Edward I. (1272—1307.)

Edward I. succeeded his father, "the bitter king."

"The greatest of the Plantagenets" may be regarded as great beside such colossal criminals as John and Richard III. In no other sense was he great. Compare him with any real benefactor of mankind, and he at once becomes a moral pigmy. Kings and queens to shine at all must be judged by the lowest standard of moral excellence—that is to say by the royal standard. In a royal personage the mere absence of a marked vice becomes an astonishing virtue. What surprises us with regard to princes is not that they are good, but that everything considered, they are not a great deal worse.

When the Prince of Wales's mischievous trip to India was being planned, Mr. Bright announced that H.R.H. was "good natured." What more reasonable therefore than saddle the taxpayer with the cost of the jaunt? Had we not every reason to expect that a prince would be as surely as a bear? For reasons about equally cogent Edward I. has been styled the English Justinian. He was indeed a lawyer in the sense that, when he wished to rob his neighbours in Scotland, Wales, or France of what belonged to them, he generally prefaced his attacks by legal quibbles of which an Old Bailey lawyer might be ashamed. He tried his utmost to set aside the provisions of the Great Charter, and when he found the barons too strong for him he shed some crocodile tears in Westminster Hall, and abandoned the attempt.

By royal decree he made the Jews give up usury on pain page 31 of death, and in London alone two hundred and eighty of them were hanged. The position of the chosen race in England has greatly improved since then. But recently the Liberal Administration sent to Egypt a powerful fleet and army to extort exorbitant interest on their behalf. On the whole, Edward's method was more commendable. Better far hang a few Goschens, Rothschilds, and Oppenheims than burn Alexandria and slaughter thousands of inoffensive fellaheen at Tel-el-Kebir, or of gallant Arabs at El Teb.

It was the one great ambition of Edward's life to impose the Norman yoke on the whole British islands. To effect this object he drained England of men and money, while inflicting on Scotland and Wales untold miseries. Of the two last native princes of Wales, Llewellyn and David, he caused the head of the former to be stuck on the Tower, crowned with ivy the latter he commanded [to be drawn, hanged, disembowelled, and quartered. They had been guilty of the enormity of standing up for the independence of the ancient Cymric race.

But it was in Scotland that Edward's policy of craft and violence met with a check, the consequences of which can hardly be exaggerated. He had little difficulty in cajoling and intimidating the Scottish nobles (the most unpatriotic in Europe) into submission to his yoke; and when that was accomplished, according to feudal ideas and precedents, all should have been achieved. But what was Edward's rage and astonishment very speedily to find himself face to face with a rising of the Scottish people, a phenomenon absolutely new in feudal Europe! They were summoned to arms by a simple country gentleman, Sir William Wallace, without aristocratic connections of any kind.

This extraordinary man was the forerunner of the Kosciuskos, Capodistrias, and Garibaldis of later times. He was the first soldier in Europe who fought, not for a dynasty, but for a nation. He brushed aside all the technicalities of the feudal law, and boldly assumed in the face of the world the title of Guardian of the Realm of Scotland. He showed how burghers and peasants, with spears in their hands, might overthrow the iron-clad knighthood of Christendom, hitherto considered invincible. He was the first to form the British infantry square, and despite feudalism he introduced the page 32 conscription. His motto was "God armeth the Patriot." In Wallace modern democracy found its first great leader.

After repeated successes against overwhelming odds in the field, aggravated tenfold by the abominable treachery of the Scottish nobles in the council, he was defeated by Edward in a desperate battle at Falkirk, and ultimately betrayed to "the greatest of the Plantagenets" for gold. He was hurried to London, tried at Westminster, and drawn, hanged, disembo welled while yet alive, and quartered at Smithfield. It was not pretended that he had ever sworn allegiance to Edward. His great crime was that he had fought for the honour and independence of Scotland after her feudal lords had ignominiously succumbed. He was judicially murdered.

But like Simon de Montfort, his work was done. His example had made the Scots, the poorest and most uncivilised people in Europe, a nation of stalwart freemen, henceforth resolute never to unite with their powerful neighbour except on terms of perfect equality. Had it been otherwise, England would have had not one Ireland, but two on her hands to day. Englishmen, quite as much as Scotsmen, have reason to bless the memory of the Scottish hero. The burghers of Flanders and the herdsmen of Switzerland were not slow to learn the lesson he had taught. No matter that his head, crowned in mockery with laurel, was stuck with that of his eldest brother, Sir John Wallace, on London bridge, feudal ruffianism in mail had received its death blow in Europe. How puny the greatest achievement of "the greatest of the Plantagenets" with such a result!

"But bleeding and bound though her Wallace wight
For his long-loved country die,
Yet the bugle ne'er sang to a braver knight
Than Wallace of Elderslie;
And the day of his glory shall ne'er depart,
His head unentombed shall with glory be balmed,
From the blood-streaming altar his spirit shall start.
Though the raven hath fed on his mouldering heart,
Yet a nobler was never embalmed,"