles which he introduced into the constitution struck deep and indestructible roots there, and have, by their permanent and progressive operation, made us in a great measure, as a nation, what we are.

Edward had a numerous family by his two wives, but a great many of his children died in their infancy. By his first wife, Eleanor of Castile, Edward, his heir and successor, was the only son, out of four, who survived him. Of eleven daughters by the same queen, four only appear to have lived. Joan was married, first to the Earl of Gloucester, and after his death to Ralph de Monthermer. Margaret married John, Duke of Brabant. Elizabeth married, first John, Count of Holland; and secondly, the Earl of Hereford. By his second wife, Margaret of France, Edward had a daughter who died in infancy, and two sons--Thomas, created Earl of Norfolk and Mareschal of England; and Edmund, made Earl of Kent by his brother, Edward II.

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XXIX. REIGN OF EDWARD II

Character of the new King--Piers Gaveston--The King's Marriage--Gaveston is Dismissed to Ireland--His Return--Appointment of the Lords Ordainers--Their Reforms--Gaveston Banished--His Reappearance--Rebellion of the Nobles and Death of Gaveston--Successes of Bruce in Scotland--The Battle of Bannockburn--The Establishment of Scottish Independence--Edward Bruce in Ireland--Power of Lancaster--The Despensers--They are Banished--Sudden Activity of the King--Battle of Boroughbridge--The King's Vengeance--Peace with Scotland--Conspiracies against Edward--Machinations of the Queen--She Lands in England--Edward is Deserted and taken Prisoner--Dethronement of Edward--Indignation against Isabella--Murder of Edward--The Lessons of the Reign--Abolition of the Templars.

The transition from Edward I. to his son, Edward II., was an abrupt descent from power to weakness. The great monarch whose proud ambition it had been to embrace the whole island in his empire, to maintain his possessions in France, and to rule his kingdom by new and superior institutions, was gone, and there appeared on the throne a youth of three-and-twenty, handsome, generous, and agreeable, but destitute of any trait which implied the elements of future greatness. He was not even vigorous in the passions which carry youth out of the direct line. He had no decided tendency to any dangerous vice. He was gentle, and disposed to enjoy the social advantages of his high position. The people of all classes and orders hastened to swear fealty to him, arguing, from the prestige of his parentage, and the reputation of his amiability, a fortunate reign. But the very first movements of the young king were fatal to those anticipations, and both at home and abroad brought a cloud over the brilliant visions which had attended his ascension to the throne. He was essentially weak, and all weak things seek extraneous support. The vine and the ivy cling to the tree that is near them, and the effeminate monarch inevitably seeks the fatal support of favourites. This was the rock on which Edward's fortunes instantly struck, and the mischief of which no experience could induce him to repair.

This disastrous propensity to favouritism, which early manifested itself, had excited the alarm of the stern old king, and led him to take decided measures against the evils which it threatened to produce. There was a brave Gascon knight, who had served in the army of Edward I. with high honour, and whose son, Piers Gaveston, had consequently been admitted into the establishment of the young prince. This youth was remarkably handsome and accomplished. He was possessed of singular grace of carriage and elegance of demeanour. In all the exercises of the age, both martial and social, he excelled, and was full of the sprightly sallies of wit and mirth which are so natural to the Gascon. The young prince became thoroughly fascinated by him. He was naturally disposed to strong and confidential friendship, and gave himself up to the society of this gay young courtier with all the ardour of youth. His father, quickly perceiving this extravagant prepossession, and foreseeing all its fatal consequences, had banished the favourite from the kingdom. On his death-bed he again solemnly warned him against favourites, depicting to him the certain ruin that such foolish attachments would bring upon him in the midst of powerful and jealous nobles; and forbade him, on pain of his curse, ever to recall Gaveston to England.

But no sooner was the breath out of the old king's body than the infatuated Edward forgot every solemn injunction laid upon him. The Scots were again strong in the field, and the late king had taken an oath from his son that he should never be buried till they were once more subjugated. But regardless of this, the young king, after making a feint of prosecuting the Scottish war, and marching as far as Cumnock, on the borders of Ayrshire, there halted, and retraced his steps to London without attempting anything whatever. Arriving in London, he at once buried the body of his father in Westminster Abbey, on the 27th of October.

The only thing for which he appeared impatient was the return of his favourite Gaveston, whom he had recalled the moment the sceptre fell into his hands; and the royal summons was as promptly complied with. Gaveston joined his royal patron before he returned from Scotland. The earldom of Cornwall had been conferred on him before his arrival; and the thoughtless upstart appeared in the midst of the court covered with his new honours, and disposed to show his resentment for past disdain to the most powerful men in the kingdom. Under the ascendancy of Gaveston, the king displaced all his father's old and experienced ministers. There was a revolution in the great offices of the court, as sudden as it was complete. The chancellor, the treasurer, the lords of the exchequer, the judges, and every other holder of an important post, were dismissed, and others more suited to the fancy or partiality of this favourite substituted. To his own share of honours and emoluments there appeared no limit. The earldom of Cornwall had been held by Edmund, son of Richard, King of the Romans, and was an appanage which had not only been possessed by a prince of the blood, but was amply sufficient of itself for the maintenance of one. But this seemed little to the king for the man whom he delighted to honour. He was continually lavishing gifts and riches on Gaveston. He handed to him the treasure which his father had laid up for the prosecution of the crusades; he presented him with estate after estate, many of them conferring fresh titles of distinction; and it was said that you could scarcely travel into any part of the kingdom without beholding splendid houses and parks, formerly possessed by great families, now conferred on this young favourite. Nor did the royal bounty stop here. The king gave him extensive grants of land in Guienne; and, as if he would raise him to a par with royalty itself, he married him to his own niece, Margaret de Clare, sister to the Earl of Gloucester, and appointed him lord chamberlain. All this did not seem to satisfy the king's desire of heaping honours and wealth upon him; and he is reported to have said that, if it were possible, he would give him the kingdom itself.

It would have been strange if the favourite, under such a rain of favour and fortune, had displayed more wisdom than his royal patron. It would have required a mind of peculiar fortitude and moderation not to have been thrown off the balance by such a rush of greatness, and Gaveston was not of that character. He was gay, vain, and volatile, and rejoiced in the opportunity of humbling and insulting all who had real claims to superiority over himself. The great and proud nobles who had surrounded the throne of Edward I. in the midst of its victorious splendour, and who had contributed by their counsels and their swords to place it above all others in Europe, naturally beheld with ill-concealed resentment this unworthy concentration of the royal grace and munificence in one so far inferior to them in birth and merit; and Gaveston, instead of endeavouring to appease that indignation, did all in his power to exasperate it by every species of ostentation and parade of his advantages. Vanity, profusion, and rapacity of fresh acquisition all united in him. He kept up the style and establishment of a prince; he treated the gravest officers of state and the possessors of the noblest names with studied insolence. He imagined that in possessing the favour of the king nothing could again shake him, and therefore he was as little solicitous to conciliate friends as he was careless to make enemies. At every joust and tournament he gloried in foiling the greatest of the English nobility and princes, and did not spare them in their defeat, but ridiculed them to his companions with jest and sarcasm. This could not last long without combining both court and kingdom for his destruction, and perhaps for his master's.

The young king was bound by the laws of feudalism to pass over to France, and do homage to Philip for his province of Guienne, and by those of chivalry, to fulfil, as early as possible, the contract of marriage with the Princess Isabella, to whom he had been long affianced. She was reputed to be the most beautiful woman of her time, and she was as high-spirited and intriguing as she was handsome. The royal couple were married on the 28th of January, 1308, with much pomp and ceremony, in the church of Our Lady of Boulogne, five kings and three queens being present on the occasion. No great affection appears to have existed on either side. Isabella could not fail to be already aware of her husband's character, and she is said to have trusted to her influence to overturn the king's favour for Gaveston, and to be able to rule him and the kingdom herself. Edward, though wedded to the loveliest woman of the age, and surrounded by every species of festivity and rejoicing, evinced, on his part, no other desire than to get back as speedily as possible to his beloved Gaveston, to whom, in his absence, he had left the management of the kingdom--a fresh indignity to his own royal kinsmen. The festive gaieties of the French court were suddenly broken off to gratify this impatient anxiety of the king to return, and the royal couple embarked for England, accompanied by a numerous retinue of French nobles, who came to attend the coronation.

Gaveston, accompanied by a great array of the English aristocracy, hastened to meet the king and queen on landing; and the scene which ensued was by no means calculated to create respect for the king, either in the mind of his young bride, or of her distinguished countrymen present. Forgetting the very presence of the queen, Edward rushed into the arms of his favourite and overwhelmed him with caresses and terms of endearment. The queen looked on with evident contempt; her kinsmen with open disgust. The nobles were filled with indignation, which Gaveston, instead of endeavouring to disarm by more modest conduct, appeared to take a particular pleasure in aggravating to the extreme. He appeared in the greatest splendour of attire, and in his equipage and retinue outshining them all. In the tournaments which succeeded the coronation he challenged, and by his indisputable vigour and address succeeded in unhorsing, the four most illustrious nobles of the land--men distinguished not only for their high rank, their great estates, and high connections, but as the successful leaders of the national armies--the Earls of Lancaster, Hereford, Pembroke, and Warrenne. This brought matters to a crisis. The anger of the whole nobility now burst forth beyond all bounds. The barons, four days after the coronation, appeared before the king with a petition, which had rather the tone of a remonstrance, and insisted that he should instantly banish Piers Gaveston. The king, hesitating, and yet alarmed, replied that he would give them an answer in Parliament.

When this Parliament met, it appeared fully armed, and with an air that menaced civil war, if its terms were not complied with. Lancaster, by far the most powerful subject in England, was the centre and head of this movement. He was first prince of the blood, possessed of immense estates, which were on the eve, by his marriage with the heiress of the Earl of Lincoln, of being increased to no less than six earldoms, including all those powers, and jurisdictions which in that age were attached to land, and made the great noble a species of king on his own estates and over a large number of influential vassals, many of them being what were called lesser barons and knights. Lancaster was turbulent, ambitious, and haughty. He had received the deadliest affronts from Gaveston which a man of his proud character could possibly receive from an upstart, and he therefore hated him with a deadly hatred. This feeling was actively encouraged by the queen, who, herself inclined to rule, and having hoped to indulge easily this passion for power through the weakness of the king, saw with keen resentment her plans disappointed by the all-engrossing influence of the favourite. The rest of the barons, gladly gathering round Lancaster, and taking courage from the favouring disposition of the queen, resolved to crush the reigning parasite. They bound themselves by an oath to expel him from the kingdom. With his Parliament in this temper, and disturbances and robberies in various parts of the kingdom--possibly fomented by the barons, or at least left unrestrained, as strengthening their cause--the king was compelled to submit to their demands; and the bishops bound Gaveston by a solemn oath never again to return to the kingdom under pain of excommunication.

The poor weak king, though he gave up his favourite for the time, still showed his folly to all the world. He endeavoured to soften the fall of Gaveston by accompanying him on his way towards the port. But instead of this port leading towards his own country, it proved to be Bristol, where it was soon discovered that he had only embarked for Ireland, over which Edward had appointed him Lord-Lieutenant, with an establishment rivalling that of a king. Not only so, but before his departure the infatuated monarch had actually bestowed fresh wealth and lands upon him both in England and Gascony. Gaveston, who really possessed much talent and learning, and might have made a distinguished and useful man had he been employed by an able monarch, who would have called out his better, and kept in check his worse, qualities, discharged his duties in Ireland as governor with vigour, repressed a rebellion there, and promoted order. But during the year he was absent his royal master was inconsolable, and never ceased labouring for his return. To this end he employed every means to conciliate the barons. He conferred on Lancaster the high office of Hereditary Steward; he flattered and promoted the Earl of Lincoln, the father-in-law of Lancaster; he heaped grants, civilities, and promises on Earl Warrenne. Having thus prepared the way, he next applied for and obtained from the Pope a dispensation for Gaveston from that oath which the barons had imposed, that he should for ever abjure the realm. With this he instantly recalled Gaveston from Ireland, and flew with joyful impatience to Chester to meet him on his way. Then, on seeing him, he rushed into his arms with every extravagance of joy. He next applied to the Parliament, which had assembled at Stamford, for a formal permission to his re-establishment in England, and, won over by the gifts and flatteries of the king, they were equally weak, and allowed him to return.

All now in the court of the imbecile monarch was rejoicing and festivity. That court was filled by every species of mimes, players, musicians, and frivolous hangers-on. Scotland was all but lost; every day Bruce and his adherents, taking advantage of the neglect of this unhappy king, were coming forth more and more openly from their hiding-places, seizing fort after fort, and even daring to make devastating inroads into the northern shires of England. In other parts of the kingdom outrages, disorder, and violence abounded; but nothing could rouse the wretched king, or withdraw his attention from the court, which was filled with revelry and feasting, and the centre and soul of which was his beloved Gaveston. The people looked on and openly expressed their contempt for the favourite. They refused to call him anything but simply "that Piers Gaveston," which incensing the foolish man induced him to prevail on the king to put forth a proclamation commanding all men to give him his title of Earl of Cornwall whensoever he was spoken of, which had only the effect of covering him with ridicule. The past experience was entirely lost on this thoughtless personage. No sooner was he freed from the consequences of his insults to the barons and courtiers than he repeated them with fresh modes of offence. He laughed at and caricatured them amongst his worthless associates. He threw his jibes and sarcasms right and left, and let them fall with the vilest nicknames on the loftiest heads. The great Earl of Lancaster was the "old hog," and the "stage-player;" the Earl of Pembroke--a tall man, of pale aspect--was "Joseph the Jew," the Earl of Gloucester was "the cuckold's bird;" and the stern Earl of Warwick "the black dog of Arden." Dearly did the vain favourite rue these galling epithets. The "black dog of Arden" swore a bitter oath that the miscreant should feel his teeth. The queen, more and more disgusted and incensed by the folly of the king, not only complained querulously to her father the King of France, but gave all encouragement to the angry nobles against the insolent Gaveston.

The riot at court had its necessary consequence--the dissipation of the royal funds and the need of more. The barons already, before voting supplies, had several times obliged the king to promise a redress of grievances. But now, on being summoned in October, 1309, three months after Gaveston's return, to meet at York, they refused, alleging fear of the all-powerful and vindictive favourite. The necessities of Edward made him imperatively renew the summons, but the barons still refused to assemble, and the object of the general odium was compelled to retire for the time. The barons then came together at Westminster in March of the following year, 1310; but they came fully armed, and Edward found himself completely in their power. They now insisted that he should sign a commission, enabling the Parliament to appoint twelve persons, who should take the name of Ordainers, having power thoroughly to reform both the government and the king's household. They were to enact ordinances for this purpose, which should for ever have the force of laws, and which, in truth, involved the whole authority of the Crown and Parliament.

The committee, instead, however, of being confined to twelve, was extended to twenty-eight persons--seven bishops, eight earls, and thirteen barons. These powerful men were authorised to form associations amongst themselves and their friends to enforce the strict observance of their ordinances; and all this was said to be for the glory of God, the security of the Church, and the honour and advantage of the king and kingdom.

Thus had the imbecility of the second Edward reduced the nation to the yoke of a baronial and ecclesiastical oligarchy. This suspicious junto, however, conscious that they would be regarded with a jealous eye by the nation, voluntarily signed a declaration that they owed these concessions to the king's free grace; that they should not be drawn into a precedent, nor allowed to trench on the royal prerogative; and that the functions and power of the Ordainers should expire at Michaelmas in the year following.

The committee sat in London, and in the ensuing year, 1311, presented their ordinances to the king and Parliament. Some of these ordinances were not only constitutional, but highly requisite, and tending to the due administration of the laws. They required sheriffs to be men of substance and standing; abolished the mischievous practice of issuing privy seals for the suspension of justice; restrained the practice of purveyance, where, under pretence of the king's service, enormous rapine and abuse were carried on; prohibited the alteration and debasement of the coin; made it illegal for foreigners to farm the revenues, ordering regular payment of taxes into the exchequer; revoked all the late grants of the crown--thus aiming a direct blow at the chief favourite, on whom the crown property had been most shamefully wasted. But the main grievance to the king was the sweeping ordinance against all evil counsellors, by which not only Piers Gaveston, but the whole tribe of sycophants and parasites were removed from their offices by name, and persons more agreeable to the barons were put in their places. It was, moreover, decreed that for the future all considerable offices, not only of the law, the revenue, and the military, but of the household also--an especial and immemorial royal privilege--should be under the appointment of the baronage. Still further, the power of making war, or even of assembling his military tenants, should no longer be exercised by the king, without the consent of his nobility. This was a wholesale suppression of the prerogatives of the crown, which the barons dared not have attempted in any ordinary reign; but this would probably have little affected Edward had not Piers Gaveston been declared a public enemy, and banished from the realm, on pain of death in case of his ever daring to return.

Nothing can show more decisively that Edward was not merely weak as regarded his favourite, but was totally unfit to rule a kingdom, having no serious feeling of its rights, or desire of its prosperity, than the fact that he signed all these deeply important decrees with a secret protest against them, meaning to break them on the first opportunity; and that he sent Gaveston away to Flanders, intending as soon as possible to recall him. The moment he was freed from the demands of Parliament, he set out to the north of England, pretending a campaign against the Scots. Once at liberty, he recalled Gaveston, declared his punishment quite illegal, restored him to his honours, employments, and estates, and the two dear friends continued at Berwick, and on the Scottish borders, doing nothing to resist the advances of Bruce.

The barons now broke all measures of restraint. Provoked to exasperation by seeing the whole of their labours at once set aside, and the favourite restored to his fortune in defiance of them, they united in a most formidable conspiracy. At the head of it appeared Gaveston's old enemy Lancaster; Guy, Earl of Warwick, "the black dog of Arden," entered into the alliance, according to one historian's expression, with "a furious and precipitate passion." Humphrey Bohun, Earl of Hereford, the constable, the Earl of Pembroke, and even the Earl Warrenne, who hitherto had supported, on most occasions, the royal cause, now joined zealously in the confederacy. Winchelsey, Archbishop of Canterbury, led on the clergy, who declared themselves in a body against the king and Gaveston. Such a coalition was able, at that time, to shake the throne itself.

Lancaster, at the head of an army marched to York, whence the king precipitately retreated to Newcastle. The former made a keen pursuit, and Edward had only just time to get on board a vessel at Tynemouth, and escape to Scarborough with his minion. There Edward left him to defend the castle, while he again set out for York to endeavour to raise a body of troops. Aylmer de Valence, Earl of Pembroke, whom Gaveston had ridiculed as "Joseph the Jew," laid brisk siege to the castle, which was in bad condition, and Gaveston, on the 19th of May, 1312, was obliged to capitulate. Both Pembroke and Lord Henry Percy pledged themselves that no harm should happen to him, and that he should be confined in his own castle of Wallingford. But, with all the boasts of chivalry, no great faith was to be reposed in such promises in those times, and they marched him away to the castle of Dedington, near Banbury, where Pembroke, on pretence of meeting his countess somewhere in the neighbourhood, left him under a feeble guard. Pembroke, who was under oath, having thus on plausible grounds retired, Warwick, "the black dog of Arden," who had vowed to show Gaveston his teeth, now appeared upon the scene. He made a show of attacking the castle; the garrison refused to defend it--no doubt being well informed of the part they were to play--and in the morning the unhappy favourite was ordered suddenly to dress and descend into the court. There he found himself, to his consternation, in the presence of the grim and vengeful Warwick, accompanied by a strong force. By his orders he was set on a mule and led to Warwick Castle with great triumph. His arrival there was announced by a burst of military music; great were the acclamations and triumph at seeing the long-detested favourite thus overwhelmed. A council was speedily formed, at which Lancaster, Hereford, Arundel, and other barons assisted. Some one ventured to propose gentle measures, and to shed no blood, but a voice exclaimed, "You have caught the fox; if you let him go, you will have to hunt him again." That hint decided Gaveston's fate. The certainty that the king would on the first possible occasion reinstate his favourite, and that their own lives might fall before his vengeance, determined them to put him to death, in disgraceful violation of the articles of capitulation, but in accordance with the ordinance passed by Parliament for his exile. Gaveston now stooped from his haughty insolence at the approach of death, and prayed for mercy from the Earl of Lancaster. It was useless; his enemies hurried him away on the road towards Coventry, and there, at a mile or more distant from the castle, on the 1st of July, 1312, they struck off his head on a rising ground called Blacklow Hill, where the Avon winds through a pleasant scene, suggestive of anything but such a tragedy.

The king, as was to be expected, was thrown into violent grief at the news of the bloody death of his beloved friend. He roused himself to something like energy; vowed deadly vengeance on all concerned, and proceeded to raise and march troops for the purpose. The barons stood in arms to receive him, and for the remainder of the year they maintained a hostile attitude, but fought no battle. The king's resentment, as evanescent as his better purposes, then gave way; the barons consented to solicit his pardon on their knees; and this pretended humility flattered him into compliance. The plate and jewels of Gaveston were surrendered into his hands, and he was implored to confirm their deeds by proclaiming the late favourite a traitor. Here, however, Edward stood firm; he not only refused, but declined also to confirm the ordinances they had passed. But they had accomplished the grand object of destroying the hated favourite, and therefore were the more willing not to press the king too closely on other points. All classes in the nation now began to cherish hopes that they might be led to chastise the Scots, and to win back, if possible, the brilliant conquests of Edward I.

For seven years the feeble and inglorious Edward II. had now suffered the loss of his great father's acquisitions in Scotland, and the reverses and disgraces of the English arms to remain unavenged. Occupied with the society of his favourite, the effeminate pleasures of the court, and the consequent contentions with his barons, he had allowed Bruce to proceed, with all the activity and resources of a great mind, to reassure the people of Scotland, retake the castles and forts, and strengthen himself against attack. Bruce had gradually risen from a condition the most perilous and enfeebled to one of considerable strength. His soldiers now held every stronghold except that of Stirling; and the governor of this fortress, by the permission of Bruce himself, appeared in London to inform the king that he had stipulated that if the castle were not relieved by the feast of St. John the Baptist (the 24th of June) it should be surrendered.

Thus the reign of this weak monarch was the rescue of Scotland. Had not this spiritless king interposed between two such monarchs as the First and Third Edward, it is difficult to suppose that Scotland could have maintained its independence. But, with the golden opportunity of an incompetent enemy, Providence had also sent Scotland one of the greatest men which it ever produced. Robert Bruce, driven to seek refuge in the most inaccessible wilds and mountains during the dominion of Edward I., and even pursued there by some of his own countrymen, such as the Lord of Lorn, and the relatives of the Red Comyn, no sooner saw the incapable ruler who had succeeded the "Hammer of Scotland," as Edward I. is styled on his tomb in Westminster Abbey, than he seized every favourable opportunity for regaining the castles and strongholds from the English. As fast as he mastered them he laid them in ruins, for he could not afford garrisons to defend them, and he knew that the feeling of the country was with him.

Thus at last it came to pass that the English had only the castle of Stirling left in all Scotland; and Sir Philip Mowbray, after a brave defence, had agreed to deliver that up if not relieved by a certain day. He had, as we have said, arrived in London with this message. Perhaps even such a message as this, full of national disgrace, might not have moved Edward out of his epicurean listlessness, but it aroused the nobles. They exclaimed unanimously that it would be an eternal shame thus to let the conquest of Edward I. fall out of their hands without a blow. It was therefore resolved that the king should lead an army to the rescue.

A royal summons was issued for all the military force of England to meet the king at Berwick on the 11th of June, 1314. The most warlike of the British subjects from the French provinces were called forth; troops were enlisted in Flanders; the Irish and Welsh were tempted in great numbers to Edward's standard by hopes of plunder; and altogether an army of not less than 100,000 men, including 40,000 cavalry--3,000 of whom, men and horse, were clad in complete armour--assembled. A large fleet attended to act in concert with the army; and at the head of this mighty force the king took his way towards Edinburgh, advancing along the east coast, and thence along the right bank of the Forth to Stirling.

Robert Bruce, who had been lying before Stirling awaiting the result of Sir Philip Mowbray's mission to London, now saw that the fate of the kingdom must be decided on or near that spot. His army was much inferior to the English one in numbers, amounting to between 30,000 and 40,000 men. But then they were tried troops, fighting for the very existence of their country, and under such leaders as Robert Bruce, Randolph, and Douglas--men whom they had followed into exploits almost miraculous. The English army was far better armed and provided, except in one particular, and that the most essential of all--a commander. Instead of being led by a man of courage, experience, and sagacity, they had a timid, effeminate puppet; and when so much depended on the commander-in-chief--even more than at the present day--that single circumstance was fatal.

Bruce made preparations for the decisive struggle with his usual ability. He had collected his forces in the forest called Torwood; but as he knew the superiority of the English, not merely in numbers, but in their heavy-armed cavalry (far better mounted and equipped than his own) and in their archers (the very best in the world), he determined to provide against these advantages. He therefore led his army into a plain on the south side of Stirling, called the New Park, close beneath which the English army would be obliged to pass through a swampy country broken up with watercourses, while the Scots stood on firm, dry ground. With this morass in front, and the deep, woody, and broken banks of the little rivulet of Bannockburn on his right, so rocky that no troops could pass them, he took care to secure the more assailable ground on his left by digging a great number of pits, about knee-deep, which he covered with brushwood, and over that with turf, so as to look like solid grassy ground. In these pits he is said by some writers to have fixed pointed stakes. The whole ground, says Barbour, the poetical chronicler, was like a honeycomb with the holes. Besides this, Bruce sought to disable the English cavalry by sowing the front of the battle-field with those cruel, four-pointed steel spikes called caltrops and crow-feet, which lamed and disabled the horses which trod upon them.

Bruce then divided his forces into four divisions. Of these he gave the command of the right wing, flanked by the Bannockburn, to his brother Edward; of the left, near Stirling, to Randolph, who was posted near the church of St. Ninians, and had orders at all risks to prevent the English from throwing succours into the city; Sir James Douglas and Walter the Steward commanded the centre; and Bruce headed the reserve in the rear, consisting of the men of Argyll, the islanders, and his own vassals of Carrick.

Douglas and Sir Robert Keith, mareschal of the Scottish army, were dispatched by King Robert to take a view of the English forces, now approaching from Falkirk. They returned saying the vast host approaching was one of the most beautiful and terrible sights imaginable; that the whole country appeared covered with moving troops; and that the number of banners, pennons, standards, flags, all of different kinds, made so gallant a show, that the bravest and most numerous army in Christendom might be alarmed to behold it coming against them. It was Sunday, and Barbour describes it as so bright that the armour of the English troops made the country seem all on fire. Never had England sent forth a more magnificent host, and never did one approach the battle-field with more imposing aspect; but the Lion-heart of the army, the terrible "Hammer of Scotland," was no longer there.

As the army drew in sight, Edward sent forward Lord Clifford with 800 horse to endeavour to gain the castle by a circuitous route, hidden by rising grounds from Bruce's left wing. They had already passed the Scottish line when Bruce was the first to descry them. "See, Randolph," he cried, riding up to him, "there is a rose fallen from your chaplet--you have suffered the enemy to pass!" Randolph made no reply, but rushed upon Clifford with little more than half his number. The English wheeled round to charge and to encompass the little band of Scots, but Randolph drew them up back to back, and they defended themselves valiantly. Douglas, who saw the perilous position of Randolph, asked to be allowed to ride up to his relief. "No," replied the king, "let Randolph redeem his own fault." But the danger became so imminent that Douglas exclaimed, "So please you, my liege, I must aid Randolph; I cannot stand idle and see him perish." He therefore rode off with a strong detachment, but seeing, as he drew near, that the English were giving way, he cried, "Halt! Randolph has gained the day: let us not lessen his glory by approaching the field." A noble sentiment, for Randolph and Douglas were always striving which should rise the highest in the nation.

Meanwhile the van of the English army approached the front of the Scottish host; and they beheld King Robert mounted on a small palfrey instead of his great war-horse, for he did not expect the battle that evening. He was riding up and down the ranks of his men, putting them in order, with a steel battle-axe in his hand, and a helmet on his head surmounted with a crown of gold. Some of the bravest knights of the English army rode out in front, to see what the Scots were doing; and Bruce also advanced a little before his own men to take a nearer view of them. Sir Henry Bohun, an English knight, mounted on a heavy war-horse, armed at all points, thought this an excellent opportunity to earn renown, and put an end to the war at a stroke, by killing Robert Bruce. He therefore charged furiously upon him, trusting with his lance to bear him to the ground, poorly mounted as he was. King Robert awaited him with the most profound composure; and, as he drew near, suddenly turned his pony aside, so that Bohun missed him with the point of his lance, and was in the act of being carried past him by his horse. Robert Bruce, rising in his stirrups as the knight was passing, dealt him such a blow on the head with his battle-axe that it broke to pieces his iron helmet as if it had been a nutshell, and hurled him dead to the ground. The English knights, astonished at the act, retired to the main body; and King Robert's friends blamed him for exposing himself and the safety of the army to such risks: but he himself only continued to look at his weapon, saying, "I have broken my good battle-axe."

The next morning the battle began in terrible earnest. The English, as they approached, saw the Abbot of Inchaffray walking barefoot through the Scottish ranks, and exhorting the soldiers to fight bravely for their freedom. As he passed they knelt and prayed for victory. King Edward, seeing this, cried out, "See! they kneel down; they are asking forgiveness!" "Yes," replied the bold Baron Ingelram de Umfraville; "but they ask it of God, not of us; these men will conquer or die upon the field."

The main body of the army, under the conduct of the king himself, advanced in a long, dense column upon the Scottish line; but they failed to break it by the shock, and repeated renewals of the charge told more sensibly on the assailants than on the assailed. The English were broken at every fresh collision; the Scots stood like a range of rocks. Every part of the Scottish army was brought into play, while the majority of the English never came in contact with the enemy. The brave Randolph led up the left wing to the support of the assaulted centre, till he appeared surrounded and lost in an ocean of foes. On the other hand, the Earls of Hereford and Gloucester made a fierce charge of cavalry on the right wing, commanded by Edward Bruce, but were received by those treacherous pitfalls, in which their horses were overthrown in confusion, and the riders, falling in their heavy armour, were unable to extricate themselves. Dreadful then was the slaughter; and amongst the rest Gloucester, the king's nephew, not wearing his armorial bearings, and not, therefore, being recognised, was cut to pieces in the mêlée.

The English archers poured their arrows thick as hail upon the main body, and might, as at Falkirk, have decided the day; but Bruce, having calculated on this, sent Sir Robert Keith, the mareschal, with a small body of horse, to take them in flank; and as the archers had no weapons for close quarters, the Scottish horsemen, dashing headlong among them, cut them down in great numbers, and threw them into total confusion.

Meanwhile Douglas and the Steward encouraged their men in the centre by their valiant deeds and the confidence in their great fame, and the battle became general along the whole Scottish line. The moment in which Bruce saw that his detachment of horse had disordered the archers, he advanced with his reserve, and the whole Scottish front pressed upon the already hesitating English. At this critical moment an event occurred which decided the victory. Bruce had posted the servants and attendants of the Scottish camp behind a hill in the rear of the army. Some writers give him credit for planning what took place, and assert that he had furnished them with banners, to represent a second army. Others, and amongst them Sir Walter Scott, attribute the appearance of these men to chance rather than design. It is supposed they saw that their army was gaining on the foe, and were therefore eager for a share of the booty. Be this as it may, suddenly the English noticed a body of men coming over the hill, ever since called the Gillies', or Servants' Hill, from this circumstance. Imagining this to be a fresh army, they at once lost heart and broke, while Bruce, raising his war-cry, rushed with new fury against the failing ranks. The king was the first to put spurs to his horse and flee. A valiant knight, Sir Giles d'Argentine, who had won great renown in Palestine, assisted the king out of the press; but he then turned saying, "It is not my custom to fly"--a keen reproof to the cowardly monarch, if he could have felt anything but fear--and dashing, with the cry of "Argentine! Argentine!" into the thickest of the Scottish ranks, was killed.

The fugitive king fled to the gates of Stirling Castle, and entreated admittance; but the brave Sir Philip Mowbray reminding him that he was pledged to surrender the castle if it were not relieved that very day, Edward was obliged to go on through the Torwood. Douglas was already pressing hotly after him; and meeting with Sir Lawrence Abernethy--a Scottish knight hitherto in the English interest, and even now on his way to the English army--he carried the not unwilling knight and his twenty horsemen along with him. Douglas and Abernethy pursued the king at full gallop, and never ceased the chase till they reached Dunbar, sixty miles off, where Edward narrowly escaped into the castle, still held by an English ally, Patrick, Earl of March. Thence the king escaped by a small fishing skiff to England, leaving a great part of his splendid army to destruction. Fifty thousand of the English were said to have been killed or taken prisoners, and the remnant of the army was pursued as far as Berwick, ninety miles distant. Of those who fell there were twenty-seven barons and bannerets, including Gloucester, a prince of the blood, 200 knights, 700 esquires, and 30,000 of inferior rank. Twenty-two barons and bannerets were taken, and sixty knights; and an English historian has asserted that if the chariots, baggage wagons, &c., that were taken, loaded with military stores and booty, had been drawn out in single line, they would have reached sixty leagues. Besides this, the ransom of so many distinguished men was a grand source of wealth to the victorious army. The losses of the Scots were comparatively trivial, Sir William Vipont and Sir William Ross being the only persons of note slain.

Such was the decisive battle of Bannockburn, which has ever since been celebrated in song and story as one of the proudest triumphs in Scottish history. It at once established the independence of Scotland. "The English," says Sir Walter Scott, "never before or afterwards, whether in France or Scotland, lost so dreadful a battle as that of Bannockburn, nor did the Scots ever gain one of the same importance." Bruce was at once elevated from the condition of an exile, hunted by his enemies with bloodhounds like a beast of the chase, and placed firmly on the throne of his native land--one of the wisest and bravest kings who ever sat there. The moral effect of this battle was almost magical. Stirling Castle was at once surrendered, according to stipulation. Bothwell Castle, in which the Earl of Hereford had shut himself up, soon after yielded to Edward Bruce, and Hereford was exchanged for the wife, sister, and daughter of the King of Scots, who had been detained eight years in England, as well as for the Bishop of Glasgow and the Earl of Mar. The triumphant Scots marched into England, ravaged Northumberland, levied tribute on Durham, wasted the country to the very gates of York, and going westward, reached Appleby in Westmoreland, whence they returned home laden with spoil. The English became thoroughly demoralised by their overthrow, and numbers fled at the approach of the merest handful of Scots. "O day of vengeance and of misfortune!" says the monk of Malmesbury; "day of disgrace and perdition! unworthy to be included in the circle of the year, which tarnished the fame of England and enriched the Scots with the plunder of the precious stuffs of our nation to the extent of £200,000"--nearly three millions of our money.

Encouraged by this panic, the Scots made fresh incursions that autumn and the following summer, but received, ultimately, some checks at Carlisle and Berwick. But, perhaps, more than from this, the security of England was purchased by the ill-fortune of Ireland; for in May, 1315, the Irish, taking also advantage of the reverses of England, invited Edward Bruce to come over, drive out the English, and become their king. Edward Bruce caught at the offer with avidity, for he was fond of battle and adventure, and ambitious of fame and power. He was brave but rash. He took over 6,000 men, and was joined by several of the Irish chiefs on landing at Carrickfergus. The Scots fought with various success, and penetrated far into Ireland. In the following spring, Edward Bruce was crowned King of Ireland in Ulster, and Robert Bruce also went over to support his claim with fresh forces, making the Scottish army about 20,000 men. For another year the two brothers continued their adventure, marching on Dublin, to which the citizens set fire, and laid waste the suburbs, so that the invaders were obliged to move on. They marched south in hope of receiving co-operation from the Irish of Munster and Connaught, but were disappointed, and involved in imminent danger from an English army of 30,000 men at Kilkenny.

The English, meantime, seized the opportunity of the absence of the King of Scots, and made fresh inroads into Scotland. This compelled his speedy return, when, in March, 1318, he made himself master of Berwick, and revenged himself on the English by again marching into their northern counties, taking the castles of Wark, Harbottle, and Mitford in Northumberland; and in a second raid in Yorkshire burning Northallerton, Boroughbridge, Scarborough, and Skipton, besides levying 1,000 marks on Ripon, and carrying off much booty. But ill-fortune soon overtook his brother Edward in Ireland, where he had left him. He engaged Sir John de Birmingham at Fagher, near Dundalk, and was left dead on the field, with 2,000 of his soldiers. The efforts of the Scots for three years to erect a kingdom in Ireland thus vanished for ever, leaving scarcely a trace. Birmingham presented the head of Edward Bruce to the King of England, who made him, in recompense, Earl of Louth.

These reverses of the Scots excited Edward of Carnarvon to one more effort for the recovery of Scotland. He assembled a numerous force, and besieged Berwick on the 7th of September, 1319, both by sea and land. It made a vigorous resistance; and Randolph and Douglas, to create a diversion, invaded the western marches with a force of 15,000 men. They made a push for York, to secure the queen, but failed. They then committed dreadful ravages in Yorkshire, and were encountered by an undisciplined mob, led on by the Archbishop of York and the Bishop of Ely. This rude assemblage they routed at Mitton, on the Swale, and slew about 4,000, chiefly peasants, but amongst them 300 churchmen with surplices over their armour; whence this battle, in allusion to so many shaven crowns in it, was called the Chapter of Mitton. Edward at length raised the siege of Berwick, and marched to intercept the Scots, but not before they had burnt and destroyed eighty-four towns and villages, and done incredible damage. On the approach of the king, they warily withdrew, and finished their successful raid by a truce for two years.

Such had been the fortune in war of the son of one of the greatest commanders that the English ever saw on the throne; such was the condition to which the weakness and cowardice of Edward II. had reduced the kingdom. The Scots insulted and harassed him on one side, the Welsh on the other; and the haughty barons, taking advantage of his fallen fortunes, sought to raise their own power on the ruins of the throne. They came forward again boldly with their ordinances, and Edward was compelled to submit to them. Lancaster was set at the head of the council, and introduced a totally new set of officers of the crown. The government offices they declared should be filled from time to time by the votes of Parliament--that is, of the barons. So far from these new rulers endeavouring to expel or humble the Scots, it was believed that Lancaster was in secret alliance with them; and this afterwards was proved to be true. Acting this traitorous part, Lancaster pretended to keep up a hostile show against the Scots, but he took care that all attempts against them should fail.

Edward was clearly totally unfit to govern a kingdom. He had not the ability to conduct the affairs of peace or war; and he was of that unhappy character of mind which never derives any benefit from experience. The misery which he had brought upon himself by his foolish fondness for Gaveston, and the destruction brought upon the favourite himself, had not the smallest effect in preventing the king from again falling into the same error. Soon after the death of Gaveston he conceived the same singular and indomitable attachment to Hugh le Despenser, or Spenser, a young man of ancient descent, and in the service of the Earl of Lancaster, who, in his change of office, had placed him about the court. This second fatal attachment involved the remainder of the reign of Edward in perpetual strife and trouble, and precipitated his terrible end.

This young Despenser, the new favourite, had all the graces of person and the accomplishments which had bewitched the king in Gaveston, but he had the advantages which never belonged to the Gascon--those of birth, rank, and connection. His father was a noble of ability and experience, highly esteemed for his wisdom, bravery, and integrity through his past life. But these things availed nothing with the indignant barons, who suddenly saw the young man and his father advanced over their heads. They withdrew sullenly from court and Parliament, and sought an opportunity to make their resentment felt by both the king and his minions. This opportunity, with a monarch like Edward, could not be long wanting. He began the same reckless course of heaping honours and estates on the younger Spenser. As he had married Gaveston to his own niece, sister to the Earl of Gloucester, he now repeated the very act as nearly as circumstances would permit him, and married Spenser to the sister and one of the co-heirs of the late Earl of Gloucester, who was killed at Bannockburn. He thus put him, in his wife's right, in possession of vast estates, including the county of Glamorgan, and part of the Welsh marches. The father also obtained great possessions, for, in spite of his reputation for wisdom, his sudden advancement to such large opportunity appeared to have awakened in him a boundless rapacity. The king immediately followed up these gifts by seizing, at the instigation of young Spenser, on the barony of Gower, left to John de Mowbray, on the plea that it had reverted to the crown through Mowbray's neglect of feudal usage on entering into possession. This was exactly the sort of occasion for which the barons were on the watch: the whole marches were in flame, civil war was afoot. The Earls of Lancaster and Hereford flew to arms. Audley, the two Rogers de Mortimer, Roger de Clifford, and many others, disgusted, for private reasons, with the Spensers, joined them. The lords of the marches sent a message to the king, demanding the instant banishment or imprisonment of the young favourite, threatening to renounce their allegiance and to punish the minister themselves. Scarcely waiting for an answer, they fell on the lands of both the Spensers, pillaged and wasted their estates, murdered their servants, drove away their cattle, and burned down their castles. Lancaster having joined them, with thirty-four barons and a host of vassals, this formidable force marched to St. Albans. Having bound themselves not to lay down their arms till they had driven the two Spensers from the kingdom, they sent a united demand to the king for this object. Edward assumed constitutional grounds for his objection to this demand. The two Spensers were absent--the father abroad, the son at sea; and the king declared that he was restrained by his coronation oath from violating the laws and condemning persons unheard. Timid at the head of an army, Edward was always bold in defence of his favourites. These pretences weighed little with men with arms in their hands. They marched on London, occupied the suburbs of Holborn and Clerkenwell, and, a Parliament having assembled at Westminster, these armed remonstrants delivered to it a charge against the two Spensers of usurping the royal powers, of alienating the mind of the king from his nobles, of exacting fines, and appointing ignorant judges. By menaces and violence they carried their point, obtaining a sentence of attainder and perpetual banishment against the two obnoxious courtiers. This sentence was pronounced by the barons alone, for the commons were not even consulted, and the bishops protested against so illegal a proceeding. The only evidence which these turbulent barons gave of their remembrance of the laws was in requiring from the king a deed of indemnity for their conduct; and having got this, they disbanded their army, and retired, highly delighted with their success, and in perfect security, as they imagined, to their castles.

But they had in reality been too successful. The force put upon the authority of the king was so outrageous, and it reduced all respect for it to so low an ebb, that the barons and knights in their own neighbourhoods became totally regardless of public decorum towards the royal family. Even the queen, who had always endeavoured to live on good terms with the barons, and who detested the young Spenser as cordially as they did, could not escape insult. Passing the castle of Leeds, in reality a crown property, but in the keeping of the Lord of Badlesmere, she desired to spend the night there, but admittance was refused her; and some of her attendants, insisting on their royal mistress being admitted to what might be called her own house, were forcibly repulsed and killed. The queen instantly complained, with all her quick sense of indignity, to the king; and Edward thought that now he had a splendid opportunity of vengeance on his haughty barons. He for once assumed courage, and displayed a spirit which, if it had been permanent and uniform, would have made him and kept him master of his throne and prerogatives. He assembled an army, fell on Badlesmere, took him prisoner, and inflicted severe chastisement on his followers. The insult to the queen had excited the indignation of the people against the barons, and completely justified the proceedings of the king. Thus suddenly finding himself on the high tide of public approbation, he at once declared the acts of the barons void, and contrary to the tenor of the Great Charter. He showed surprising activity in collecting forces and calling out friends in different parts of the kingdom. He recalled the two Spensers. They had only been banished in the month of August; in October they were again on English ground. The king marched down upon the quarters of the lords of the marches, who were thus suddenly taken unawares, while isolated in fancied security, and incapable of resistance. He seized and hanged twelve knights of that party. Many of the barons endeavoured to appease him by submission, but their castles were taken possession of, and their persons imprisoned.

Lancaster, alarmed for his safety, hastened northward, and now openly avowed his league with Scotland which had been so long suspected, and called on the Scots for help. This was promised him under the command of the two great champions of Scotland--Randolph, now Earl of Moray, and the Douglas. But these not arriving, Lancaster set out on his march, and was joined by the Earl of Hereford and all his forces. Their army, however, did not equal that of the king, which numbered 30,000 men.

Lancaster and Hereford posted themselves at Burton-upon-Trent, hoping to keep back the royal forces by obstructing the passage over the bridge; but in this they failed, and hastily retreated northwards, hoping daily for the arrival of the promised aid from Scotland. At Boroughbridge, on the 16th of March, 1322, they were intercepted by a force under Sir Simon Ward and Sir Andrew Harclay, who occupied the bridge and the opposite banks of the river. In fear of the pursuit of the king's army, the two barons endeavoured to force the bridge, but were stoutly repulsed; Hereford was killed, and Lancaster, who in his terror had lost all power of commanding his troops, was seized and conducted to the king.

No greater contrast could be exhibited by two commanders than was shown on this occasion by Hereford and Lancaster. Hereford, determined to force the bridge, charged on foot; but a Welshman, who had discovered that the bridge was in a very decayed state, and full of holes, had concealed himself under it, and through one of these holes he thrust a spear into the bowels of the brave earl, who fell dead on the spot. Lancaster attempted to find a ford over the river, but the archers of the enemy poured in showers of arrows upon him. Night put a stop to the battle, and in the morning he was taken. Lancaster had in his day a great reputation for piety. "He was," says Froissart, "a wise man and a holy; and he did afterwards many fine miracles on the spot where he was beheaded." Hume has painted this nobleman as violent, turbulent, and hypocritical; and attributes his reputation for piety to the monks, whom he favoured, and who were his historians. But there is nothing in his public conduct which may not assume the character of patriotism, for he fell as he had lived, in endeavouring to resist the mischievous practices of the king in regard to his favourites. He was a prince of the blood, and, by his position and the rights of the Charter, bound to support the constitution which the king was continually violating in his unbounded partiality for his minions. In conformity with his character, Lancaster, on being surrounded, retired into a chapel, and, looking on the holy cross, said, "Good Lord, I surrender myself to Thee, and put me into Thy mercy." He had no mercy to expect from Edward, who, remembering too well the indignities which his beloved Gaveston had received at the hands of the earl and his associates at his execution, now resolved to have ample revenge.

About a month after the battle, he convoked a court martial at the earl's own castle of Pontefract, where he himself presided, and where, as a traitor, having made league with Scotland against his rightful sovereign, Lancaster was condemned to be hanged, drawn, and quartered. He was clothed in mean attire, set upon a sorry jade of a horse, with a hood upon his head, and in this manner he was led to execution on a hill near the castle, the king's officers heaping all kinds of insults upon him, and the populace, whom he had incensed by calling in the Scots, pelting him with mud, and pursuing him with outcries and curses. In his life and death Lancaster bore a striking resemblance to the Earl of Leicester, the leader of the barons in the reign of Henry III.

Besides the two leaders of this revolt, five knights and three esquires were killed in the battle, and fourteen bannerets and fourteen knights bachelors were hanged, drawn, and quartered. Amongst those who were executed were Badlesmere--who had insulted the queen,--Gifford, Barnet, Cheney, and Fleming. Many were thrown into prison, and others escaped beyond the sea. "Never," says an old writer, "did English earth at one time drink so much blood of her nobles, in so vile a manner shed as this." But not only was this vengeance taken on the persons of the insurgents: their vast estates were forfeited to the crown, and the people soon beheld, with inexpressible indignation, the greater portion of these immense demesnes seized upon by the younger Spenser, whose rapacity was insatiable. In a Parliament held at York, the attainder of the Despensers was reversed, the father was created Earl of Winchester, and both he and his son enriched by the lands of the fallen nobles. Edward was as totally uncured of his folly as ever. Harclay, for his services, received the earldom of Carlisle and a large estate, which he soon again forfeited, as well as his life, for a treasonable correspondence with the Scots. But the rest of the barons of the royal party, receiving little, were the more incensed at the immense spoils heaped on the Spensers. The king's enemies, on the other hand, vowed vengeance on both monarch and favourite, whom the people regarded with more determined envy and hatred than ever.

Thus Edward, falling the moment that he was successful into his hopeless failing of favouritism, not only lost every advantage he had so completely gained, but hastened by it the day of retribution. The nobles who had escaped to France, there set on foot a dangerous conspiracy. Amongst these was the younger Roger Mortimer, one of the most powerful barons of the Welsh marches, who had been twice condemned for high treason but, receiving a pardon for his life, was detained in the Tower, where his captivity was intended to be life-long. Making his guards drunk with a drugged liquor, he escaped, and now joined these conspirators, all smarting from their sufferings on account of the favourite, and many of them from his usurpation of their castles and lands.

Everything favoured these conspirators. At home, the young Spenser, as little instructed by past dangers as his master, seemed to grow every day more arrogant; and an expedition against the Scots, like all the expeditions of this king against that people, proving a failure--followed by the usual inroads of the Scots, in one of which they nearly took the king prisoner, and in which they wasted the country to the very walls of York--created deep discontent and national irritation. Sensible of the lowering aspect of things in France, Edward, at length, after a war of three-and-twenty years, fruitful in disaster and ruin, now concluded a peace with Scotland for thirteen years. In this truce he did not recognise the title of Robert Bruce to the crown; but Bruce, who had made good his claim to it, who had repelled all the attacks of England on his country, given the enemy a great overthrow at Bannockburn, and on various occasions carried the war into England, satisfied himself with these substantial advantages.

Fortified on this side, Edward still did not sit secure. Soon after the treaty he was startled by a plot to cut off the elder Spenser, and then by an attempt to release the prisoners taken at Boroughbridge from their dungeons. This failed, but the conspiracy in France grew, and circumstances favoured it. Charles the Fair, the brother of Edward's queen, now on the throne, having, or pretending, causes of complaint against Edward's officers in the province of Guienne, overran that province with his arms, and took many of the castles. Edward apologised and offered to refer the causes of quarrel to the Pope; but Charles took advantage of his brother-in-law's difficulties, and endeavoured to deprive him of his French territories altogether. Edward sent out his brother, the Earl of Kent, to endeavour to negotiate matters, but without effect; and Isabella, who had long wished to quit the kingdom, now prevailed on the king to let her go over and arrange the business with her brother. Edward fell into the snare: the queen found herself in Paris, and the centre of a powerful band of British malcontents. One common principle animated the queen and the refugees of the Lancaster faction, and bound them together--hatred of the Spensers. The queen had come attended by a splendid retinue--for she came not only as Queen of England and Princess of France, but in the character of an ambassador. Publicly, therefore, she was received with every honour; and, publicly, she appeared to be negotiating for a settlement of her royal husband's difficulties; but as the mode of solving them, she conceded that he should come over in person and do homage for his provinces. This proposal, which astonished both the king and the whole court, was strenuously resisted by the younger Spenser. He well knew the feelings entertained by the queen towards him; and therefore would, on no account, trust himself in Paris with her. But to allow the king to proceed there alone was as full of danger. The king might there fall under the influence of some other person; and at home his own position would be most perilous during the king's absence, regarded as he was with universal hatred.

The king had advanced as far as Dover, where, no doubt, at the persuasion of the Spensers, he stopped, and, on the plea of illness, declined to proceed any farther. Foiled in this scheme, Isabella hit upon another, which was that Edward should make over Guienne and Ponthieu to his son, who then could go instead of his father, and perform the requisite homage. This was more easily fallen into by the king, because it suited young Spenser by keeping the king at home. Edward resigned Guienne and Ponthieu to his son, now thirteen years old, who went over, did the homage, and took up his residence with his mother.

The plot now began to unfold itself palpably. The queen was not only surrounded by a powerful body of English subjects hostile to their king, but she had the heir to the throne in her possession, and she determined never to return to England till she could drive young Spenser thence, and seize the reins of power herself. When, therefore, the homage being completed, Edward urged the return of his wife and son, he received at first evasive answers, which were soon followed by the foulest charges against him by his own queen. She complained that Hugh Spenser had alienated the king's affection from her; that he had sown continual discord between them; had brought the king to such a feeling against her, that he would neither see her nor come where she was. She accused the Spensers of seizing her dower and keeping her in a state of abject poverty and dependence, and, beyond all this, of having a design on the lives of both herself and son. The king put forth a defence of himself, but nothing could clear him from the charge of having grossly neglected the queen for his favourites, or of having most thoroughly merited her contempt and aversion.

But while the queen was doing the utmost to disgrace and ruin her husband, her own conduct was notoriously scandalous. During the life of the Earl of Lancaster she appears to have leaned very much on him for counsel and support; but now the Lord Mortimer was become the head of the Lancastrian party, and therefore necessarily was thrown daily into her society. Mortimer was handsome, brave, of insinuating address, and sufficiently unprincipled. The affairs of the party brought them into almost perpetual contact, and intimacy speedily ripened into intrigue and criminality. Very soon the position of the queen and Mortimer was generally known. They lived in the most avowed intimacy, and when Edward, made aware of it, insisted on Isabella's immediate return, she declared boldly that she would never set foot in England till Spenser was for ever removed from the royal presence and counsels. This public avowal won her instant popularity in England, where Spenser was hated, and threw for awhile a slight veil over her own designs. An active correspondence was opened with the discontented in England; the vilest calumnies were propagated everywhere against the king, and this disgraceful family quarrel became the common topic of all Europe.

The King of France, from motives of policy, declared himself highly incensed against Edward for his treatment of his sister, and even threatened to redress her wrongs. He still protected her, even after her open connection with Mortimer, though both himself and his two brothers had thrown their wives into prison for irregularity of conduct, where the wife of his brother Louis had been strangled. But though Charles probably never seriously intended to take any active measures on behalf of Isabella, Edward was greatly alarmed, and not only sent, in the name of Spenser, rich presents to the French king and his ministers, but also wrote to the Pope, earnestly imploring him to command Charles to restore to him his wife and son. This letter to the Pope was strongly backed, according to Froissart, "by much gold and silver to several cardinals and prelates nearest to the Pope." The interference of his holiness afforded a sufficient plea for Charles to withdraw all countenance from Isabella, and even to command her to quit the kingdom. To save appearances, therefore, Isabella quitted Paris, and betook herself to the court of the Count of Holland and Hainault. That this was a step by no means disagreeable to Charles the Fair is obvious from the fact that the count was his own vassal, and suffered no remonstrance for this reception of the English queen. The partisanship of the count was of the most decided kind. The queen, the more indissolubly to engage him in her enterprise, affianced her son Edward, the heir to the English throne, to Philippa, his second daughter. The brother of the count, John of Hainault, became a perfect enthusiast in the cause of Isabella, who, still young--only eight-and-twenty years of age--and eminently beautiful, seemed to inspire him with all the chivalrous devotion of the most romantic ages. He declared his full faith in Isabella's innocence of all impropriety, with the spectacle of her intimacy with Mortimer daily before his eyes; and he was deaf to all warnings of danger from the jealousies of the English, who, he was assured, were especially disgusted by the interference of foreigners. By this alliance, and the secret assistance of her brother, the King of France, Isabella soon saw herself surrounded by an army of nearly 3,000 men.

Edward, roused by the imminent danger, endeavoured to prepare measures of defence. But the danger was far more extensive than appeared on the surface. Conspiracy did not merely menace from abroad, but penetrated every day deeper, and into the very recesses of his own family. His brother, the Earl of Kent, a well-meaning but weak prince, who still remained on the Continent, was persuaded by Isabella and the King of France that it behoved every member of the royal family to join in the attempt to rid the kingdom of the Spensers; and this, they assured him, was the object of the expedition. Won over to what appeared so desirable an attempt, he also won over his elder brother, the Earl of Norfolk. The Earl of Leicester, the brother and heir of the Earl of Lancaster, had abundant motives of interest and vengeance for entering into the design. The Archbishop of Canterbury and many of the prelates approved of the queen's cause, and aided her with money; several of the most powerful barons were ready to embrace it on her appearance on the English coast; and the minds of the populace were embittered against the king by the industrious dissemination of calumnies and injurious truths.

Isabella set sail from the harbour of Dort with her little army, accompanied by the Earl of Kent; and on the 24th of September, 1326, landed at Orwell, in Suffolk. She was soon joined by the Earls of Norfolk and Leicester, thus receiving the high sanction of two princes of the blood; the Bishops of Lincoln, Ely, and Hereford met her with the sanction of the Church and numerous forces. The fleet had been won over and kept out of the way, and the land forces sent against her at once hailed the young prince with acclamations, and joined the Queen's banner. Isabella made a proclamation that she came to free the nation from the tyranny of the Spensers and of Chancellor Baldock, their creature. The barons, who thought themselves secure from forfeiture in coalition with the prince, made a reconciliation with the barons of the Lancastrian faction, and the people poured in on all sides. Never was a miserable monarch so deserted by his people, and by his own blood. His wife, his son, his brothers, his nobles, his prelates, his people, all were against him. The queen and prince stayed three days in the abbey of the Black Monks at Bury St. Edmunds, where their partisans continually increased.

Meantime, the wretched king appealed to the citizens of London to maintain the royal cause, and issued a proclamation offering £1,000 to any one for the head of Mortimer--a pretty sum, equal to £10,000 at the present day. The appeal remained totally unheeded; and Edward fled from his capital, accompanied only by the two Spensers, Baldock, the chancellor, and a few of their retainers. Scarcely were they out of the gates when the populace rose, seized the Bishop of Exeter, whom the king had appointed governor, beheaded him, and threw his body into the river. They met with and killed a friend of the favourites--one John le Marshal. They made themselves masters of the Tower, and liberated all the State prisoners--a numerous body, most of them suffering for the attempts to put down young Spenser--and then entered into an association to put to death without mercy every one who dared to oppose the queen and prince. Such was the fury of the populace against the king and his favourite; and this spirit appeared in every part of the kingdom.

The poor forsaken king fled to the Welsh, amongst whom he was born; but they would none of him, and he was compelled to take to the sea with his favourite. The elder Spenser was left in Bristol as governor of the castle; but the garrison mutinied against him, and on the approach of the queen he was delivered up to her. The poor old man, now nearly ninety, was brought before Sir William Trussel, one of the Lancastrian exiles, who, without allowing him to utter a word in his defence, condemned him to death. He was taken outside the walls of the city and hanged on a gibbet, his bowels were torn out, and his body was cut to pieces, and thrown to the dogs; and, as he had been made Earl of Winchester, his head was sent to that city, and stuck on a pole. Such was the fate of this old man, who had borne a high character through a long life, till strange fortune lifted him aloft, and developed in him the lurking demons of rapacity and lust of his neighbour's goods.

The unhappy king, meantime, with the son of this old man, endeavouring, it was supposed, to escape to Ireland, had been tossed about for many days on a stormy sea, which seemed to enter into the rebellion of his people, and to reject him and cast him up, as it were, on the coast of South Wales. His flight had furnished the barons with a fortunate plea for deposing him. They first issued a proclamation at Bristol, calling on the king to return to his proper post; and, as he did not appear, on the 26th of September, forming themselves into a Parliament, they declared that the king had left the realm without a ruler, and appointed the Prince of Wales guardian of the kingdom. The king, on landing, knowing what he had to expect, hid himself for some weeks in the mountains near Neath Abbey, in Glamorganshire. His place of retreat was very soon known, and young Spenser and Baldock were seized in the woods of Llantressan, and immediately afterwards Edward came forth and surrendered himself to the Earl of Leicester, the brother of Lancaster, whom he had beheaded at Pontefract. Without a single sign of sympathy or commiseration from high or low, the wholly-abandoned king was sent off a prisoner to Kenilworth. Short and bloody work was made with the favourite. Trussel, the same judge who had condemned his father, condemned him to be drawn, hanged, disembowelled, beheaded, and quartered; and the sentence was carried into execution with revolting minuteness. He was hanged on a gallows fifty feet high, and his servant, Simon Reding, was hanged on the same gallows, only a few yards lower. The Earl of Arundel, allied to the Spensers by marriage, and one of those active in the death of the Earl of Lancaster, was beheaded with two other noblemen. Baldock, as a priest, was exempt from the gallows; but, being sent to the Bishop of Hereford's palace in London, he was there seized by the enraged populace, as, probably, the senders foresaw, and, though rescued, died soon after in Newgate of his injuries. So terminated the fortunes of Edward's few adherents. His own fate, steeped in still deeper horrors, was fast hastening on.

A Parliament--one of those solemn mockeries which we often see in history--was summoned in the king's name to meet at Westminster on the 7th of January, 1327, to condemn the king himself. There Adam Orleton, Bishop of Hereford, one of the most violent partisans of the queen and a bitter enemy of the king, assumed the office of speaker. The very appearance of such a speaker indicated--had all other circumstances been wanting--the determination of the barons to proceed to extremities with Edward. Orleton, for his attachment to the party of Lancaster, had been deprived of the temporalities of his see by the king, at the instance, as supposed, of Hugh Spenser, and he had on every possible occasion since displayed the most vindictive animus against the king. He had spread with indefatigable activity the filth of the Court scandal respecting Edward, and this might have passed for religious zeal in one of his profession and rank in the Church had he not winked as resolutely at the notorious vice of the queen. But he was one of her most energetic partisans in England; he hastened to meet her on landing; and in the Parliament, and everywhere amongst the barons, when it had been proposed to allow the king to be reconciled to his family, and rule by advice of his nobles, he had effectually quashed such sentiments, and turned the tide of opinion for the king's deposition. He now put the formal question, whether the king should be restored, or his son at once be raised to the throne. For appearance' sake the members were left to deliberate in their own minds on the question till the next day; but there could be only one answer, and that was for the father's dethronement. The public, on hearing that decision, broke forth into loudest acclamations, which were vehemently reiterated when the young king, a boy of fourteen, was presented to them. By a singular informality, Parliament deposed Edward first, and judged him afterwards.

Five days after declaring the accession of Edward III., a charge was drawn up against his father, in which some eminent historians discern the malice of his enemies rather than impartial grounds of complaint. They say that, notwithstanding the violence of his opponents, no particular cause was laid to his charge. True, those which were loudly enough proclaimed by the public voice to be of a scandalous nature were omitted, probably out of respect to his son, who was present during the whole proceedings. But what they did charge him with were incapacity for government, waste of time on idle amusements, neglect of business, cowardice, being perpetually under the influence of evil counsellors, of having by imbecility lost Scotland and part of Guienne, with arbitrary and unconstitutional imprisonment, ruin, and death of different nobles.

Surely these, if not all crimes, had all the effect of crimes on the nation. They were fraught with mischief, public discord, and decay, and must be regarded as affording ample grounds for deposition. In fact, the whole kingdom was weary of the incorrigible king; not a single voice was raised in his behalf, and on the 20th of January a deputation was despatched to announce his deposition to him at Kenilworth. This deputation consisted of certain bishops, earls, and barons, with two knights from each shire, and two representatives from each borough. The most glaring feature of harshness in the selection of the deputies was that the spiteful Adam Orleton, and the savage Sir William Trussel, who had passed such barbarous sentences on Edward's friends the Spensers, were amongst its leading members. At sight of Orleton the king was so shocked that he fell to the ground. The interview took place in the great hall of Kenilworth, and the king appeared wrapped in a common black gown. Sir William Trussel, as speaker, pronounced the judgment of Parliament, and Sir Thomas Blount, the steward of the household, then broke his white staff of office, and declared all persons discharged and freed from Edward's service, the ceremony being the same as practised on a king's death. On the 24th King Edward III. was proclaimed, it being declared to be by the full consent of the late king; on the 28th the young monarch received the great seal from the chancellor, and re-delivered it to him; and on the 29th he was crowned at Westminster by the Archbishop of Canterbury.

The extreme youth of the king enabled Queen Isabella, his mother, to have the chief power of the crown vested in her. But her unconcealed connection with the Lord Mortimer made her very soon lose the popularity which her pretence of driving away the Spensers had obtained her. Both barons and people looked with ill-suppressed jealousy and disgust at the dangerous position of Mortimer; and however completely the late king had forfeited public favour, it was not long before the people began to feel that it was not the part of a wife to have invaded the kingdom, and deposed and pursued to death her husband and the father of her children. Isabella had indeed pretended to lament over this necessity, and to bewail the afflictions of her husband; but her actions belied her words and tears, for she still pressed on his abdication, and was all the time living in open adultery with her paramour Mortimer. Thus public feeling and indignation grew apace, and there were not wanting monks who boldly denounced from the pulpit the scandalous life of the queen, and awoke a feeling of commiseration for her captive husband. Those who beheld the proud Mortimer actually occupying, in the name of the queen, the seat of royal power, burned with not unnatural wrath at the degradation of the throne; those who saw the unfortunate Edward, gentle and depressed in his fallen fortunes, became touched with compassion for him. The Earl of Leicester, now Earl of Lancaster, though he had a brother's blood in his remembrance, could not help being affected with generous and kindly sentiments towards his prisoner, and was even suspected of entertaining more honourable intentions towards him.

These things were whispered to Isabella, and the king was speedily removed into the care of Sir John Maltravers, a man of a savage disposition, and embittered against the king by injuries received from him and his favourites. Maltravers appeared to study the concealment of his captive, removing him from time to time from one castle to another in the space of a few months. At length Lord Berkeley was added to the commission of custody, and the unhappy captive was lodged in Berkeley Castle, near the river Severn. While Lord Berkeley was there Edward was treated with the courtesy due to his rank and to his misfortunes; but that nobleman being detained at his manor of Bradley by sickness, the opportunity was taken to leave the dethroned king in the hands of two hardened and desperate ruffians, named Gournay and Ogle. These men appeared to take a brutal delight in tormenting him. They practised upon him daily every indignity which they could devise. It is stated that one day, when Edward was to be shaved, they ordered cold and filthy water from the castle ditch for that purpose; and when he desired it to be changed, they refused it with mockery, though the unfortunate prince burst into tears, and declared that he would have clean and warm water.

These modes of killing were, however, too slow for those who wanted to be secure from any popular revulsion of feeling in favour of the deposed monarch; and one night, the 21st of September, 1327, frightful shrieks were heard from the castle, and the next morning the gates were thrown open, and the people were freely admitted to see the body of the late king, who, it was said, had died suddenly in the night. Of the nature of that disease there was no doubt on the minds of any one, for the cries of the sufferer's agony had reached even to the town, waking up, says Holinshed, "numbers, who prayed heartily to God to receive his soul, for they understood by those cries what the matter meant." The murder of Edward of Carnarvon is one of the horrors of history. The fiends who had him in custody, it came out, had thrown him upon a bed, and held him down violently with a table, while they had thrust a red-hot iron into his bowels through a tin pipe. By this means there appeared no outward cause of death; but his countenance was distorted and horrible to look upon. Most of the nobles and gentlemen of the neighbourhood went to see the body, which was then privately conveyed to Gloucester, and buried in the abbey, without any inquiry or investigation whatever.

Edward, at the time of his murder, was forty-three years old. He had reigned nineteen years and a half, and spent about nine months in woful captivity after his deposition.

Maltravers, Gournay, and Ogle were held in universal detestation. Gournay was some years afterwards caught at Marseilles, and shipped for England; but was beheaded at sea, as was supposed, by order of some of the nobles and prelates in England, to prevent any damaging disclosures regarding their accomplices or abettors. Maltravers found means of doing service to Edward III., and eventually obtained a pardon.

This reign presents a melancholy example of the miseries which befell a nation in those days from a weak king. In those rude times the throne was not fenced about and supported by the maxims and institutions which now-a-days enable very ordinary kings to fill their high post without any public inconvenience, and verify the observation of the celebrated Swedish chancellor, Oxenstierna, "See, my son, with how little sense a kingdom may be governed." In the time of Edward II. the convenient maxim had not been introduced that "the king can do no wrong." The monarch stood alone amid a race of powerful and ambitious barons, who were always ready to encroach on the throne, and could be restrained only by a strong hand. The king had not, as he has now, his council and his ministers to share his responsibilities, and to afford him the help of their united talents and advice. He acted more fully from his own individual views and, therefore, the consequences to the nation were the more directly good or evil as the king was wise or the reverse. In Edward II.'s reign the arms of the nation were disgraced, its hold on Scotland and France was weakened, and there was a vast amount of internal discord and civil bloodshed. We do not find those great enactments of laws which distinguished the reign of his father, and the estates of the crown were wasted on unworthy favourites. Yet, even in this reign the people gained something, as they have always done, from the necessities of kings. The barons, by the ordinances which they wrung from the weak hands of Edward, extended the privileges of Parliament, and circumscribed the power of the Crown. They decreed that all grants made without consent of Parliament should henceforth be invalid; that the king could not make war or leave the kingdom without consent of the baronage in Parliament assembled, who should appoint a regent during the royal absence; that the great officers of the crown and the governors of foreign possessions, should at all times be chosen by the baronage, or with their advice and assent in Parliament. These were important conquests from the Crown, and came in time to be the established privileges, not exclusively of the peers, but of Parliament at large.

The very usurpations and arbitrary deeds of the favourites produced permanent good out of temporary evil; for the barons compelled Edward to renew the Great Charter, and introduced a new and most valuable provision into it--namely: "Forasmuch as many people be aggrieved by the king's ministers against right, in respect to which grievances no one can recover without common consent of Parliament, we do ordain that the king shall hold a Parliament once a year, or twice, if need be." Thus, out of this king's fatal facility to favouritism came not only his own destruction, but also that grand security of public liberty--the annual assembling of Parliament.

Besides the troubles related, the kingdom during this reign was afflicted by a severe famine, which lasted for several years. The dearth was not produced by drought, but by continued rains and cold weather, which destroyed the harvests and caused great mortality amongst the cattle, and, of course, raised the price of everything to an enormous pitch. Parliament foolishly endeavoured to keep down prices by enacting, in 1315, a tariff of rates for all necessaries of life, but they very soon discovered that such a device was useless, and therefore repealed it.

In this reign also took place one of those great political changes which spring of necessity from the progress of society; this was the abolition of the celebrated Order of the Knights Templars. This famous Order was one of three religious military Orders which arose out of the Crusades. The other two were the Knights of the Hospital of St. John of Jerusalem, commonly called Knights Hospitallers, and the Teutonic Knights of St. Mary of Jerusalem, or German Knights of the Cross, all of which sprang up in the twelfth century. The foundation of the Order of Knights Templars, or Brethren of the Temple of Solomon, or Soldiers of the Temple, or Soldiers of Christ, took place in 1118 or 1119. Nine knights, all French, took a vow to maintain free passage for pilgrims to the Holy Land. To this vow they added those of poverty, chastity, obedience, and battle against the infidels. For six or seven years they did not add to their numbers, but in 1128 Pope Honorius II. confirmed a rule of the Council of Troyes on their behalf, thus fully recognising them as an orthodox body, the Pauperes Commilitones, or Poor Soldiers of the Holy City. Honorius appointed them to wear a white mantle, and in 1146 Eugenius III. added a red cross on the left breast, in imitation of the white cross of the Hospitallers, whose business it was to attend the sick and wounded, and entertain pilgrims. This red cross, borne also on their banners, became famous all over the world, from the valour of these knights, who hence acquired the common cognomen of Red Cross Knights.

The Order speedily grew into fame and popularity. Young men of the noblest families of every nation in Christendom eagerly sought admittance into it. They became extremely numerous, in time admitting priests and persons of lower rank, or esquires. Their chief seat after their expulsion from Jerusalem by Saladin was in Cyprus, but they had also "provinces" in Tripoli, Antioch, Portugal, Spain, France, England, Scotland, Ireland, Germany, Italy, and Sicily. Their history is the history of all the wars of the Christians against the infidels in the East, and for one hundred and seventy years they formed the most renowned portion of the Christian troops. But with fame came also immense wealth and--its usual sequence--corruption. Their vows had become a mockery. Instead of poverty and chastity, they grew notorious for the splendour of their abodes, and the pomp, luxury, and licentiousness of their lives.

In the time of Edward II. they had incurred the resentment of his brother-in-law, Philip the Fair, of France. They were suspected of exciting the Parisians to a resistance to the debasement of the coin, which Philip was noted for; but there needed no other temptation to their destruction with this needy prince than their enormous wealth. In 1306 the grand master of the Temple, Jacques de Molay, was summoned to Europe by Pope Clement V., who had secretly agreed with Philip to suppress the Order. De Molay was summoned on pretence of consulting with the Pope on uniting the two Orders of the Templars and Hospitallers. Witnesses were soon found to charge the whole Order of the Templars with the systematic practice of the most revolting crimes, and on the 12th of September, 1307, secret instructions were sent to all the governors of towns in France, by which in one night the whole of the Templars in France, including De Molay, were seized and thrown into prison. Their houses and property were everywhere seized, and their great stronghold, the Temple, in Paris, was taken possession of by Philip himself. For the space of six years there followed the most extraordinary and terrible scenes. The members of the Order were put to the most savage tortures to compel them to confess to the most incredible crimes and, on recanting their forced confessions, they were burnt at the stake. In Paris, Rheims, Sens, Vienne, and various other places, these dreadful cruelties and butcheries were perpetrated, till on the 22nd of March, 1312, the Pope abolished the Order for ever. On the 18th of March, 1314, De Molay, the grand master, and Guy, commander, or grand prior, of Normandy, were burnt on one of the small islands of the Seine.

In England and Ireland they were all in like manner arrested by sealed orders on a particular day, and their property of every kind, as well ecclesiastical as temporal, was confiscated. In this country, however, they were treated with great lenity: the witnesses brought against them refused to declare that they knew anything to their discredit, or, indeed, anything of their secret principles or practices. The Pope, incensed at this leniency, wrote strongly to Edward, exhorting him to try torture. A threat of treating them as heretics induced all but the grand master, William de la More, to confess their heresy; and they were sent to pass the remainder of their lives as prisoners in different monasteries, the revenues of their immense estates being conferred by king and Parliament on the Hospitallers, or Knights of St. John of Jerusalem. Their chief seat was the Temple, in Fleet Street, which they erected in 1185; but as early as the reign of Stephen they were established in the old Temple on the south side of Holborn, near the present Southampton Buildings.

So fell this mighty Order. Matthew Paris asserts that the number of their manors or estates throughout Christendom amounted to 9,000, and he estimates their yearly income at not less than £6,000,000 sterling. With the exception of Spain and Portugal, their property, as in England, was given to the Knights of St. John.

King Edward II. left four children, two sons and two daughters. Edward succeeded him; John, Earl of Cornwall, died early at Perth; Joan was married to David Bruce, King of Scotland; and Eleanor to Reginald, Duke of Gueldres.

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